What is mastery learning? According to John Caroll, all children will learn given the following conditions: a dedicated teacher, adequate and appropriate instructional materials, tests, enough time,administrative and parental support, and an environment conducive to learning. David Jacobsen contends that mastery is an instructional strategy that allows students to progress at their own pace through a unit of study. Formative tests are used to provide feedback about the learning progress. Final exams are used to document final mastery of the content.

        Carol Cummings believes that mastery learning is the most logical place to begin if we are going to assure children of success experiences. Many philosophy suggests that given enough time and proper learning conditions, all childrencan learn the objectives we set out to reach them.

        A very crucial factor lies in task analysis. Oftentimes we overlooked the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes in our desire to cover so much topics.

        The time element is another very crucial component. If students are normally distributed by ability or aptitude and are provided appropriate instruction tailored to their characteristics, the majority should achieve mastery of the subject and learning should be dramatically improved. If the student does not spend sufficient

Time to learn a task, he or she will not master it.

        Mastery instruction is a challenging strategy because the teacher must continually monitor each student, provide a variety of instructional materials and activities, determine what skills each student has mastered and give immediate feedbacks.

        The tasks in mastery learning are truly challenging but the rewards are great in terms of success and joy.

 

By: Edwina B. Gatmen | Teacher II | Bagac Elementary School | Bagac, Bataan