Sep 10 2008
Great article… worth reading.
COMMENTARY
It’s Not What We Teach, It’s What They Learn
I never understood all the fuss about that old riddle—“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound?” Isn’t it just a question of how we choose to define the word sound? If we mean “vibrations of a certain frequency transmitted through the air,” then the answer is yes. If we mean “vibrations that stimulate an organism’s auditory system,” then the answer is no.
More challenging, perhaps, is the following conundrum sometimes attributed to defiant educators: “I taught a good lesson even though the students didn’t learn it.” Again, everything turns on definition. If teaching is conceived as an interactive activity, a process of facilitating learning, then the sentence is incoherent. It makes no more sense than “I had a big dinner even though I didn’t eat anything.” But what if teaching is defined solely in terms of what the teacher says and does? In that case, the statement isn’t oxymoronic—it’s just moronic. Wouldn’t an unsuccessful lesson lead whoever taught it to ask, “So what could I have done that might have been more successful?”
That question would indeed occur to educators who regard learning—as opposed to just teaching—as the point of what they do for a living. More generally, they’re apt to realize that what we do doesn’t matter nearly as much as how kids experience what we do.
Consider what happens between children and parents. When each is asked to describe some aspect of their life together, the responses are strikingly divergent. For example, a large Michigan study that focused on the extent to which children were included in family decisionmaking turned up different results depending on whether the parents or the children were asked. (Interestingly, three other studies found that when there is some objective way to get at the truth, children’s perceptions of their parents’ behaviors are no less accurate than the parents’ reports of their own behaviors.)
But the important question isn’t who’s right; it’s whose perspective predicts various outcomes. It doesn’t matter what lesson a parent intended to teach by, say, giving a child a “timeout” (or some other punishment). If the child experiences this as a form of love withdrawal, then that’s what will determine the effect. Similarly, parents may offer praise in the hope of providing encouragement, but children may resent the judgment implicit in being informed they did a “good job,” or they may grow increasingly dependent on pleasing the people in positions of authority.
From both punishments and rewards, moreover, kids may derive a lesson of conditionality: I’m loved—and lovable—only when I do what I’m told. Of course, most parents would insist that they love their children no matter what. But, as one group of researchers put it in a book about controlling styles of parenting, “It is the child’s own experience of this behavior that is likely to have the greatest impact on the child’s subsequent development.” It’s the message that’s received, not the one that the adults think they’re sending, that counts.
Exactly the same point applies in a school setting, since educators, too, may use carrots and sticks on students. We may think we’re emphasizing the importance of punctuality by issuing a detention for being late, or that we’re making a statement about the need to be respectful when we suspend a student for yelling an obscenity, or that we’re supporting the value of certain behaviors when we offer a reward for engaging in them.
But what if the student who’s being punished or rewarded doesn’t see it that way? What if his or her response is, “That’s not fair!” or “Next time I won’t get caught” or “I guess when you have more power you can make other people suffer if they don’t do what you want” or “If they have to reward me for x, then x must be something I wouldn’t want to do”?
We protest that the student has it all wrong, that the intervention really is fair, the consequence is justified, the reward system makes perfect sense. But if the student doesn’t share our view, then what we did cannot possibly have the intended effect. Results don’t follow from behaviors, but from the meaning attached to behaviors.
The same is true of teachers who are stringent graders. Their intent—to “uphold high standards” or “motivate students to do their best”—is completely irrelevant if a low grade is perceived differently by the student who receives it, which it almost always is. Likewise, if students view homework as something they can’t wait to be done with, it doesn’t matter how well-designed or valuable we think those assignments are. The likelihood that they will help students learn more effectively, let alone become excited about the topic being taught, is exceedingly low.
If teachers just do their thing and leave it up to each student to make sense of it—“so that the child comes to feel, as he is intended to, that when he doesn’t understand it is his fault” (to borrow John Holt’s words)—then meaningful learning is likely to be in awfully short supply in those classrooms.
But let’s face it: It’s easier to concern yourself with teaching than with learning, just as it’s more convenient to say the fault lies with people other than you when things go wrong. It’s tempting, when students are given some kind of assessment, to assume the results primarily reveal how much progress each kid is, or isn’t, making—rather than noticing that the quality of the teaching is also being assessed.
“I taught a good lesson …” probably suggests that learning is viewed as a process of absorbing information, which in turn means that teaching consists of delivering that information. (Many years ago, the writer George Leonard described lecturing as the “best way to get information from teacher’s notebook to student’s notebook without touching the student’s mind.”) This approach is particularly common among high school and college teachers, who have been encouraged to think of themselves as experts in their content areas (literature, science, history) rather than in pedagogy. The reductio ad absurdum would be those who “took their content so very seriously that they forgot their students,” as Linda McNeil put it in her devastating portrait of high school, Contradictions of Control: School Structure and School Knowledge.
The trouble may start in schools of education, where preservice teachers in many states spend very little time learning about learning, relative to the time devoted to subject-matter content. Worse, when teachers these days are told to think about learning, it may be construed in behaviorist terms, with an emphasis on discrete, measurable skills. The point isn’t to deepen understanding (and enthusiasm), but merely to elevate test scores.
The fact is that real learning often can’t be quantified, and a corporate-style preoccupation with “data” turns schooling into something shallow and lifeless. Ideally, attention to learning signifies an effort to capture how each student makes sense of the world, so we can meet them where they are. “Teaching,” as Deborah Meier has reminded us, “is mostly listening.” (It’s the learners, she adds, who should be doing most of the “telling,” based on how they grapple with an engaging curriculum.) Imagine how American classrooms would be turned inside out if we ever really put that wisdom into action.
