Jim Martin (continued)
to the seminar they wanted to do. I tell them to list all of their dis- coveries; their group’s and the other groups’. I’ve observed that they know more, better, than I could ever teach them via direct teaching. Then, I test them. First with my test, which is mostly es- say, and which they do their usual work on. The next day, they get the publisher’s test. Not long after the test begins, comments start coming in: “This is easy.” “This is boring.” “This barely covers the basics.” These students own their learnings. Their locus of control for their education resides within their person. How do you view this way of teaching so you can try it? The whole thing is driven by a question the student raises. This act generates an incipient concept, a bootstrap I can use to make sure that facts are discovered to clarify the concept. These elusive facts which clarify students’ thoughts about the concepts and processes they are engaging are what I call, “needs to know.” What happens in your brain when you need to know something: a forgotten ingredient in a recipe, how much you spent on auto maintenance last year, where is Qatar? Your inner self is mobilized, and you find the facts. And they clarify. From time to time, they raise further questions. Likewise with students. Their “Need to Know” generates a search for relevant facts. There is a difference between immersing students in the facts as they give form to the concept and medium, and committing facts to rote memory in the presence or absence of the medium. The difference between hypothetico-deductive and verification ac- tivities. The great majority of publishers’ activities are verification inquiries, with students simply verifying what they have been told they will find. Where is the brain’s role in this? Verification is clerk’s work; self-directed inquiry is brain’s work. To do this kind of teaching, teachers must be comfortable with the concepts and processes embedded in their curricula, and with allowing their students to think. This is not easy at first. Teachers perceive that control has moved from themselves to the students; enough to make many have second thoughts. Clean structure in
the learning environment and faith in the students’ integrity will make it work. And building their capacity for actively participat- ing in effective work groups.
Asking and answering inquiry questions in an effective work
group provides a nearly perfect environment for all students to learn any content for understanding. Note that I am not claiming the same for memorizing content particulars for tests. The main criterion of the teaching I support is that the student’s brain has to be an active participant in developing the concepts and engaging curricular particulars. It’s difficult to become comfortable with this way of teaching at first; at least, it was for me. I did, not sure how, make myself check where my students were relative to other students in their understandings. To see how they were doing, I followed up by talking with their teachers in the next grade when I could, to compare their outcomes on publishers’ tests compared with other classes. I focused on my bottom 25th percentile, who usually did well.
Memorizing material to pass tests does not personally empow- er most people. Learning for understanding does. These two ap- proaches to learning aren’t necessarily incompatible. In the United States, we don’t seem to understand what the two approaches mean, and tend to emphasize the former over the latter. Learning for understanding is a student-centered process. It takes time to let our teacher-centered part of us relax and let the students follow their questions. And to elucidate the successive approximations of students who are involved and invested in their learnings; approximations which mark the road they are on: Students who own what they know and will know.
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Jim Martin is a retired but still very active science educator who writes a regular blog on science and learning for CLEARING. You can them at
www.clearingmagazine.org.
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www.clearingmagazine.org
CLEARING Fall 2017
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