jan 1, 1890 - Chalkboards &
Textbooks
Description:
With the advent of compulsory schooling in the United Kingdom in the late eighteen hundreds and the significant increase in student population in public schools, the British acknowledged a sudden need to adopt a unified education program. The chalkboard stood at the core of this new teaching culture. This report will argue that the chalkboard gave rise to the standardization of public education, and its integration into English classrooms in the nineteenth century led to the widespread advancement of rote memorization as the dominant teaching pedagogy in the United Kingdom (Avenia, 2012).
The blackboard is an adaptable technology and extremely reliable. As Puryear (1999) defends, the chalkboard is inexpensive to produce, easily distributed, and portable. The chalkboard is easily mastered by anyone with basic literacy skills, so although it was introduced with the teacher centred rote memorisation pedagogy at its core, it could just as easily be used to enhance education placing students in the centre. Ressler (2004) contests that the chalkboard is a fundamental tool to facilitate learning because “the learning process is about making connections” (p.71) and a chalkboard permits the text to remain visible for the students (Avenia, 2012).
Added to timeline:
History of Educational Technology
References:
Avenia, T. (2012). The History and Future of the...
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