Madeline Hunter in front of UES, probably in the late 1970s

Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916–1994) was an American educator who developed a model for teaching and learning that was widely adopted by schools during the last quarter of the 20th century.

She was named one of the hundred most influential women of the 20th century and one of the ten most influential in education by the Sierra Research Institute and the National Women's Hall of Fame.

I taught with Madeline Hunter from 1974 to about 1982. Madeline was a teachers teacher. She knew how learning took place and was able to clearly train others in those methods. I learned how to think and act like a teacher from Madeline. She could think on her feet and believed that everyone including children, adults and teachers could learn? She was an amazing person and I considered it a priviledge to work under her. Kent Gardiner


Madeline Hunter from her Facebook page.

Video of Madeline Hunter 1973
Dr. Madeline Hunter describes her program in individualized instruction and comments on two schools -- her own experimental elementary school at UCLA and an inner-city school in Los Angeles. Dr. Hunter explains her process of custom tailoring instruction to fit each learner as an individual and shows how these techniques are relevant to human relations and school discipline. From the Human Relations and School Discipline series

UCLA 1935

UCLA, 1934

UCLA, 1936

Madeline said she like to serve popcorn at the yearly FSA picnic so she could greet everyone and not get stuck with one person.

Madeline presenting an Ode to a departing staff member. The Ode was written by Janet Harkness, left.

Madeline at a FSA picnic

Ann de la Sota
Anger Over Tuition
Childhood Expressions by Corinne A. Seeds
Corinne A. Seeds
Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School
Cynthiana Brown
Craig Cunningham
Janet Harkness
Lab School Videos
Madeline Hunter
Moving UES
UES
UES Timeline
UES Videos
University Elementary School Buildings

125 Year Celebration
1933 UES Newspaper
1970 Year Plan
1972 Year Plan

Encyclopedia:

Madeline Cheek Hunter

Influential American educator Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916-1994) developed a model for teaching and learning that was widely adopted by schools during the last quarter of the 20th century.

Madeline Hunter was one of two daughters born to Alexander Cheek, grandson of a Cherokee Indian. He had been orphaned at eight years old and had to drop out of school to work. Eventually he became a barber and, as a result of hard effort and intelligence, owned shops all over the United States and Canada. Her mother, Anna Keis, was the daughter of a Bohemian nobleman and a peasant woman.
Madeline's family originally lived in Canada where she was born. Her father was an avid hunter who liked Canada because "the duck hunting was better there." As Madeline was a "sickly" child, the family ultimately moved to California to avoid the terrible Canadian winters in Saskatchewan. Although they returned to Canada from May to October for many years, most of her schooling was in California. She and her father became naturalized United States citizens when she was about 14 years old. There was never a question that she and her sister would receive an education, a privilege denied her parents.
In junior high school she was placed in an experimental school to test some of Stanford University professor Louis Terman's psychological theories on intelligence. The school used her to score intelligence tests. Hunter later reported that, "As a result of that 'chore' and the stimulation from an outstanding school psychologist and teacher, Christine Cook, I became interested in human intelligence. That and classical ballet were my passions in life." As a 16-year-old (1932) she entered the University of California at Los Angeles as a combination pre-medicine and psychology major while continuing her ballet dancing. Eventually she had to choose between going to South America on tour with the Ballet Russe or finishing her degree. After choosing the latter, she discovered that limited eye-hand coordination would deny her the chance of a career as a neurological surgeon.
Two additional events influenced her choice of a career in school psychology. The first occurred many years before when waiting to be assigned to her seventh grade classroom in junior high school. Unknowingly, she would be assigned to an experimental class. While sitting in an auditorium, she watched as nearly every other student's name was called first and left for an assigned classroom. The feelings of hurt associated with a child being labeled last or dumb was not forgotten in her later works. As a consequence, a theme that runs consistently throughout her career is the need to give positive reinforcement to students in schools—"Never put a kid down, always build the kid up." A second defining moment that shaped her thinking occurred after graduation during her first work experiences at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles and at Juvenile Hall. From these situations she soon concluded that interventions in helping children in such situations were "too little, too late." She knew she needed to turn to children in schools and work there on the preventative side rather than the remedial side.
During World War II she married an engineer, Robert Hunter, who continued to work at Lockheed Aviation until his retirement. In 1944 they had a daughter, Cheryl, whose later career was that of a film editor, and in 1946 they had a son, Robin, who later became a school principal. When the children no longer needed a mother at home, Madeline went back to work full time in education, holding a series of positions in Los Angeles, namely, school psychologist, then principal, followed by director of research, and finally as an assistant superintendent who was used for "trouble shooting" difficult situations in the inner city, often involving multicultural groups. After 1963 she was associated with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), first at the University Elementary School and later as a professor in the College of Education. During those years she worked closely with her colleague John Goodlad and was given the opportunity to implement her educational model in that laboratory school setting. She was named one of the hundred most influential women of the 20th century and one of the ten most influential in education by the Sierra Research Institute and the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Dissatisfaction with the quality of instruction in American schools during the 1970s and 1980s led many educators to call for fundamental changes. Madeline Hunter's model was turned to by many as a solution, and eventually it was implemented in 16 states formally in the 1980s and was widely used in others. Her education model is a "teacher decision-making model that is applicable to any mode or style of teaching, to any learner, and for any objective." Her method enables teachers to understand how particular behaviors can be attained by a student and how those desirable behaviors can be transferred and repeated in new situations.
A brief list of instructional and curricular decisions an English teacher might make in preparing for class are: (1) What can the students do as a result of this class? (2) What skills or information will the students need for attaining what they need to learn? (3) What learning behaviors can the teacher facilitate in the students which will result in the highest probability of being satisfying and successful? and (4) How will the teacher artistically use research and intuition to make students' satisfying achievement more probable?
By using her pre-medical background and her work in psychology, Hunter skillfully translated research from academic disciplines into teacher language and educational practice. She argued that teaching is like ballet or surgery; that is, teachers have to automate many behaviors so they can perform them artistically at high speed when a situation requiring them arises. As a consequence of applying her model, students learn behaviors that they can creatively transfer into new situations.
In response to a question asking her to assess the current educational situation in the 1990s, she said, "I believe the future of education is bright! We are beginning to unlock the mystery of the human brain and how it processes and learns. We, now, can enable teachers to use that knowledge to accelerate that learning process. No longer is teaching a 'laying on of hands.' It has become a profession that combines science with art to create a better and a more productive world for humankind." She died in 1994.

Life

During World War II she married an engineer, Robert Hunter, who worked at Lockheed Aviation until he retired. They had two children, a daughter and a son. In 1944 their first child was born, Cheryl, who became a film editor later in her career. In 1946 they had their second child, Robin, who became a school principal.

After her children were on their own, she went back to working full time as an educator. She held many positions such as: a school psychologist, principal, director of research, and an assistant superintendent. She was given the opportunity to implement her educational model in a laboratory school setting. In Hunter's lifetime, she wrote 12 books, over 300 articles, and produced 17 videotape collections.

According to the Graduate School of Education at U.C.L.A where she worked, Hunter died at the age of 78 in Los Angeles from a series of strokes.

She believed that the foremost job of teachers was decision making, and that each teacher makes thousands of decisions each day. All of the decisions a teacher makes can be put into one of three categories: (1) content category - what you are going to teach; (2) teaching behavior category - what you as the teacher will do to facilitate and escalate that learning; and (3) learning behavior category - how the students are going to learn and how they will let you know that they've learned it.

Educational Beliefs

In response to a question asking her to assess the current educational situation in the 1990s, she said, "I believe the future of education is bright! We are beginning to unlock the mystery of the human brain and how it processes and learns. We, now, can enable teachers to use that knowledge to accelerate that learning process. No longer is teaching a 'laying on of hands.' It has become a profession that combines science with art to create a better and a more productive world for humankind." (Source?)

Madeline Hunter developed the Instructional Theory into Practice teaching model. It is a direct instruction program that was implemented in thousands of schools throughout the United States.

Theories on Education

Hunter identified seven components for teaching:

knowledge of human growth and development

content

classroom management

materials

planning

human relations

instructional skills

Hunter also developed a direct instructional model and elements of effective instruction.

