“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
- Albert Einstein
What does learning look like? Educators have been asking themselves this question for decades. How much time should young children spend playing and exploring and how much time should teachers dedicate to direct instruction?
In a recent DoubleX article, writer and developmental scientist Alison Gopnik explained how parental anxiety and government policies are driving schools towards a more rigid curriculum for pre-schoolers. She argues that more direct instruction is not what young children need.
Gopnik cited two studies published in Cognition, a science journal; one from the University of California Berkeley, which she helped author, and another from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the MIT study, a teacher showed a group of 4-year olds a new toy with four tubes, saying, “I'm going to show you how my toy works. Watch this!” She then showed them how to pull on a tube and make the toy squeak. For a second group of students, Gopnik showed the students a new toy, and said she had “just found it.” The teacher acted surprised when she pulled a tube and it let out a squeak.
The group of children given direct instruction played with only the one tube that squeaked, while the students who weren’t given direct instruction played with the toy longer and discovered many of the instrument’s hidden functionalities.
In Gopnik’s own study at U-C Berkeley, a researcher showed a new toy to 4-year olds and performed many actions, such as pushing buttons and pulling rings in different sequences. Some of these actions caused the toy to play music and some didn’t. With another group of 4-year olds, the researcher acted more clueless, saying things like, “Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works?” The group of students exposed to the “clueless” researcher were more likely to find the simplest way of making the toy play music, whereas the other group copied the more elaborate sequence modeled by the teacher.
According to Gopnik, the study demonstrates that “[w]hile learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution.”
Many other educators have written that, for authentic learning experiences, teachers must stop regarding themselves as experts and students as vessels into which they pour their knowledge. As John Seely Brown, consultant and former chief scientist at Palo Alto Research Center, asserts, the teacher must no longer be “the sage on stage.” Seely Brown argues that pedagogy is transitioning towards participatory, passion-based learning, where students are encouraged to be curious, to solve problems and to discover their own interests.
This transition requires a significant shift in the teaching dynamic.
Jeff Utecht, an education blogger at The Thinking Stick, explains, “We push when an effective education system is a pull system. Students need to pull education towards them around passion, curiosity, and imagination.” Or as Dan Pink, a former speechwriter to Al Gore turned motivational speaker and author, might say, students need to develop intrinsic motivation, rather than chasing “sweeter carrots.”
One way teachers can motivate students is to weigh their words well in advance, during the lesson planning stage, says Angela Maiers, a former teacher and education consultant. “Often we think we are modeling skills and strategies for students when we are really just telling and assigning. The few minutes we spend thinking through our language can impact the flow and dynamics of the instruction.”
But changing the way teachers speak to students and enabling students to participate more directly in lessons doesn’t mean lowering expectations, it simply means changing our view of what learning looks like.
Returning to the example of pre-school students, Elizabeth Blackwell, a blogger for the parenting site Babble.com, grew worried when she compared her daughter’s preschool activities to those of children at other schools who had homework each night. She was concerned because her daughter couldn’t yet write the alphabet. But one day her daughter brought home a story she had dictated to her teacher. Ultimately, Blackwell came to realize that the story represented not only her daughter's imagination, but also an important phase in the reading process.
“Think of what it means from a child’s viewpoint: An adult is paying attention, writing down what I say … That’s a powerful incentive for learning,” Blackwell quoted Jerlean Daniel, deputy executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, as saying.
(See also “What Playtime Means to Educators”)
Elizabeth Devine, a Social Studies teacher at Hall High School in Hartford Conn., teaches passion-based learning in her classroom. In one course, students learn about human rights issues by creating action projects where they try to effect a significant local or global change. “It’s absolutely a challenge but if we give them suggestions, and guidance along the way, consult with them about what they’re doing, they generally come up with some really fabulous ideas.” Devine listed several examples of her student projects, from developing mentorships at lower-income schools to raising awareness about depression and suicide prevention, to helping curb domestic abuse and violence.
At the School of the Future, a progressive Grade 6-12 school in New York City, history teachers challenge students to ask questions and conduct research like real historians do. Science teachers helped students build a model of New York City that symbolized all of the parts of a human cell. According to Edutopia, “SOF measures the full range of student ability through formative assessments, presentations, exhibitions, and tests that focus on authentic tasks to assess students' skills and knowledge as they relate to real-world endeavors.”
School of the Future has a 98 percent graduation rate – which is all the more impressive given that most of the students at come from poorer families, with 40 percent qualifying for free or reduced-cost lunches.
Students don’t need to begin their college preparation in pre-school. Instead, students of all ages need teachers need to step back and give them room to grow. Teachers who encourage autonomy, self-direction, and creativity are teaching students skills that will last them a lifetime.
Senior Writer
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