Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. South Philadelphia has a mainly immigrant, working-class population, while North Philadelphia and areas west of University Park are rough and somewhat rundown. Some of the best older suburbs lie along the old Pennsylvania Railroad âMain Lineâ running to the west.
We use a different approach to the instruction which does not place a premium on time in class. We base our unit. of instruction on mastery of school subjects rather than on the time spent on them. In mastery learning, students. must demonstrate the knowledge of the subject to be learned before credit is given. We believe that mastery. learning provides the greatest opportunity for the students who are out of step with their coursework to catch up, or in many cases, to accelerate their high school program.
Traditional Teaching. Traditional teaching is concerned with the teacher being the controller of the learning environment. Power and responsibility are held by the teacher and they play the role of instructor (in the form of lectures) and decision maker (in regards to cirriculum content and specific outcomes). They regard students as having 'knowledge holes' that need to be filled with information. In short, the traditional teacher views that it is the teacher that causes learning to occur (Novak, 1998) Learning is cheifly associated within the classroom and is often competitive. The lesson's content and delivery are considered to be most important and students master knowledge through drill and practice (such as rote learning).