Teaching, learning, or both?
Jun. 21st, 2009 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageMy assignment: First Journal entry
Think About It
Take a few minutes and jot down your thoughts in your Journal. Do you think we teach children mathematics or do you think they learn mathematics? What images do you think of when you think of teachers teaching? What images do you see when children are learning? Is it possible that learning can happen on its own or from a peer, with the minimum involvement of a teacher?
Teachers play an important role in the process we call learning. They become the "guide on the side" not the "sage on the stage." Showing and telling are not teaching. Rather, we hope that children can be actively engaged in learning, questioning, analyzing, predicting and constructing knowledge from meaningful contexts and real-world experiences.
My answer:
I don't think this should be an either/or question; that is, I don't believe there is a great divide between teaching and learning. They are two parts of the same whole. Facilitating learning is called teaching, and it can take many forms. When I think of teaching, I generally picture direct instruction, the teacher modelling and then the students practising with guidance. Then I think about the activities I have students do that look nothing like that - jigsaw activities, where my whole role is to write questions on chart paper and let groups come to their own answers through exploration; whole-class discussions, where my role is to moderate who speaks and when, and possibly ask leading questions if the discussion stalls; critical literacy and exploration activities, where I provide materials and guide students to see them in light of certain key questions. I'm not doing much modelling or direct instruction in any of those situations - and together, they make up well over half of the classroom activities I plan.
I don't think the traditional teaching methods - imparting knowledge to students who lack it, in a top-down model - is really as traditional as recent research would have us believe. It seems to me that the method we're being told to consider, including the one hinted at in this journal entry with that very leading question, is just a variation on the age-old Socratic method, where we teach by asking questions that lead students towards more, deeper questions, and the knowledge they require to ask the next level of questions. Indeed, in the Socratic method, the students ask at least as many questions of each other as the teacher asks of them, resulting ideally in a depth of discussion that is totally lacking in so-called traditional educative methods. (I call it a variation because the Socratic method is mostly a thought exercise, with the students studiously avoiding getting their hands dirty, whereas the modern version of it requires kids to get up to their elbows in manipulatives of all kinds.) Most learning has been done like this since the beginning of time; it was the people we think of as traditional teachers who changed it, bringing Skinner's behavioural model of teaching into the forefront of pedagogy.
So, to bring this journal back around to its point, students learn mathematics in a variety of ways, including direct teaching, exploratory learning, peer interaction, and observation of the world around them. My job as a mathematics teacher is to highlight the connections between mathematical concepts, to ask the questions that will lead to students deepening their understanding of those concepts and their connections, and to facilitate their exploration of their world through the language of mathematics.
Think About It
Take a few minutes and jot down your thoughts in your Journal. Do you think we teach children mathematics or do you think they learn mathematics? What images do you think of when you think of teachers teaching? What images do you see when children are learning? Is it possible that learning can happen on its own or from a peer, with the minimum involvement of a teacher?
Teachers play an important role in the process we call learning. They become the "guide on the side" not the "sage on the stage." Showing and telling are not teaching. Rather, we hope that children can be actively engaged in learning, questioning, analyzing, predicting and constructing knowledge from meaningful contexts and real-world experiences.
My answer:
I don't think this should be an either/or question; that is, I don't believe there is a great divide between teaching and learning. They are two parts of the same whole. Facilitating learning is called teaching, and it can take many forms. When I think of teaching, I generally picture direct instruction, the teacher modelling and then the students practising with guidance. Then I think about the activities I have students do that look nothing like that - jigsaw activities, where my whole role is to write questions on chart paper and let groups come to their own answers through exploration; whole-class discussions, where my role is to moderate who speaks and when, and possibly ask leading questions if the discussion stalls; critical literacy and exploration activities, where I provide materials and guide students to see them in light of certain key questions. I'm not doing much modelling or direct instruction in any of those situations - and together, they make up well over half of the classroom activities I plan.
I don't think the traditional teaching methods - imparting knowledge to students who lack it, in a top-down model - is really as traditional as recent research would have us believe. It seems to me that the method we're being told to consider, including the one hinted at in this journal entry with that very leading question, is just a variation on the age-old Socratic method, where we teach by asking questions that lead students towards more, deeper questions, and the knowledge they require to ask the next level of questions. Indeed, in the Socratic method, the students ask at least as many questions of each other as the teacher asks of them, resulting ideally in a depth of discussion that is totally lacking in so-called traditional educative methods. (I call it a variation because the Socratic method is mostly a thought exercise, with the students studiously avoiding getting their hands dirty, whereas the modern version of it requires kids to get up to their elbows in manipulatives of all kinds.) Most learning has been done like this since the beginning of time; it was the people we think of as traditional teachers who changed it, bringing Skinner's behavioural model of teaching into the forefront of pedagogy.
So, to bring this journal back around to its point, students learn mathematics in a variety of ways, including direct teaching, exploratory learning, peer interaction, and observation of the world around them. My job as a mathematics teacher is to highlight the connections between mathematical concepts, to ask the questions that will lead to students deepening their understanding of those concepts and their connections, and to facilitate their exploration of their world through the language of mathematics.