The instructional model has seven components:

objectives

standards

anticipatory set

teaching (input, modeling, checking for understanding)

guided practice/monitoring

closure

independent practice

The elements of effective instruction are very similar to those of the instructional model, featuring seven components of teaching and behavioral objectives:

objectives

set(hook)

standards/expectations

teaching (input, modeling/demo, direction giving, and checking for understanding)

guided practice

closure

independent practice

Hunter was the creator of Instructional Theory into Practice (ITIP). ITIP is a teaching model on inservice/staff development program widely used during the 1970s and 1980s.

Madeline Cheek Hunter. (n.d.). Biographies. Retrieved November 5, 2008, from Answers.com Web site:

1930 census Madeline Hunter:

1940 Madeline Cheek goes to Hawaii

1964 LA Times:

1968 Madeline Cheek Hunter offers recipe:

1970 Principal Madeline Hunter

1970 Madeline Hunter

1977 Madeline Hunter

1978

1987 Madeline Hunter, Times

1994 Madeline Hunter obituary:

1994 Death date from Ancestry:

Photos of Madeline Hunter at the University Elementary School:

1978

1986
"Practically everyone knows there's plenty wrong with our schools," Madeline Hunter says. "The good news is that education is undergoing steady improvement precisely because we're intensely analytical and critical of it."

Hardly anyone is more analytical and critical-and supportive-than Hunter, a widely acclaimed teacher of teachers.

Hunter's telephones ring constantly. Among the most frequent callers are school administrators eager to learn the latest, day by day, in terms of upgrading the educational experience: How to make good teachers, how to spur kids to learn faster, how to cure many of the ills of education.

`Dial-a-Miracle Help'

"It might sound like they're asking for dial-a-miracle help," Hunter says, "but actually the calls are a healthy symptom of a new era of enlightenment."

Tall and slim, with alert brown eyes and a grandmotherly empathy, Madeline Hunter, 70, is a pioneer of the new era.

"Education," she said, "is at the breakthrough stage reached by medicine in another age-a time when scientists discovered it was germs and not evil spirits that caused trouble. We have identified cause-and-effect relationships in education. The evidence of what's right and what's wrong contains lots of surprises."

A psychologist as well as an educator, Hunter served for more than 20 years as principal of the University Elementary School (known as UES) at UCLA, an experimental laboratory whose research findings sent shock waves through the educational establishment.

Among the findings at UES: The most common reasons given for school failure simply don't stand up.

A Different Story

"For years," Hunter said, "teachers, politicians and social workers have blamed low learning levels on everything from the bleak environment of the ghetto to broken homes to substandard IQs to malnutrition to poverty in general."

But the findings gathered by Hunter and UES told a different story. "By changing nothing but the ability of the teacher to teach," Hunter said, "we can bring about a more dramatic change in the success of a child in learning than through the manipulation of any other factor in his or her environment. We have yet to find a student who won't learn."

Three years ago Hunter gave up her post as UES principal to become a professor of education at UCLA. There she lectures to doctoral students, including school superintendents, principals, college professors and secondary teachers.

Additionally she has developed "Aide-ing in Education," a videocassette program to train volunteer classroom aides for public schools, and under UCLA sponsorship she has worked on "Mastery Teaching," a 20-tape videocassette series aimed at helping teachers to do their jobs better.

The great-granddaughter of a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, Madeline Cheek Hunter began solving educational puzzles as a schoolgirl in Los Angeles. When she took an IQ test in junior high, "I was graded one point lower than my best friend, and I nearly died of humiliation.

"But more importantly I was fascinated by the idea that a person's intelligence could be tested merely by asking questions. I expressed so much curiosity about it, the school psychologist enlisted me to help score tests.

"I didn't know how to spell the word psychologist, but decided I'd become one. When I told my friends, they said, `OK, read my palm.' "

Between classes at UCLA-where she earned degrees in psychology and education-she was hired as an assistant to a diagnostic psychologist. "I loved the responsibility so much," Hunter said, "I ended up doing most of the work while she collected all the fees, but I didn't care. She was grooming me for a career, and to me that's what counted."

At age 20 Hunter became a psychologist at Juvenile Hall, working with delinquents. "I kept asking myself, `Why is this or that kid out stealing hubcaps instead of attending school?'

"I discovered he was skipping classes because school had become a punishing place: He couldn't read, and he was failing one subject after another. I knew I couldn't change his family background-which often consisted of a father in prison, a mother out soliciting, a sister on drugs-but I was determined to teach him to read and do something useful with his life."

In time Hunter became a school psychologist. Later she won promotion to principal and worked in schools ranging from Watts to Bel Air. "For quite a while," she said, "I was bogged down at various schools in adminis-trivia: dealing with lost lunch boxes and mixed-up bus schedules. But eventually the lucky day arrived when I landed at UES."

Along the way she met and married Robert Hunter, a now-retired Lockheed executive who worked on the high-flying U-2 spy plane and helped solve many problems in the United States missile program. They have a daughter, Cheryl, 38, a film editor; a son, Robin, 36, an elementary school principal; and two grandchildren.

At UES Hunter and her staff worked toward the goal of increasing the ability of teachers to teach. "Only 20 years ago," she told an interviewer recently, "we were still confronted by a widespread myth that teachers are born, not made. I knew it was a myth because I had seen too many bumbling beginners-including me-turn into reasonably decent teachers.

"I'd also seen a lot of charismatic teachers, pied pipers who looked wonderful to the kids. The pied pipers managed to produce some of the happiest illiterates in the entire school. Charisma is great, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient to be a good teacher."

Components of Teaching

One key effort at UES, Hunter said, was aimed at identifying the components of successful teaching methods. "Consider an analogy with nutrition, which is both a science and an art. Any human, regardless of age, needs certain nutrients for health: protein, vitamins, minerals. The science part tells us you can't get much nourishment on a diet of soft drinks and doughnuts.

"The art of nutrition is how you put the meal together. If you take turkey, mashed potatoes and green salad, shove it into a blender and whip it into a slush, you may have a nutritious meal but nobody's going to eat it. So the art involves how you serve it up.

"At UES we identified a lot of the nutrients required for a successful school situation, to spur kids to learn. We worked with a cross section of youngsters, ages 3 to 12, carefully prescreened and brought in from many different economic and social backgrounds.

"We showed teachers what those learning nutrients are, how to put everything together in a nourishing meal. We made darned good cooks out of some and master chefs out of others.

"Just as research has identified protein's role in the growth of muscles and bone, so we identified some basic principles that affect learning. We pulled these principles out of psychological literature and translated them into teacher talk.

"For example, a teacher might say, `George, how much is 12 times 12?' Just as soon as she has singled out George, the rest of the class knows who the pigeon is, and they don't even bother to listen. But let her say, `Everyone, get ready to answer the question: How much is 12 times 12?' All the minds are in gear. The whole class is listening. Now the teacher can ask George for the answer, and everybody hears it.

The Critical Difference

"It's a very simplistic example, but we've found conclusively it's the kind of tactic that makes the critical difference between learning and and not learning.

"At another level we work on reinforcement. You and I will do what works well for us. If you can draw water by turning a lever at the kitchen sink, next time you want water you'll turn the lever. But if you get an electric shock in the process, you'll look for some other way of drawing water.

"Examine reinforcement in the classroom. For example, Harry wants attention, so he makes a smart remark. The teacher bawls him out, giving him plenty of attention, so he gets what he wanted.

"What the teacher should do in that situation is ignore him and continue to teach. Better yet, anticipate him. `Class, we're going to be talking about aircraft today, and Harry, you know a lot about aircraft, so be sure to signal me when you can help me.' This way the teacher elicits productive behavior from the student instead of inadvertently rewarding destructive behavior."

Another major effort developed at UES was aimed at bringing medical research into the teaching process, and Hunter has continued to sharpen the effort. She said: "Teachers need to distinguish between benign stress that is growth-evoking, and malignant stress that results in hypertension, coronary arrest, arthritis.

"For example, if a teacher tells a child, `Your whole grade depends on this, so you better get busy,' that child is probably going to fall apart under malignant stress.

