Whatever Happened to Madeline Hunter?
“I used to think teachers were born, not made … but I know better now. I’ve seen bumblers turned into geniuses, while charismatic characters turned out happy illiterates.” Madeline Hunter, 1991
A former teacher and elementary school principal, and professor of educational administration and teacher education at University of California, Los Angeles, Madeline Hunter developed a model of teaching that combined instructional techniques applied to all academic subjects across elementary and secondary school classrooms. Called Instructional Theory into Practice (ITIP), the teacher-centered, direct instructional model was anchored in, according to Hunter, psychological learning theory and educational research. Academic content was important as were specific student objectives on what they were to learn and the sequence of techniques teachers were to use to reach those content and skill objectives (see here and here).
Hunter’s gift was to convert this model of “mastery teaching” into seven key features that every teacher had to cover within a lesson. A common template for a “Hunter Lesson” looked like this:
Administrators and teachers adopted this design for lessons across the country CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened to Madeline Hunter? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice