A Lexicon of Learning

What Educators Mean When They Say...

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M

magnet schools

Alternative public schools, most of which focus on a particular area of study, such as performing arts or science and technology but also offer regular school subjects. Students from any part of the school district may enroll and the schools often have waiting lists. Most magnet schools were originally established by large urban school districts to help achieve racial desegregation, so they have entrance requirements intended to maintain racial balance. Some magnet schools have other entry requirements, such as achievement in the school's area of concentration, but others do not.

mainstreaming

The practice of placing students with disabilities into regular classrooms. The students usually also receive some assistance and instruction in separate classrooms, often called resource rooms. (Programs in which students with disabilities spend all or nearly all of their time in regular classrooms are called inclusion or full inclusion programs. Mainstreaming is also known as partial inclusion.)

Experts say successful mainstreaming requires regular communication and cooperation among teachers, students, and parents. Individualized Education Programs need to be jointly developed, thoroughly understood, and carefully followed. The classroom teacher may need special training and assistance from the special education staff. Mainstreaming is also more effective when regular students are given information about their peers with special needs.

manipulatives

Learning materials designed to help students understand abstract ideas by handling physical objects. An abacus is a mathematics manipulative.

mastery learning

A way of organizing instruction that tries to ensure that students have mastered each increment of a subject before going on to the next. The idea assumes that a subject can be subdivided into sequential steps organized hierarchically. The classic mastery learning model formulated by psychologist Benjamin Bloom calls for teachers to teach a unit of work and give a formative test. 

Students who do not master the material study it in a different way while the mastery students do enrichment work. Then all students take a summative test, which nearly all students are expected to pass.

measurement error

The calculated amount by which a test score may vary from the student's theoretical "true" score (no test can be exact in measuring a student's ability).

mediation

This term has at least two quite different meanings. One refers to the recourse taken by school boards when teacher contract negotiations halt. Mediation over contract specifications is binding arbitration in some states, meaning that the board and union must accept the terms negotiated. In other situations involving conflict resolution, a mediator is a neutral party who works between the two conflicting parties and attempts to arrive at a satisfactory compromise.

Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, developer of the Instrumental Enrichment program, uses the term mediation to refer to the interactive process by which a teacher promotes the cognitive development of students.

mentor

A role model who offers support to another person. A mentor has knowledge and experience in an area and shares it with the person being mentored. For example, an experienced teacher might mentor a student teacher or beginning teacher.

Some student mentoring programs are designed to help at-risk students succeed in school. Acting as role models, mentors spend time with individual students once or twice a week—encouraging, listening, making suggestions, and taking the student to events, activities, or the mentor's place of employment to help the student learn about a career and consider further education.

merit pay

A system that recognizes teachers or principals who are thought to be especially capable by paying them higher salaries. Conventional merit pay, based on judgments made by supervisors or peers, is controversial because the grounds for awarding it are necessarily subjective. Because students learn in different ways and teachers and principals have different styles, some people believe it is unfair to regard one competent teacher or principal as better than another. Most current versions of merit pay, known as pay for performance, are tied to student achievement.

Merit pay is uncommon even though many noneducators argue for it. Many educators believe it encourages competition rather than cooperation among teachers and principals and tends to reward a few teachers and principals at the expense of others.

metacognition

The ability to be conscious of and, to some degree, control one's own thinking. Educators have come to use the prefix "meta" to refer to the application of a process to the process itself. (For example, meta-analysis is analysis of a large number of research studies on a particular topic.) In this case, cognition is thinking, so metacognition means thinking about one's own thinking.