"But if the teacher says, `Boy, you've already got the first paragraph done! I'll bet you're going to do better on this paper than you've ever done before,' that child is probably going to do better because the teacher has given him confidence. Under benign stress he will stretch his competence in a healthy way. It makes a crucial difference."

Another crucial difference occurs, Hunter said, when a teacher creates an environment where, right from the start, a youngster respects himself as a person who is worthy and competent. "A child doesn't need to be loved at school-only at home-but he does need the feeling that he has choices about his life.

The Eager Approach

"A good teacher encourages him to approach the entire learning experience eagerly and aggressively. If the child is made afraid, he's going to withdraw. But if the teacher expresses faith in his competence, the child's attitude will be: `I see the problem is something new for me, but chances are I can deal with it.' "

In her lectures and seminars Hunter encourages not only teachers but principals and school district officials to take part in continuing staff development programs.

"You wouldn't think of going to a doctor for treatment on his first day back from a five-year African safari where he had learned nothing and was hopelessly obsolete," she said. "You wouldn't think of going to an attorney who hadn't kept up with the law. But in education we do have teachers who are stagnating because their school districts have failed to keep the teachers growing.

"Sad to say," Hunter continued, "there are principals who do not know how to supervise or evaluate a teacher. Supervision refers to continuing the growth of the teacher. Evaluation refers to assigning a teacher to a category of either staying on or shipping out.

"The absence of supervision or evaluation means there are some completely inadequate teachers with whom no one has done anything. Now, obviously, a school is no better than the people in it-the teachers, supervisors, principals-and that means a lot of work has to be done on staff development."

Hunter adds to her full days by regularly visiting schools and working with teachers at the classroom level. "One thing I keep trying to get across is, how to discipline with dignity. You see, no human can bear to lose dignity. If you humiliate kids, they won't get mad, they'll get even.

"One way to discipline with dignity can be summed up as control by proximity. If, for example, a kid is drawing a motorcycle, when he should be listening, the teacher can deal with it 90% of the time by simply standing next to him. He knows why the teacher is there, but nobody else knows, so the student hasn't lost face. Or if two girls are talking about a birthday party or a date, just walking over and teaching from that part of the room will stop their talking.

"Another way to discipline with dignity is to use an example that involves the student's name in a positive way. Suppose Bob is drawing that motorcycle while you are trying to teach multiplication. So you tell the class: `OK, Bob has played nine games and made five home runs in every game. How many total home runs? Bob, be my assistant teacher and call on somebody to answer.'

On a Positive Basis

"This engages him on a positive basis. It's very different from saying, `Bob, put that away and pay attention,' which only humiliates him publicly.

"My point is a teacher can be tougher than pig iron when it comes to discipline, but without sacrificing the student's place in the world.

"Another way is to give a secret signal: just walk by the student and touch the paper he's drawing on. Nothing has to be said; he knows that you know."

Hunter also teaches other approaches to discipline with dignity. "One is to use a private reminder. For example, tell the class: `Everybody close your eyes and be thinking of a question you would ask about the chapter so far.' And meantime you go over to the student who's out of order and say, `I know you have to be having a hard time taking care of yourself. Can you handle this or would you like some help from me?' This lets him make the choice."

A variation is to correct an error without causing a loss of dignity. "If you ask a child, `what's 5 times 9?' and the child replies, `40,' you can say `no' and go to another student, but that first kid is going to be so humiliated he will never volunteer another answer.

"How much better to give a prompt and say, `You would be right if I'd asked 5 times 8, because 5 times 8 is 40.' Or you could give a different prompt and say, `If you went to the store and bought 8 packs of nickel candy, that would be 40 cents, but I want you to buy an extra pack to keep for yourself, so you need one more nickel. How much would that be?'

"Now, 90% of the time the kid will come out with the right answer. You say, `Right, and I'm going to come back to that later, see if I can catch you.' In this way you dignify the prompt and you hold the child accountable."

Hunter has also given plenty of attention to the nature of homework, and she takes a characteristically enlightened view of it. "Homework should deal with something a student pretty much knows how to do, and its purpose should be to increase fluency and proficiency. Homework should not involve original learning, because the beginning is like wet cement: a mistake is very hard to correct.

"What I'm saying is against motherhood and apple pie, but in fact a lot of homework is just drivel. Teachers grade homework when they haven't the foggiest idea of who did it, or how much help the student was given. It reminds me of a marvelous cartoon of a kid handing a paper to his dad and saying, `You flunked the homework assignment last night. But don't feel badly-none of the other dads knew how to do it either.'

Cutting Down on Paper Work

"I tell teachers: instead of checking whether a student has done his homework, check whether he's learned it. If you give 10 problems in algebra as homework, when the students come in next day check them on one or two similar but not identical problems.

"The real question is whether the student learned what the homework was designed to accomplish, and this can be checked quickly in class. This also has the virtue of cutting down on the blizzard of paper work that teachers have to deal with."

Hunter also urges teachers to use transfer theory: "Give students examples they can relate to," to help them grasp concepts and situations that might otherwise seem elusive or distant.

Hunter cites "Romeo and Juliet" to illustrate her approach. "I'd tell the class: `Suppose in high school you met a really neat kid you were dying to date, but you knew your parents would have a fit about it. What would your parents object to? They don't know the neat kid, but they do know the family is of a different race, creed or color, or maybe on welfare.

" `Well, if you really were crazy about that kid, but your parents wouldn't let you date, you'd probably meet without telling your parents.

" `OK, you're going to read a story about exactly the same situation in old Italy.'

"The essence of transfer theory," Hunter said, "is to hook into something the student already knows, and then to bring it forward to accelerate present or future learning."

One subject Hunter teaches at the doctoral level to superintendents, principals and teachers is called "motivation and attribution theory."

She said: "Most success is attributed to either native ability or to the competition's deficiencies. For example, `I'm a great tennis player because I'm well coordinated,' or `because my opponent was so terrible he made me look good.'

"But the only factor we completely control is effort. As distinct from the myth that, for example, so-and-so is a marvelous writer because he or she has a knack for it, people simply don't look at the many hours the writer puts into listening, writing, revising, editing. Roll Over Without Trying

"Unfortunately, many kids have learned that their effort doesn't pay off, because they've been given jobs that were too difficult for them, or they've been told they don't have the ability to do something, and consequently they just roll over without trying.

"We know, however, that effort is extremely important, and we also know that `feeling tone' affects effort: most of us are motivated to do those things we find are pleasant, and to withdraw from those things that are unpleasant.

"How to apply this in a classroom? If a student is not putting forth effort, it's OK to be a little bit unpleasant, to say, for example, `I can see you don't feel like working now. That's OK, you can finish it at noon, if your prefer.'

"That leaves the student in charge-he decides whether it's going to be now or at noon, but there's no question it's going to be finished.

"Just as soon as he begins working, the teacher can come over and say, `You know, you've really got a good start on that.' The pleasant feeling tone has been restored, and it's one way to teach people to be successful.

"Another way is by using self and using novelty. Suppose a kid is not the least bit interested in, say, the religions of the Far East. I'd say, `You know, if you were Buddhist, you'd really believe in reincarnation, and that what you didn't do to a satisfactory degree in this life you'd have to re-do in another. Suppose you were Buddhist. What would you have to re-do in your next life?'

"This gets kids to thinking. One girl said, `I'd sure have to wash a mountain of dishes again.' Another said, `I'd sure have to re-do a lot of term papers.'

"The obvious lesson: by involving the student-because we're all interested in ourselves-you can increase effort."

Hunter has found endless ironies in the process of teaching teachers. "What I see over and over again," she said, "is a `never use a preposition to end a sentence with' syndrome.

"I'm especially sensitive to it because of an experience I had as an undergraduate: my psychology professor lectured for two solid hours to tell us about all the research that showed the typical attention span was 20 minutes!

"Many times at the graduate level I find that instructors actually violate theory while they are supposed to be teaching it. Just recently I saw a professor-who had been in one of my classes-deliver a lecture to teachers on the crucial importance of using diagrams. She talked for an hour and not once did she use a diagram.

Hadn't Thought of It

"Afterward I asked her if she had a special reason for not doing precisely what she was telling the teachers to do. She confessed that she hadn't thought of it."

