The Executive Approach

I have had a few experience with teachers who use the executive approach. I see it being used in most schools today in preparation for standardized tests. I think that this approach works very well for a testing environment. Personally, I am not a huge fan of this type of teaching because I believe that students find little relevance between what they are taught in school and what is going on in their lives and all too often as soon as they have passed the class they forget all the information.

However, there are a few benefits to this approach. I believe that they have very accurate assessment methods for checking for understanding in their students. I also believe that their use of the same materials lends itself to quicker learning for the children because they are simply learning new content not a new method of gaining that content. Thereby, making knowledge transfer much quicker than other methods. I also think that because Standardized testing is such a huge deal right now that the Executive approach is given much more credit because the methods used work very well for this kind of assessment era. Another benefit of this method is that it is very very highly structured.

The Executive classroom is very teacher-centered as well which sometimes makes teacher feel as though they have more control. I believe that this method is appealing to many teachers because they like to be in control of what is going on in their classroom. Personally, I feel if the teacher isn't competent in what they are teaching a highly structured classroom will not improve their teaching. This Executive approach can be very bad if the teacher isn't a good teacher, the students will simply feel like they are under a dictator which I don't think will enhance anybody's educational experience. However, if the teacher understands and can teach well then the Executive approach for them might be a very positive thing.