For me, this might be the most important topic I consider in this blog for the week. I am a teacher in the social sciences (social studies, history, economics, et.al.), but have a background in Engineering, math and the empirical sciences. With this perspective, I have had a lot of experiences in education where I am left scratching my head…
There are a lot of great new teaching methods out there, a lot of new and interesting uses for technology…BUT…just because these new methods and tools are interesting to me seemed to be problematic, in that good teaching and having students learn might not necessarily have anything to do with the new and fun things we can do as teachers…
I guess that I am only presenting the fact that I have been ‘reasonably’ skeptical about a lot of what I have seen. For instance, lately I have run across more and more edu-blogs proselytizing the progressive wonders of letting students define the curriculum as some sort of anodyne for teaching in the future. While there may be some value in this (for certain students, and some subjects), there are some pretty obvious cases where this is ridiculous.
Interestingly enough, the vast majority of subject areas where these new methods lie is within what could be called (some of) the humanities and social sciences. These subject areas have been involved with so much flux regarding the basics of curriculum that this seems like a likely area to experiment in.
I, myself, have been spending a lot of time trying to understand the basics of what is important to know (as a teacher, and what students should know as graduates) for a while now. But, there are some who have approached this topic from a bit different perspective:
[PT] Pseudoteaching: Hunting Monkeys
http://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/pt-pseudoteaching-hunting-monkeys
Pseudoteaching is something you realize you’re doing after you’ve attempted a lesson which from the outset looks like it should result in student learning, but upon further reflection, you realize that the very lesson itself was flawed and involved minimal learning.
Being pseudotaught
http://mreeseducation.blogspot.com/2011/03/being-pseudotaught.htmlTo me, the key phrase in that quote is, "In class, students feel like they are learning…." (Perhaps that’s just my bias as a student, though.) But, I know the feeling of being pseudotaught. It’s that feeling of sitting in a class, typically watching, as has been mentioned many times before, a lecture or a video (complete with demos!) and truly believing that I understand what’s being presented.
And then…I try to apply it. Suppose that wonderful classroom experience was a demonstration on fluid pressure. Two hours later, I’ll be walking down a hallway and see some objects in an aquarium when thoughts along the lines of:
"Now, that one on the bottom is under more pressure, because…no, wait, let me think…no, that’s not right…huh?"
Immediately, that familiar sinking feeling of frustration and loss comes back to me. And once again, I know–I really have no idea what’s going on beneath those waves. It’s not a good feeling! It only goes to reinforce the struggle that many of my fellow students have with learning.
Pseudoteaching
http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=1992
First, it’s easy to believe that if you’re preparing, and presenting eloquently, you are communicating. And that isn’t necessarily so. For learning to stick, there are several necessary components, the most important being that the learner needs to be engaged in meaningful activity. That’s not likely the case in the classroom where learners are in your control. Now, if you’re giving meaningful assignments before the lecture, and then extending the learning afterward, you have a chance. Otherwise, the content is likely to fall on deaf ears.
It’s real easy to delude ourselves that good production equals good learning, but the evidence is to the contrary. Similarly, it’s easy to convince ourselves that we’ve given the learners the necessary information. That doesn’t work either. You’ve got to understand learning, formally or intuitively (and the latter is not the way to bet), and align the elements to succeed.
Khan Academy is an Indictment of Education
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/khan-academy-is-an-indictment-of-education
The fact that TED, Bill Gates, and the media love Khan Academy shows the failure of education. Khan Academy looks great because our country has reduced teaching and learning to preparing students to bubble in answer sheets for multiple choice tests. But if we shift the purpose of education from consuming knowledge and stating answers to creating knowledge and exploring solutions, the fallacy of Khan Academy “reinventing education” is blatantly apparent.
Action-Reaction
http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/#!/page/1
All of these perspectives are driven by math and science teachers, and rightly so… While I see that many of the English and social studies curricula leave a lot of room to experiment in, the fact is that basic arithmetic hasn’t changed, other than the fact that real mastery may be of more value now than when I was in school. The same goes for some of the fundamental sciences (chemistry and physics)…
These areas of endeavor and study have tangible and measurable ways to assess student’s knowledge, and in many cases these assessments are about as close to authentic as you might ever want.
In any case, the use of the term ‘pseudoteaching’ is a reasonable push back, since there has to be some sort of outcome to teaching (and learning), and if this activity has measurable outcomes, we can evaluate how well we are doing as teachers. I find this sort of empiricism to be refreshing when compared to some of the breathless prose I often see regarding any new technique of form of internet technology to leverage.
With all of this in mind, I can see that math, science, and even language classes need to look at this form of serious evaluation of teaching methods. All of these areas of study demand (to varying degrees) lots of repetition, memorization, and old fashioned discipline to successfully get through a class.
This focus upon Epistemology (i.e. what is it to learn something? What is it to know something?) is a rational way to evaluate these sorts of classes…if only because there is a self evident curriculum and long standing outcomes to use for comparison.
For other subject areas, such as my focus in social studies, I still see that there is a real need to work on defining just what is important…