Hunter's main frustration at the doctoral level is that superintendents, principals and teachers "want to memorize theory, and without incorporating it into their own behavior, or modeling it, they simply tell other teachers how to do certain things. It's like the teacher who shouts, `Stop yelling at me!' "

Many in the educational process are undeniably excellent, but the question remains: how have people risen to become principals and superintendents of schools without knowing certain basic principles?

"That's a question we are all asking," Hunter said. "One explanation is that there are those-an excellent teacher or an excellent administrator-who have stumbled onto some of these methods without even knowing what was causing what.

"It's almost like the medicine man who does a lot of singing and dancing and collecting gnats' eyelashes by midnight, and then picks a quinine branch to stir the magic brew, and gives it to the malaria patient."

Too much current teaching is done intuitively instead of deliberately, in Hunter's opinion, "and intuition is just not that reliable. Many times I've wished for divine revelation and it hasn't come. But specific knowledge you can pull up deliberately and consistently.

"Right now the `in' term in education is `metacognition.' It means that teaching should be running on two tracks-one, where you're responding to the student, and two, where you're watching yourself teach.

"For example, while you are speaking to the class, you see two kids talking to each other. The monitoring part of your brain wonders if they will stop or if you will have to stop them. Meantime, you keep on speaking to the class.

"To do your job effectively, you have to know good theory and put it into practice. So you have to think about your own thinking while you are thinking, and that's what is called metacognition."

Hunter encourages teachers to network and to coach each other, and especially to observe each other, "because if you're watching, you can see a lot more than if you're engaged in it.

"Occasionally," Hunter said, "I meet a reluctant dragon who says, `Well, I'm a good teacher, why should I learn anything else?'

"And I reply: `You may be the best teacher in the school today, but you're not going to be good very long if you do not continue to learn.' "

Illustration

PHOTO: Madeline Hunter, shown here with doctoral students at UCLA, is a pioneer educator dedicated to making a "critical difference." / MARISSA ROTH "By involving the student, you increase effort," says veteran educator Madeline Hunter.

Word count: 3769

(Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1986all Rights reserved

Dr. Hunter had a series of strokes, said the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she was an adjunct professor. Dr. Hunter was nationally known for her work at the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, the laboratory school of U.C.L.A.'s Graduate School of Education. She served as its principal from 1963 until 1982, when she became a full-time professor in administration and teacher education at the graduate school.

She used her background in psychology to tailor different approaches for helping pupils learn. Her technique identified the most effective methods for teachers in helping pupils overcome any barriers to learning. Her research challenged the view that failure to learn stems from environmental factors like poverty, broken homes or a low I.Q. She believed that proper teaching methods could overcome any disadvantage.

Madeline Cheek Hunter

Influential American educator Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916-1994) developed a model for teaching and learning that was widely adopted by schools during the last quarter of the 20th century.Madeline Hunter was one of two daughters born to Alexander Cheek, grandson of a Cherokee Indian. He had been orphaned at eight years old and had to drop out of school to work. Eventually he became a barber and, as a result of hard effort and intelligence, owned shops all over the United States and Canada. Her mother, Anna Keis, was the daughter of a Bohemian nobleman and a peasant woman.

Madeline's family originally lived in Canada where she was born. Her father was an avid hunter who liked Canada because "the duck hunting was better there." As Madeline was a "sickly" child, the family ultimately moved to California to avoid the terrible Canadian winters in Saskatchewan. Although they returned to Canada from May to October for many years, most of her schooling was in California. She and her father became naturalized United States citizens when she was about 14 years old. There was never a question that she and her sister would receive an education, a privilege denied her parents.

In junior high school she was placed in an experimental school to test some of Stanford University professor Louis Terman's psychological theories on intelligence. The school used her to score intelligence tests. Hunter later reported that, "As a result of that 'chore' and the stimulation from an outstanding schoolpsychologist and teacher, Christine Cook, I became interested in human intelligence. That and classical ballet were my passions in life." As a 16-year-old (1932) she entered the University of California at Los Angeles as a combination pre-medicine and psychology major while continuing her ballet dancing. Eventually she had to choose between going to South America on tour with the Ballet Russe or finishing her degree. After choosing the latter, she discovered that limited eye-hand coordination would deny her the chance of a career as a neurological surgeon.

Two additional events influenced her choice of a career in school psychology. The first occurred many years before when waiting to be assigned to her seventh grade classroom in junior high school. Unknowingly, she would be assigned to an experimental class. While sitting in an auditorium, she watched as nearly every other student's name was called first and left for an assigned classroom. The feelings of hurt associated with a child being labeled last or dumb was not forgotten in her later works. As a consequence, a theme that runs consistently throughout her career is the need to give positive reinforcement to students in schools - "Never put a kid down, always build the kid up." A second defining moment that shaped her thinking occurred after graduation during her first work experiences at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles and at Juvenile Hall. From these situations she soon concluded that interventions in helping children in such situations were "too little, too late." She knew she needed to turn to children in schools and work there on the preventative side rather than the remedial side.

During World War II she married an engineer, Robert Hunter, who continued to work at Lockheed Aviation until his retirement. In 1944 they had a daughter, Cheryl, whose later career was that of a film editor, and in 1946 they had a son, Robin, who later became a school principal. When the children no longer needed a mother at home, Madeline went back to work full time in education, holding a series of positions in Los Angeles, namely, school psychologist, then principal, followed by director of research, and finally as an assistant superintendent who was used for "trouble shooting" difficult situations in the inner city, often involving multicultural groups. After 1963 she was associated with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), first at the University Elementary School and later as a professor in the College of Education. During those years she worked closely with her colleague John Goodlad and was given the opportunity to implement her educational model in that laboratory school setting. She was named one of the hundred most influential women of the 20th century and one of the ten most influential in education by the Sierra Research Institute and the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Dissatisfaction with the quality of instruction in American schools during the 1970s and 1980s led many educators to call for fundamental changes. Madeline Hunter's model was turned to by many as a solution, and eventually it was implemented in 16 states formally in the 1980s and was widely used in others. Her education model is a "teacher decision-making model that is applicable to any mode or style of teaching, to any learner, and for any objective." Her method enables teachers to understand how particular behaviors can be attained by a student and how those desirable behaviors can be transferred and repeated in new situations.

A brief list of instructional and curricular decisions an English teacher might make in preparing for class are: (1) What can the students do as a result of this class? (2) What skills or information will the students need for attaining what they need to learn? (3) What learning behaviors can the teacher facilitate in the students which will result in the highest probability of being satisfying and successful? and (4) How will the teacher artistically use research and intuition to make students' satisfying achievement more probable?

By using her pre-medical background and her work in psychology, Hunter skillfully translated research from academic disciplines into teacher language and educational practice. She argued that teaching is like ballet or surgery; that is, teachers have to automate many behaviors so they can perform them artistically at high speed when a situation requiring them arises. As a consequence of applying her model, students learn behaviors that they can creatively transfer into new situations.

Madeline C. Hunter, the maverick educator and psychologist who was recognized worldwide for her research demonstrating that teachers-not heredity and environment-were the primary influences on learning skills, is dead.

The UCLA professor-whose workshops attracted thousands of educators over the years-was 78. She died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

A UCLA spokeswoman said she had recently suffered several strokes.

Known as the founder of what is called the "clinical teaching method," Mrs. Hunter held four degrees in education and psychology, her last a doctorate in education from UCLA in 1966.

Her career beginnings were ordinary but in distinctly disparate locations: Clinical psychologist at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Juvenile Hall, school psychologist and then principal at public schools ranging from Watts to Bel-Air.

She had been affiliated with John Goodlad, scholar and onetime director of UCLA's University Elementary School. He named her principal of the school in 1963, a post she held for nearly 20 years.

It was there she became aware of research that challenged longstanding beliefs that poor learners came from poor and broken homes, that low incomes produced low IQs. Instead, she discovered that teaching methods alone can make the difference.

"We have yet to find a student who won't learn (when taught properly)," she said in a Los Angeles Times interview in 1986.

She also made partners of her student's parents and urged them to encourage the self-respect she was trying to instill in the children.

Despite her burgeoning reputation and the consequent demands on her schedule, she made time each day to spend with her students at the experimental university school.

UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young, whose two children attended University Elementary School while Mrs. Hunter was there, said upon learning of her death that "the worldwide community of educators has lost a true pioneer who changed the face of elementary education for all time."

What she studied and then taught for three decades brought throngs of frustrated teachers to her seminars-teachers battling declining test scores, teachers fighting rising dropout rates, teachers in conflict with parents who either did not understand or did not trust those they had charged with their children's education.

"I used to think teachers were born, not made," Mrs. Hunter said in 1990. "But I know better now. I've seen bumblers turned into geniuses while charismatic characters turned out happy illiterates."

Her tools involved a language all her own: modeling was demonstration; dip-sticking meant that the teacher was checking for understanding, and anticipatory set meant review.

"Disciplining with dignity" involved an approach she called "skillful manipulation."

And she also invented characters.

Poverty Johnny had a mother who constantly told him to shut up. Affluent Johnny had a mother with the same message, but who couched it in more genteel terms.

Mrs. Hunter not only became popular, she became wealthy. She spoke thousands of times for fees as high as $5,000 a day and she published videos and books. Most California districts exposed at least some of their teachers to her training.

But not all liked what they heard, particularly her ideas that the instructor should prompt new concepts from youngsters. Or that homework should involve review or "something a student pretty much knows . . . not original learning because the beginning is like wet cement: A mistake is very hard to correct."

"A lot of homework is just drivel. Teachers grade homework when they haven't the foggiest idea of who did it, or how much help the student was given. . . . The real question is whether the student learned what the homework was designed to accomplish."

Survivors include her husband, Robert Hunter, a daughter, a son, two grandchildren and a sister.

Donations in her name are requested for the Madeline Hunter Fund, a scholarship endowment in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

Illustration

PHOTO: Madeline Hunter in 1986 / Los Angeles Times

Madeline Cheek Hunter, professor of educational administration and teacher education, was the creator of the Instructional Theory Into Practice (ITIP) teaching model, an inservice/staff development program widely used during the 1970s and 1980s.
Hunter entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), at the age of sixteen and, over the course of her career, earned four degrees in psychology and education. In the early 1960s Hunter became principal of the University Elementary School, the laboratory school at UCLA, where she worked under John Goodlad. She left the school in 1982 amidst controversy over her methods, but continued at UCLA as a professor in administration and teacher education. She also continued to lecture and write, and by the time of her death at the age of seventy-eight, Hunter had written twelve books and over three hundred articles, and produced seventeen videotape collections.

Hunter's influence on American education came at a time when public schools were criticized widely for falling test scores, increasing dropout rates, and discipline problems. Hunter claimed that her teaching methods would transform classrooms into learning environments, allow the dissemination of more knowledge at a faster rate, and use positive reinforcement and discipline with dignity to greatly reduce disruptive behavior. Her seven-step model and related educational theories, outlined in her extensive writings, lectures, and videotape series, gave teachers strategies for controlling their classrooms and planning their lessons. Administrators used the model as a way to assess the effectiveness of their teachers.

Hunter defined teaching as a series of decisions that take place in three realms: content, learning behaviors of students, and teacher behaviors. Content refers to the specific information, skill, or process that is appropriate for students at a particular time. Content decisions are based upon students' prior knowledge and how it relates to future instruction; simple understandings must precede more complex understandings. Decisions regarding learning behaviors indicate how a student will learn and show evidence of that learning. Because there is no best way for all students to learn, a variety of learning behaviors is usually more effective than one. Evidence of learning must be perceivable by the teacher to ensure that learning has occurred. The third area of decision-making, teacher behavior, refers to the use of principles of learning–validated by research–that enhance student achievement.

Article:

Ads by Google

1 Yr Master of Education

Get an online Master of Education

from Concordia University in 1 yr!

Discover.ConcordiaOnline.net

Online College Classes

Accredited online university.

Several programs to choose from.

www.BroadviewUniversity.edu

Want to Teach Special Ed?

NCATE Accredited Bachelor or Master

in Special Education. Apply Today!

www.WGU.edu/SpecialEd

Online Degree Programs

AA, BA, BS, MA, MS, & PhD Degrees

Search 1,000+ Accredited Programs

www.DegreeSearch.org

K12 Online Academy

Engaging Curriculum & Personalized

Attention From K12 - Tuition Free!

www.K12.com

In order to successfully implement Hunter's methods, teachers undergo extensive professional development that conveys the types of decisions they must make. Training includes viewing videotapes that demonstrate effective decision-making in the classroom, and the Teaching Appraisal for Instructional Improvement Instrument (TAIII), administered by a trained observer or coach, which diagnoses and prescribes teacher behaviors to increase the likelihood of student learning.

Hunter's method of direct instruction, generally referred to as the Madeline Hunter Method, includes seven elements: objectives; standards; anticipatory set; teaching; guided practice; closure; and independent practice. Behavioral objectives are formulated before the lesson and clearly indicate what the student should be able to do when the lesson is accomplished. Standards of performance inform the student about the forthcoming instruction, what the student is expected to do, what procedures will be followed, and what knowledge or skills will be demonstrated. The anticipatory set is the hook that captures the student's attention. Teaching includes the acts of input, modeling, and checking for understanding. Input involves providing basic information in an organized way and in a variety of formats, including lecture, videos, or pictures. Modeling is used to exemplify critical attributes of the topic of study, and various techniques are used to determine if students understand the material before proceeding. The teacher then assists students through each step of the material with guided practice and gives appropriate feedback. Closure reviews and organizes the critical aspects of the lesson to help students incorporate information into their knowledge base. Independent practice, accomplished at various intervals, helps students retain information after initial instruction.

Although the Hunter Method was widely used during the last quarter of the twentieth century, it has not been without its critics. Based on behavioral psychological theory, some educators concluded that it is mechanistic and simplistic and is only useful–if at all–to teach the acquisition of information or basic skill mastery at the cost of stifling teacher and student creativity and independent thinking. Others deplore the use of the Hunter Method as a lockstep approach to instructional design. The Hunterization of teaching has even led some districts to require teachers to utilize the Hunter approach and base their teacher evaluation instruments on it. Hunter herself lamented this misuse of her methods and claimed that there was no such thing as a "Madeline Hunter-type" lesson. A significant body of criticism questions her claims that her method could enable students to learn more at a faster rate and improve student achievement. Several studies, most notably the Napa County, California, study, indicate little, if any, evidence to justify her claims.
Proponents point to Hunter's clear and systematic approach to mastery teaching. They argue that, rather than being prescriptive, Hunter provides a framework within which teachers can make decisions that are applicable to their own classrooms. Rather than being simplistic or superficial, Hunter's method is straightforward and uses a common language that classroom teachers can easily understand. Although Hunter's method may be easy to implement, it may also be complex in its application, depending upon the specific objectives of the teacher.

During the height of her popularity, Hunter's ITIP Model for mastery teaching was formally adopted in sixteen states and widely used by many others. Hunter is regarded by many as a "teacher's teacher" for her ability to translate educational and psychological theory into practical, easy-to-understand pedagogy, and her influence on classroom teaching techniques is still evident in the twenty-first century.

See also: TEACHER EDUCATION.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GIBBONEY, RICHARD A. 1987. "A Critique of Madeline Hunter's Teaching Model from Dewey's Perspective." Educational Leadership 44 (5):46–50.
HUNTER, MADELINE. 1967. Teach More–Faster! El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.
HUNTER, MADELINE. 1979. "Teaching Is Decision Making." Educational Leadership 37 (1):62–65.
HUNTER, MADELINE. 1982. Mastery Teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications.
ROBBINS, PAM, and WOLFE, PAT. 1987. "Reflections on a Hunter-Based Staff Development Project." Educational Leadership 44 (5):56–61.
SLAVIN, ROBERT E. 1987. "The Hunterization of America's Schools." Instructor 96 (8):56–60.

