MASTERY LEARNING BROUGHT ME TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The Australian Army sent me to Papua New Guinea in 1975 to work as a training officer at the Joint Services College of Papua New Guinea.

Mastery Learning was the key to my posting and it has stayed in this country to the present time. Please click:

archive on mastery learning for schools - family positive living - aids ...

familypositiveliving.blogspot.com/.../archive-on-mastery-learning-for-sc...‎

Dec 21, 2012 - ARCHIVE ON MASTERY LEARNING FOR SCHOOLS.

Resource ideas for the Department of Education in Papua New Guinea.

My involvement with Mastery Learning goes back to my school days. I was having problems with grade 12 physics in 1963.

Our text book written by one Mr Barrell has about 12 chapters with about 10 exercises at the end of every chapter. There were 120 problems in the book. The last 3 exercises were to be solved by the class genius. That was not me.

These were the days of Norm Referenced Assessment when the testing process in schools was to identify the class genius, average students and the dummos. I was average. My parents sent me to Hubbard Academy in Brisbane to be coached in Physics.

It was an awakening. Our text book had about 12 chapters. At the end of every chapter were about .....wait for it ..... 250 problems. That was about 3000 problems for the year of coaching. Each was arranged in simple to complex order and known to unknown. Physics became easy.

THIS WAS MASTERY LEARNING AS I WAS LATER TO LEARN.

I applied the strategy to classes when I became a high school teacher. Then I joined the Australian Army as an Education Officer of the Royal Australian Army Education Corps (RAAEC).

At the same time I studied for my Bachelor of Education at the University of Queensland and met for the first time, the writings of Dr Benjamin Bloom with his Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and a new old friend Mastery Learning.

I was critical of Army Education and the way the assessment required the soldiers to understand complex theoretical questions in the Australian Army Certificate of Education (AACE 1).

As an idealistic young lieutenant, I wrote to the RAAEC journal on how studies could be made less complex for soldiers. It must have worked as I became subject master for at least 4 army education subjects over the next 10 years.

But I had been noticed. The question was how to best employ Copeland or how to get rid of him. I was posted to the Joint Services College of Papua New Guinea in 1975. Recommendation was made by Major Wolf Fladun who came with me. He had been a boy soldier in the Germany army.

Over the next two years, an amazing course developed in Mastery Learning. It was a course called a Program in Problem Solving (PIPS). Please click:

MASTERY LEARNING FOR PNGDF TRAINING

Senior officers in the PNGDF today say that PIPS is the only training they can remember from 40 years ago. It was a process of gentle brain washing in the basics of decision making. Did you check? How did you check?

I wrote extensively in the Australian Defence Force Journal on Mastery Learning. Over a decade, the basics became well known in the Defence Force. Please click:

SETTING UP MASTERY LEARNING

After Papua New Guinea, I was posted to the RAAF School of Languages to teach Tok Pisin. Over a 14 year period, language training was based on Mastery Learning. Please click:

MASTERY LEARNING OF TOK PISIN PATTERNS

MASTERING TOK PISIN AT PT COOK

After retirement, I came back to PNG to work in Education. Slowly Mastery Learning found a place particularly in the suggestion at higher levels that Mastery Learning was the replacement for Outcome Based Education.

I have demonstrated to the Education Department the use of Mastery Learning at Boreboa and Ward Strip schools, Kila Kila High school and Port Moresby Institute of Matriculation Studies.

Grade 8 classes were taken for Mastery Writing over one term for one lesson a week. Results in the Written Expression exam were quite spectacular.

Each lesson, exercises were completed one at a time with support of the teacher. Twenty would be completed every lesson in lock-step. There are more in the archives above. Please click:

WRITING SKILLS FOR HIGHER GRADES

WRITE SWEET ENGLISH

MASTERY WRITING FROM WORLD HISTORY (3)

Mastery Learning is on its way back from the 1950s when Dr Benjamin Bloom first promoted the Strategy.

The exercises below would be for the lower grades upwards. It may be that up to grade 12, there would be 1200 exercises on heat. Please click;

BRAIN STORMING MASTERY LEARNING IN SCIENCE

MASTERY LEARNING ON BODY HEAT