Bransford and MOST

I've found MOST environments to be quite intriguing, even though they have only limited use for my subject area. I find the idea of teaching literacy by such a non-traditional method to be not only useful, but ultimately necessary for struggling readers.

Although I've always had above average literacy skills in English, I can remember taking French courses and really struggling in them. This was in the mid to late 1990's and I can remember my teacher being one of the top educators at the school. She was very up to date on technology and tried to immerse us in the language as much as possible. Unfortunately, resources were limited, multimedia was just taking off, and the dominant technique for learning french was rope memorization.

Reading up on the MOST environment and how Bransford discussed its merits with struggling learners, I couldn't help but envision how this can directly affect foreign language classrooms (whether we are teaching Spanish to American youth or teaching ESL students English). I can remember watching a movie in French 3 and being able to follow what was happening, even though I would never be able to translate the dialogue if it was written out on paper.

The downside to the MOST environment is the preparation and materials that it requires. It is not as simple as showing movies. From what I've experienced in my math classroom, integrating video productively into the standard course of study is often hard, as the flow and pacing of the video very rarely matches up to the pacing of your classroom. Plus, you generally have a range in mind of student ability that you aim for when you are teaching and often times a video misses that range.

Although the implementation of MOST takes more time (haha, pun intended) than preparing a simple instruct-recall lesson, it does a world of good, particularly for the students you are trying to reach. The idea of being immersed in a foreign language, recreating the story line, analyzing what has happened, it makes the idea of taking a foreign language class sound much more pleasant.

References: BRANSFORD, J. D., SHARP, D. M., VYE, N. J., GOLDMAN, S. R., HASSELBRING, T. S., GOIN, L., O'BANION, K., LIVERNOIS, J., SAUL, E., & THE COGNITION AND TECHNOLOGY GROUP AT VANDERBILT (1996). MOST ENVIRONMENTS FOR ACCELERATING LITERACY DEVELOPMENT. IN S. VOSNIADOU, E. DECORTE, R. GLASER, & H. MANDL (EDS.), INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE DESIGN OF TECHNOLOGY-SUPPORTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS (PP. 223-255). MAHWAH, NJ: ERLBAUM.