MARILYN HEATH

Read more: Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916–1994) - Teacher, Teaching, Student, and Students - StateUniversity.com http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2074/Hunter-Madeline-Cheek-1916-1994.html#ixzz2Wo4HlEkw

Influential American educator Madeline Cheek Hunter (1916-1994) developed a model for teaching and learning that was widely adopted by schools during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Madeline Hunter was one of two daughters born to Alexander Cheek, grandson of a Cherokee Indian. He had been orphaned at eight years old and had to drop out of school to work. Eventually he became a barber and, as a result of hard effort and intelligence, owned shops all over the United States and Canada. Her mother, Anna Keis, was the daughter of a Bohemian nobleman and a peasant woman.
Madeline's family originally lived in Canada where she was born. Her father was an avid hunter who liked Canada because "the duck hunting was better there." As Madeline was a "sickly" child, the family ultimately moved to California to avoid the terrible Canadian winters in Saskatchewan. Although they returned to Canada from May to October for many years, most of her schooling was in California. She and her father became naturalized United States citizens when she was about 14 years old. There was never a question that she and her sister would receive an education, a privilege denied her parents.

In junior high school she was placed in an experimental school to test some of Stanford University professor Louis Terman's psychological theories on intelligence. The school used her to score intelligence tests. Hunter later reported that, "As a result of that 'chore' and the stimulation from an outstanding school psychologist and teacher, Christine Cook, I became interested in human intelligence. That and classical ballet were my passions in life." As a 16-year-old (1932) she entered the University of California at Los Angeles as a combination pre-medicine and psychology major while continuing her ballet dancing. Eventually she had to choose between going to South America on tour with the Ballet Russe or finishing her degree. After choosing the latter, she discovered that limited eye-hand coordination would deny her the chance of a career as a neurological surgeon.

Two additional events influenced her choice of a career in school psychology. The first occurred many years before when waiting to be assigned to her seventh grade classroom in junior high school. Unknowingly, she would be assigned to an experimental class. While sitting in an auditorium, she watched as nearly every other student's name was called first and left for an assigned classroom. The feelings of hurt associated with a child being labeled last or dumb was not forgotten in her later works. As a consequence, a theme that runs consistently throughout her career is the need to give positive reinforcement to students in schools - "Never put a kid down, always build the kid up." A second defining moment that shaped her thinking occurred after graduation during her first work experiences at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles and at Juvenile Hall. From these situations she soon concluded that interventions in helping children in such situations were "too little, too late." She knew she needed to turn to children in schools and work there on the preventative side rather than the remedial side.

During World War II she married an engineer, Robert Hunter, who continued to work at Lockheed Aviation until his retirement. In 1944 they had a daughter, Cheryl, whose later career was that of a film editor, and in 1946 they had a son, Robin, who later became a school principal. When the children no longer needed a mother at home, Madeline went back to work full time in education, holding a series of positions in Los Angeles, namely, school psychologist, then principal, followed by director of research, and finally as an assistant superintendent who was used for "trouble shooting" difficult situations in the inner city, often involving multicultural groups. After 1963 she was associated with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), first at the University Elementary School and later as a professor in the College of Education. During those years she worked closely with her colleague John Goodlad and was given the opportunity to implement her educational model in that laboratory school setting. She was named one of the hundred most influential women of the 20th century and one of the ten most influential in education by the Sierra Research Institute and the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Dissatisfaction with the quality of instruction in American schools during the 1970s and 1980s led many educators to call for fundamental changes. Madeline Hunter's model was turned to by many as a solution, and eventually it was implemented in 16 states formally in the 1980s and was widely used in others. Her education model is a "teacher decision-making model that is applicable to any mode or style of teaching, to any learner, and for any objective." Her method enables teachers to understand how particular behaviors can be attained by a student and how those desirable behaviors can be transferred and repeated in new situations.

A brief list of instructional and curricular decisions an English teacher might make in preparing for class are: (1) What can the students do as a result of this class? (2) What skills or information will the students need for attaining what they need to learn? (3) What learning behaviors can the teacher facilitate in the students which will result in the highest probability of being satisfying and successful? and (4) How will the teacher artistically use research and intuition to make students' satisfying achievement more probable?

By using her pre-medical background and her work in psychology, Hunter skillfully translated research from academic disciplines into teacher language and educational practice. She argued that teaching is like ballet or surgery; that is, teachers have to automate many behaviors so they can perform them artistically at high speed when a situation requiring them arises. As a consequence of applying her model, students learn behaviors that they can creatively transfer into new situations.

In response to a question asking her to assess the current educational situation in the 1990s, she said, "I believe the future of education is bright! We are beginning to unlock the mystery of the human brain and how it processes and learns. We, now, can enable teachers to use that knowledge to accelerate that learning process. No longer is teaching a 'laying on of hands.' It has become a profession that combines science with art to create a better and a more productive world for humankind." She died in 1994.

Madeline

By Daniel Gursky

What do teachers and medicine men have in common? Madeline Hunter knows. A medicine man, according to Hunter, might concoct a brew for curing malaria by mixing a gnat's eyelash with water from a magic tree and performing certain carefully prescribed incantations. While the mixture might actually cure malaria, the medicine man wouldn't understand that it was the quinine from the tree that actually produced the healing. As Hunter sees it, many teachers-- like medicine men--flounder along on intuition, occasionally displaying flashes of quinine-like inspiration but lacking a sound scientific basis for their methods. "We've had wonderful teachers since the days of Christ and Plato, but they were intuitive teachers,'' she says. Coming from Hunter, intuition doesn't quite sound like an obscenity, but it does seem like something to avoid.

To some teachers, Hunter's insights make her an educational guru. Crusading against the intuitive, spontaneous, improvisational approach to teaching, Hunter has built a profitable enterprise by spreading her model of teaching as an "applied science.'' In Hunter's world, teachers aren't much different from surgeons: Education, like medicine, is based on proven research findings that link cause and effect.

"We are today where medicine was when [physicians] found that germs, not evil spirits, cause disease,'' Hunter tells a group of teachers and principals who have traveled from around the country to hear her message during a three-week summer workshop at the University of California at Los Angeles, her hometown. For $450 a week, Hunter will give them straightforward answers to many questions that have troubled teachers for decades. What's more, she assures the educators, these answers, when properly applied in the classroom, will help students learn more.

In her popular book Mastery Teaching, Hunter offers readers a guarantee of sorts: "From now on, you will know what you are doing when you teach, why you are doing what you do.''
With such a positive, uncomplicated message, it's not surprising that Hunter has amassed a large, loyal following among teachers and principals. The UCLA workshop participants offer rave reviews for the woman most simply call Madeline. "Madeline makes me feel good about being a teacher,'' says one. Adds another: "She's an amazing woman.''

Over the past two decades, Madeline Hunter has become a household word among educators. She's been called an institution, as well-known as Kleenex or Xerox. She's spoken to thousands of teachers in every state and in dozens of countries, and thousands more have been exposed to Hunter's ideas through a variety of forums. When school districts adopt a program of "effective instruction,'' it's probably an adaptation of her model.

But Hunter inspires as much criticism as praise. For a growing number of teachers, the idea of an externally imposed teaching model runs counter to their demands for professional autonomy. There seems to be an inherent contradiction between Hunter's model of effective teaching and education reformers' efforts to promote a more flexible, child-centered approach to learning. Teachers in many districts complain that some administrators have turned Hunter's teaching methodology into a rigid religion; non-believers in such schools often suffer the penalty of poor evaluations.

Other critics have condemned her work, calling it "pseudoscience'' and "mechanistic behaviorism''; one leading researcher says there's no solid evidence to back up Hunter's ambitious claims that her model is effective. And some fiscal-minded skeptics question the wisdom of spending millions of dollars to train teachers and administrators in Hunter-type programs when school budgets are already strained.

An aura of science and medicine pervades Hunter's UCLA workshop. The site--the health sciences building--is surrounded by the UCLA Medical Center, medical school, and dental school; clad in white lab coats, medical professionals with stethoscopes around their necks wander hallways lined with drawings and photos of human anatomy. Even the title of Hunter's workshop--"clinical supervision''--evokes a medical tone.

Hunter, still trim and energetic at 75, comes across as the archetypal teacher: authoritative, confident, witty, and eloquent. Her manner of speaking, with concise phrases and abundant hand gestures, is a bit reminiscent of George Bush's, except Hunter speaks in complete sentences. Her catchy slogans, on the other hand-- "more inspiration, less perspiration,'' "what is logical is not always psychological,'' and "thinking on your seat is easier than thinking on your feet''--bring to mind Jesse Jackson.

