Rethinking Teaching and Learning

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how new information is learned, and why other information is not learned. I should first say that my definition of learning is that a person has acquired knowledge or a skill that can be recalled months later in a different setting. Of course this is not really measurable in a classroom, but it is my goal when I teach a student. I want them to recall something I taught them when in a college class or talking with their parents one night, etc. One of my pet peeves is students telling my that I learned it but forgot it. My question is that if we forget something, was it really learned in the first place?

This leads me to the question that is always on a teacher's mind these days, how do students learn? My original teacher training was in Constructivism which basically says that all people construct their understanding of the world. Learning occurs when a person is confronted with their own misunderstanding and replaces that misunderstanding with a truer understanding. My understanding in PCT takes this to the next level. In PCT thought, a person learns when they encounter error and choose to educe that error by changing a reference (replacing an old understanding with a new one).

In order for this to happen, several things need to occur. The first is that students need to have error about their own misunderstanding or lack of knowledge. This is incredibly difficult to do in a lecture style classroom. Even in a lab or hands-0n environment this can be difficult to achieve because it presupposes that a student cares about the knowledge. I think that this is why we need to tap into a student's beliefs. If a student does not see a need for the knowledge, even if they have some sort of error about the knowledge, they can always say, "Well I don't really need this anyway," or something similar.

This brings me to the next point, once a student has an error about their understanding of the world, they need to do an action to correct it. Teachers assume that students come to them with the tools to learn. I hear many students say that so and so teacher does not teach in a way that I can understand. I wonder, though, in this climate of testing, testing, and more testing which leads to cover, cover, and cover that we have forgotten to teach students the tools to learning. How do you learn in a classroom that is being taught in a style that is contrary to the method you best learn? How do you learn when you are depressed because your boyfriend just dumped you? How do you learn when the kid next to you keeps distracting you? In my experience, many students do not know how to take notes in a way that helps them, let a lone how to learn despite distractions. As professionals we have found our own ways or had parents or other adults that taught us strategies. Where is this taught? Where does a person learn the tools of learning?

In all, I guess what I am proposing in this long blog is a different way of looking at teaching and learning. Instead of teaching kids content, maybe I should be creating a classroom of discovery where students' beliefs about themselves and the world are looked at and encouraged or challenged. I should then focus my teaching on tools of learning so students have actions that help them reduce the error in their systems that also lead to learning.