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.
Detailed in the literature are two types of goal orientations. The first is a mastery goal, where students focus on mastery of a task and have the desire to acquire new skills. The second is a performance goal, where learnersâ main concern is demonstrating competence and focus on receiving favorable judgments of ability from others.