Hunter tells the audience she doesn't know the secret for producing virtuoso instructors, but she says her model can turn marginal teachers into effective ones. "Pedagogy is invariant just as nutrition theory is invariant,'' she says. "It looks very different, but a good music teacher is doing what a good calculus teacher is doing, just like it looks different if you're eating dried caribou or raw fish or peanut soup, but it's all protein.''

The foundation of Hunter's pedagogy--and the thing most closely identified with her--is her "elements of successful instruction.'' She talks and writes about other subjects, but when districts, schools, and ultimately, teachers, implement a Hunter-type model, it usually centers on her elements of instruction.
Briefly, the model consists of:

The anticipatory set--getting students focused on the subject, possibly by having them think about some relevant example from their own lives.

The lesson's objective--letting students know what they are learning and why.

Input--offering more information and stimulus to involve students in the lesson.

Modeling--demonstrating the subject matter, sometimes with actual models, other times with relevant examples.

Checking for understanding--having students make various hand signals or asking for individual or group responses.

Guided practice--roaming the room to help students and correct their mistakes.

Independent practice--giving students exercises to reinforce the lesson, after the teacher is confident they have a good grasp of the subject matter.

Those seven elements, combined with positive re- inforcement, Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of thinking, and other nuggets of educational psychology, form what Hunter calls her "decisionmaking model'' of teaching. "I don't tell teachers what to do,'' she says. "All I can tell teachers is what they better know and think about before they decide what to do.''

Although it looks a lot like the traditional lecturedominated style of teaching, Hunter maintains that her model of instruction applies equally well to any situation in which someone is trying to teach, whether it's a cooperative-learning classroom, computerassisted instruction, or a corporate training session. "I've simply taken the theory, much of which has been around for a hundred years, and translated it for classroom teachers,'' she says.

No one can accuse Hunter of not practicing what she preaches: Her lectures include all of her elements of successful instruction. She starts one segment by asking participants a question to get them thinking. Teachers and principals versed in Hunter lingo know she's given them an "anticipatory set.'' From there, Hunter states the thesis of the discussion; every minute or two, she illustrates her point with an example, sometimes from her beloved field of medicine, other times from her varied experiences in and out of schools. "Examples are the most powerful thing in education,'' she explains.

Hunter's examples also provide a glimpse into her background and the roots of her educational philosophy. She started her career more than four decades ago as a clinical psychologist with the Los Angeles Children's Hospital and later at juvenile hall. After finding those remedial ends of psychology unsatisfying, Hunter decided to try her hand at school psychology, which she thought offered better opportunities to prevent the problems she had seen in her earlier jobs. (Her initial impression of schools: "Every teacher had taken an educational psychology course, but none of it applied to teaching.'')

She has developed and refined her instructional model over the course of her long education-related career, which has included more than a dozen years as a psychologist and principal in Los Angeles-area public schools and 20 years as principal of University Elementary School, a lab school on the UCLA campus. Hunter left the lab school in 1982 but has stayed on at UCLA as an adjunct professor of education.

Of her many accomplishments, Hunter is perhaps proudest of the hand-signaling system she developed to help teachers, as she puts it, "check for understanding.'' A simple glance around the classroom lets a teacher employing this system know who has grasped the material and who has not. For example, a teacher might ask a series of true-or-false questions that each student must answer with a thumb up for true, a thumb down for false, or a thumb to the side if he or she is not sure. The teacher might also ask students to show with one or two fingers if sentence one or sentence two contains, say, a dependent clause. The possibilities are endless. It's all part of Hunter's admonition to "teach smarter not harder.'' If teachers practice "dip-sticking,'' she says, they won't have to wait until test time to see whether their students really understand the material.

Naturally, every Hunter presentation includes hand signals, the seminar at UCLA being no exception. As she displays sample work sheets on an overhead projector for almost an hour, she asks the audience to respond with signals: "Raise your hand if you think this work sheet is worth doing.''

Hunter acknowledges that some teachers and students think signaling is "baby stuff.'' But they become enthusiastic signalers, she adds, once they realize that the system offers everyone an unthreatening way to correct misconceptions.

On the surface, Hunter seems to offer teachers a helpful framework for instruction. For some of Hunter's critics, however, her model adds up to little more than an inventory of what most teachers already do. "A lot of [the model's] popularity is the fact that it's not very innovative,'' says Robert Slavin, an education researcher at Johns Hopkins University. "The reason it sounds sensible is because it's what teachers have been doing.'' Teachers who attend a Hunter presentation may leave feeling affirmed, he notes, but they return to their classrooms and practice business as usual because they think they're already teaching the right way.

"This is just a hunch,'' Slavin adds, "but I would guess that training in Madeline Hunter would make no difference for maybe 70 percent of teachers. Maybe 30 percent are struggling, and, for them, appropriate training and follow-up may be useful.''
A different criticism comes from Richard Gibboney, who challenges Hunter's central assertion that education is "just like'' medicine, nutrition, and other more traditional sciences. "She has the aura of science without the substance,'' argues Gibboney, a former commissioner of education in Vermont who is now an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "When science is applied to the human area, it comes out as pseudoscience. Teachers are told, 'research says,' and they're kind of browbeaten into believing it. They're going to think it's right; it's like arguing with the principles of physics.''

Moreover, Gibboney asserts, the psychology underlying Hunter's model is the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and E.L. Thorndike, which, by its nature, is highly mechanistic. "It's really a technique to teach without the ideas, without worrying about what you teach or the context in which teaching is done,'' Gibboney says. "Her method lets a social studies teacher drone through a text and present inadequate, superficial information more effectively. It's perfect for facts, but it's ab- solutely ineffective for teaching ideas.''

Hunter disagrees and argues that her method, when used correctly, can help students understand both concrete facts and abstract concepts. It's up to teachers, she says, to take the lead in guiding students beyond the mere recitation of names and dates. Hunter offers a formula for teaching, but she cautions that teachers must apply her methods appropriately, according to the situation.

Whether a lesson involves ideas or facts, Hunter warns teachers against wandering too far from "safe'' subject matter; the emotions aroused by controversial issues, she says, can sidetrack students from the lesson's objective. And, unlike many teachers who want students to become more self-directed learners, Hunter is uneasy about allowing students too much freedom. "Students,'' she has written, "have an absolute gift for volunteering murky or confusing examples or those which present an exception to the rule.'' Hunter's message coincides with her suspicion of intuition and improvisation: Teachers should stick to their plan and maintain control of the discussion.

John Taylor Gatto, who gives his New York City students almost free reign to decide what they want to learn, considers Hunter's approach "massively illconceived.'' "You can create geniuses without all this phony theorizing,'' says Gatto, the 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year. "Formal teaching is a very small and inconsequential part of learning. In truth, people teach themselves.''

Probably the greatest concern from teachers about Hunter's model involves the rigid way it has been applied--and misapplied--in schools. It's a depressingly familiar story: Administrators seek set formulas that promise dramatic results. And Hunter's allusions to science and research can be seductive, especially with policymakers demanding greater "accountability'' from schools. Often as not, widespread implementation results in oversimplification of complex issues, inhibiting the flexibility crucial to effective practice. In short, many of the problems associated with Hunter's model are problems rooted in the educational system itself.

For example, Hunter says she developed her model not as a way to evaluate teachers but rather as a means for supervisors to coach teachers and "accelerate'' their teaching. But stories abound of teachers who received poor evaluations because they didn't "do Madeline Hunter'' properly in their classrooms.
Last January, Sylvia Amato retired from her job as a speech therapist in an urban New Jersey school district. But rather than leaving with fond memories from her 20year career, Amato left feeling bitter because of her experience with the Program for Effective Teaching and Supervision, the district's version of the Hunter-based model of instruction.

Amato, who worked with her students once a week, recalls rehearsing a fairy tale with one group for a performance before several other classes. Observing Amato and her students on rehearsal day, the department head strongly criticized the teacher for not employing all the PETS elements. "I certainly should not have been expected to do it then,'' Amato says. "The kids were all excited about the play, and I was written up for not doing PETS. I had always had wonderful evaluations, and then I started to get all sorts of lousy evaluations. Coming at the end of my career, it didn't make me feel good about all the energy and enthusiasm I had put into my teaching.''