You are using metacognition when you can track your progress in solving a multistep problem or when you realize that you have been looking at a page in a book without following the meaning and backtrack until you find the place where your mind began to wander.

middle schools

Schools for students in the early adolescent years between elementary school and high school. Most middle schools include grades 5 through 8 or 6 through 8. Middle school advocates say that young adolescents have special needs because of their rapid growth and change. They say middle schools should have team teaching, interdisciplinary curriculum, advisory systems, and other provisions for personalization. Most junior high schools, which have traditionally included grades 7 through 9, do not have these features.

minimum competency tests

Tests created by a school district or state that students must pass before graduating. In the 1970s, some states devised minimum competency tests intended to ensure that high school graduates had achieved minimal proficiency in basic skills. In recent years, states have often replaced minimum competency tests with more demanding tests aligned with adopted curriculum standards.

mixed-ability grouping

Intentionally mixing students of varying talents and needs in the same classroom. The success of this method, also called heterogeneous grouping, depends on the teacher's skill in differentiating instruction so that all students feel challenged and successful. 

Advocates say mixed-ability grouping prevents lower-track classes from becoming dumping grounds and ensures that all students have access to high-status content. Opponents say it is difficult for teachers to manage, hampers the brightest students from moving at an accelerated pace, and contributes to a watered-down curriculum.

multi-age grouping

The practice of having children of different ages in the same classroom, rather than assigning them to age-graded classrooms (e.g., 6-year-old children to 1st grade and 7-year-old children to 2nd grade). Multi-age grouping is practiced more often in elementary schools than in secondary schools. A typical grouping is children ages 5–7 as primary students and children ages 8–10 as intermediate students.

 The reason for combining two or more grade levels is that students can be grouped with others who are at the same developmental level regardless of age. In other words, they can learn at a faster or slower pace without being made to feel abnormal.

multicultural education

Schooling that helps students understand and relate to cultural, ethnic, and other diversity, including religion, language, gender, age, and socioeconomic, mental, and physical differences. Multiculturalism is intended to encourage people to work together and to celebrate differences, not to be separated by them. However, the field itself is controversial.

Opponents of multicultural education feel that it detracts from students' knowledge of American history and commitment to traditional values, especially patriotism. Supporters feel that a multicultural approach provides a more balanced look at history and the world, and that studying several viewpoints increases students' depth of understanding.

Some multiculturalists believe that a natural first step toward helping students appreciate other cultures is first to focus on the students' own cultures. For example, they believe an Afrocentric curriculum gives African-American students pride in their cultural heritage. Other advocates believe that emphasizing the differences between groups promotes fragmentation and rivalries. They see multicultural education as a process that encourages teachers to integrate various cultures' beliefs, music, language, and social skills into each school subject, as appropriate.

multidisciplinary curriculum

Refers to curriculum in more than one discipline or subject area. People may use this term and related ones differently, but, in general, a multidisciplinary curriculum is one in which the same topic (e.g., harmony) is studied from the viewpoint of more than one discipline (e.g., music, history, and literature). For example, students may study weather using a variety of disciplines. They might study the current science behind measuring air pressure, learn about the history of weather prediction, and read and write poetry about weather.

multimedia presentations

Presentations that use more than one medium to communicate information. For example, a CD-ROM that combines text, pictures, sound, voice, animation, and video is multimedia. Multimedia presentations may be used by teachers to cover new subject matter or by students to present projects.

multiple intelligences

A theory of intelligence developed in the 1980s by Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. Gardner defines intelligence broadly as "the capacity to solve problems or fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting." He originally identified seven intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. He later suggested the existence of several others, including naturalist, spiritual, and existential. Everyone has all the intelligences, but in different proportions.

Teachers who use a multiple-intelligences approach strive to present subject matter in ways that allow students to use several intelligences. For example, they might teach about the Civil War using songs from that period or teach the solar system by having students physically act out the rotation of planets around the sun.

Source: Quote from "Multiple Intelligences Go to School: Educational Implications of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences," by H. Gardner & T. Hatch, 1989, in Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4–9.

This document contains some material that was previously published in The Language of Learning: A Guide to Educational Terms, edited by J. Lynn McBrien and Ronald Brandt, 1997, ASCD.