Hi everyone. I would like to talk about the luck of the draw factor in education in this post.
Topics
- Not Choosing Your Teachers
- Not Choosing Your Students
- Randomness As A Part Of Life
Not Choosing Your Teachers
I do not know many places where students choose their teacher before the start of a school year. There are a few cases where students do change teachers or change schools if the old teacher or school does not work for the student. You can somewhat choose university/college professors with the use of https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ for choosing classes with good instructors and avoiding awful teachers. For the most part, you have to be deal with the teacher you are given with. It is one fact of life.
Teachers can be either male or female, young, middle-aged or old, funny or mean, strict or not so strict, a good teacher or a bad teacher. Note that teachers are people too. Teachers have their own ways of teaching, explaining things and ways of interacting with different students.
Not Choosing Your Students
The previous section was from the student perspective. This section looks at not choosing students from the teachers' perspective. I am not sure if teachers do select students at the elementary or high school level. At the university level, the students choose to enroll into courses that they are interested in or the courses that are mandatory for their program. (I don't know about students and course selection at colleges.). Teachers, educators and professors do deal with a variety of new and different students every school year. The variety of students is diverse in terms of nationalities, beliefs, learning styles and personalities.
From a theoretical and statistical perspective, I think it is difficult to compare student performance between classes and between professors in different years for the same course. There are many different variables/factors involved. Variables that can be quantified include test averages, final grade average scores. There are also things such as teaching quality, student participation, choice of topics, test difficulty. These factors are subjective as different people will have different ratings. It would be hard to compare which student groups in a class did better than another. Surveys from students on student satisfaction for a course could help but scores can be subjective.
Randomness As A Part Of Life
Kids and young students early on do experience elements of randomness without actually knowing what it is. Teachers change from year to year. Classmates also change from year to year. Some students and teachers may change schools too. Nothing really stays the same. There are a some cases where you get the same classmates and maybe the same teacher from a year ago or a couple of years ago.
Teachers have different students each year with their own learning styles, personalities and habits. It is important for teachers to be adaptable to students. What works for one group of students may not work for another group of students in terms of teaching and handling students.
Thank you for reading.