In his book Tales Out of School, Patrick Welsh, a high school English teacher in Alexandria, Va., describes how he reacted when an associate principal began using Hunter's elements of instruction as a basis for teacher evaluations. "I'd been teaching for 18 years and received enough feedback from parents and students to know I must be doing something right,'' Welsh writes. "Why should I be forced to go through a set of prescribed, mechanistic procedures to satisfy the school system's need to document before the public its seriousness about improving teaching?'' Welsh is even more blunt when directly asked about Hunter's model. "It's stuff for incompetent teachers teaching dumbbells,'' he says. "It's the antithesis of what good teaching is. Any idiot can play the Madeline Hunter game.''

In response to such reports, Hunter contends that her ideas have been misinterpreted. "I have come out loud and clear that anybody who uses a checklist in observing a lesson does not understand teaching,'' she says. "There is nothing you should expect to see in every lesson. If somebody told me I had to do all these things in every lesson, I'd say, 'I do not; I know better.' There is no such thing as a 'Madeline Hunter' lesson. There's an effective lesson or an ineffective lesson, but not a Madeline Hunter lesson.''

To their credit, many states and districts have tried to keep their Hunter programs from becoming too rigid. "I see her as non-prescriptive,'' says Joyce Murphy, former coordinator of the Teaching Effectiveness Network, a broad Maryland program based on Hunter's ideas. "People criticize Madeline because they take what she says and see it as one model. They don't really listen to what she's saying.'' Adds Bertha Stewart, an elementary instructional assistant in Maryland's Prince George's County: "It's only as rigid as the teacher makes it. You can make any program rigid and you can make any program lax. That's the teacher's choice, not Madeline Hunter's choice.''

Although Hunter has often condemned the use of evaluation checklists, her books readily promote a list mentality. In Mastery Teaching alone, she outlines three categories of decisions in teaching, six ways to increase students' motivation, three principles to improve lectures, four characteristics of an effective model, four factors that affect what students remember, and even four principles of chalkboard use.

The workshop at UCLA offers a different sort of insight into what happens when relative newcomers to the Hunter approach try to incorporate her model into their teaching. After four days of listening to Hunter talk, the participants spend the fifth day teaching short sample lessons and receiving feedback from their colleagues. The lessons cover the gamut--everything from Eskimos to mnemonic devices--but they're remarkably similar in structure. Most start with a "think of a time when ...'' statement, followed by a declaration of the objective, a few minutes of straightforward lecturing, and some questions requiring signal responses from the listeners. Some lessons are better than others, but none of them approaches Hunter proficiency. Nevertheless, the educators are excited as they try to emulate the master. "I've taught that lesson a million times,'' says one participant, "but I feel much better about it now that I've analyzed it.''

A nagging question keeps coming to mind: If these teachers and principals, working directly with Hunter, are inclined to distill her ideas to a few set components, how can the model remain flexible when implemented throughout an entire district? Hunter herself contends that teachers need two years of practice and regular coaching to put her theories into effective practice. But how many districts are willing to make that sort of commitment, especially if they don't see immediate results?

Hunter offers few details about her financial status, though she acknowledges that she makes a comfortable living. A 1990 article in the Los Angeles Times Magazine

Clearly, many districts have spent large sums of money to bring Hunter and her model to their schools. Some educators who have been trained in Hunter's ideas and methods aren't convinced it was worth the expense. Kenneth Kastle, principal of William Tennent High School in Warminster, Pa., says his district allocated about $100,000 to train every teacher and administrator in the "essential elements of instruction.'' In the end, Kastle says, it was a waste of money: The program--which is still in effect--has done nothing to improve teaching or learning. "The amazing thing,'' he says, "is that millions and millions of dollars have been spent across the country, so you would think that in some place you would find some positive results.''
Given Hunter's impressive claims, it seems reasonable to expect, as Kastle does, that there is evidence documenting the effectiveness of her methods. But that's not the case.

Hunter, of course, says there are many success stories. She likes to tell one about a failing inner-city elementary school in Los Angeles that she and some colleagues overhauled in the early 1970s. Just by changing the way teachers at the school taught, Hunter says, student learning doubled and, in some instances, quadrupled, and discipline problems virtually disappeared.

Rodney Skager, a colleague of Hunter's at UCLA who studied the project, tells a different story, an ambiguous one at best. "There was improvement in achievement by kids who were in the project for a whole year,'' Skager acknowledges. "But those results are qualified by the fact that the poorer, more mobile kids dropped out.'' Skager never published his study because of this flaw; he says there was no scientific way to say if scores improved because the worst kids moved away or because Hunter's model worked. "It isn't as convincing as Madeline would like it to be,'' he notes.

Other, more recent, research offers similar mixed results. One of the more detailed studies was conducted over four years in Napa County, Calif., where Hunter had consulted with district educators. That study found some positive effects on student achievement during the first two years, but those gains stopped the third year, and achievement actually dropped the fourth year. A study of a statewide Hunter-type program in South Carolina reached a similar conclusion: Teachers were enthusiastic about the training, but student achievement was basically unaffected.

"It never did anything to improve student achievement,'' says Slavin of Johns Hopkins, who is familiar with the various studies. "But that didn't make the slightest difference to anyone'' respon- sible for implementing similar programs in other places.

Hunter blames the lessthan-convincing results in those districts on poor implementation, not the model. "In the Napa study, they did not use the model completely,'' she argues. "They did not teach for transfer, which is essential in my model. And some of the consultants were working with the control school. It was a very messy piece of research.'' And in South Carolina? "They acknowledged that they were not doing the coaching that I said was essential to translate knowledge into practice,'' she says. "You find they actually do not know what I'm saying.''

Furthermore, Hunter maintains that it's almost impossible to conduct a valid study in schools because it's too difficult to control the variables. She argues that her own success is proof enough that her model is effective. "Why did the model start in the 1970s, go like a dreadnought through the '80s and a hurricane in the '90s?'' she asks. "You either have to say educators are so stupid that for 20 years they've continued to use something that obviously doesn't work, or else you have to say it works.''

Hunter's fans seem equally unconcerned by the lack of more concrete evidence. "I'm sure it works,'' says Bertha Stewart, the elementary instructional assistant in Maryland. "I don't have any written research, but I really believe it helps. Not every activity inside the brick walls of schools has to have written research to support it.''

It's tough to be neutral about Madeline Hunter. People love her or hate her, and no amount of evidence will change their minds. Hunter says every component of her model is based on proven psychological studies or other scientific research; her opponents cite studies showing that her model makes no difference in student performance. As Richard Gibboney points out, "Research findings never changed anybody's mind about anything.''

Hunter is well-aware of the criticisms of her work, and she seems to relish the controversy. "They say the strength of an impact is measured by the strength of the opposition to it,'' she says. "If you want no criticism, you do nothing, you say nothing, you be nothing. I have learned that the criticism is inevi- table.''

Hunter refuses to let her critics slow her pace. Although she is well past retirement age, she has no plans to close up shop. Without a doubt, additional teachers and administrators will be captivated by her engaging style and become, to use a phrase that now has many different meanings, "Hunterized.'' Even if Hunter were to stop speaking and writing tomorrow, her message would continue to spread for many years to come. Hunter's faithful adherents would certainly see to that.

Still, resistance to Hunter's methods is growing. Districtwide implementation of her model may become rarer as teachers gain more control over their professional lives--including their inservice training, which is how Hunter usually reaches educators.
One thing is certain: Many teachers will resist Hunter's ideas if school administrators present them as the one correct way to teach, without acknowledging the infinite variables that make every classroom unique. Teacher Sylvia Amato captures the feelings of many teachers: "You have to measure the love and the rapport and all the other things that happen between a teacher and a student, not just the objectives of the lesson.''

GatheringGardiners

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Madeline Cheek (Hunter) 1916 - 1994

Madeline Cheek Hunter

Further Reading

Citation styles

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Life

Educational Beliefs

Theories on Education

Madeline Cheek Hunter

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Madeline

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Madeline Cheek (Hunter) 1916 - 1994

Madeline Cheek Hunter

Further Reading

Citation styles

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Trending topics

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Life

Educational Beliefs

Theories on Education

Madeline Cheek Hunter

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Madeline