And it’s not just listening in the literal sense that’s needed, but the willingness to imagine the student’s point of view. How does it feel to be sitting there with your shaky efforts to write an essay or solve a problem subjected to continuous evaluation? (Many teachers who expect their students to bear up under, and even benefit from, a constant barrage of criticism are themselves often extremely sensitive to any suggestion that their craft could be improved.) Indeed, educators ought to make a point of trying something new in their own lives, something they must struggle to master, in order to appreciate what their students put up with every day.
Finally, as teachers are to students, so administrators are to teachers. Successful school leadership doesn’t depend on what principals and superintendents do, but on how their actions are regarded by their audience—notably, classroom teachers. Those on the receiving end may be older than students, but the moral is the same: It’s best to see what we do through the eyes of those to whom it’s done.
Vol. 28, Issue 03, Pages 26,32
7 responses so far
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It is interesting to me that educators need to consider this seemingly simple insight. I suppose almost never being taught by a teacher with the cognitive ability to employ the learner’s eye must be the main reason so many teacher have trouble employing or at least remembering this concept. After all, we are the fruit of an over ripe system, “I learned this way, why can’t you,” still echoes down the halls.
Having been in the purgatory of the parochial school system I know firsthand the effect that “teaching” has on learning. Today, when I teach I think back to my teachers and those who made a difference in my learning. Even back then, I knew that those special few teachers looked at me as someone more like themselves a ”learner” and not as a passive student. My challenge is to remember I am and will always be a learner.
After taking the two Learning Through Teaching classes last year and now this one, my eyes have been opened. I have tested many of the learning activities in all of my classes with success for the most part. The old ways of “teaching” do not work for many of our youth today, but time is the enemy.
What I struggle with is class time constraints, effective teaching/learning, and meeting state standards. For example, the Hospitality class, even though a block class for the year, spends 2 class periods a week at the Red Jacket, 3 here in the classroom. The AHLA course content is rigorous, and the NH state standards consist on 43 competencies. Reading to reinforce the content is assigned, but books seldom leave the shelf. Work ethic is lacking in many of our youth. “But it’s only school, I’m not like this at work.” Drives me nuts!
My deepest concern is what happens to our students after Kennett. Are professors adjusting their teaching methods? Feedback from graduates is college is so much work. They don’t know how to read a text, or write research papers. Kathy Keene and I were shocked last year when we sat in on a college English class at UNH and she was teaching the “comma” because students didn’t know how or when to use one. Can our youth be competitive in today’s global economy?
I really feel teaching and learning is taking on a whole new attitude and look. I know form my own experiences that things have changed. When i was in elementary, Jr. High, and High School it seemed like every class was structured the same way and most teachers followed a lecture format. You also knew which students the teachers took seriously and which ones they pretty much ignored because they didn’t think they were serious about learning. Fortunately for me, I was usually taken seriously unless it was a math class. I always enjoyed learning and tried to get the most out of my classes and teachers. A lot of these teachers from my past did not take into consideration “how each student makes sense of the world” and how they could learn best. They simply taught one way and assessed one way and that was it. When I went to college many teachers used this same style, but taught us these new teaching strategies and differentiated instruction and wanted us to teach this “new” way.
I feel challenged sometimes to see the students points of view and imagine where they are coming from and what they are experiencing in their life and in their learning process. I find it challenging to to think outside of my box at times and i know its challenge i like to take on. I try to always listen to my students and ask questions and try to help when i can. It always amazes me to hear their points of views. It think this is part of the “learning about learning” process.
I think we are lucky to have so many resources and research data to help us become better teachers and students. Everyone does learn differently. I feel teachers are adjusting to these new ways of teaching, but like Lori brought up are the college professors adjusting to this style as well? How will our students do once they leave Kennett? Will they be prepared for different teaching styles, methods of learning, and the workload they will have? I guess we can only do our best to prepare them and offer them guidance when they need it. I know my teachers were very good about that. Even when I went to college and i was struggling with my music workload the first person I called Mike Martin. He gave me some words of advice and encouragement and gave me some help on my theory homework. Even to this day he is a resource for me and my choral teaching. If i have a question i know i can count on him to help me. I think teachers that make themselves available and let you know you can still count on them no matter what stage of life your in is an important aspect of our jobs. I have contacted several of my past teachers for help with things and that has been my best source of learning.
As always, I’ll provide the whiney new-teacher perspective.
As a student, I crave that basic concept. Boil it down, then build it up. I suspect my students desire the same and I know I fail them just as my teachers failed me.
Why was I never taught how to break-down a concept to its most basic form and build a lesson from that point? No one, not one “teacher”, offered me the tools that I now need so desperately. I find myself toward the end of a unit before the lightbulb finally shines and I see where I should have begun, how I should have structured it all along. Thank goodness it happens at all – next year’s students will benefit – but what about the confused kids in front of me today? It’s difficult for me to continue along this vein at risk of indirectly criticizing collegues. I receive so much support, SO MUCH ADVICE, but I don’t feel as though I get what is truly needed. Is it structure I seek? Yes, I think so. Content-specific structure! Where is that?
This article was very interesting, and since I am continuously studying and learning, I connected strongly with the paragraph I quote here:
“And it’s not just listening in the literal sense that’s needed, but the willingness to imagine the student’s point of view. How does it feel to be sitting there with your shaky efforts to write an essay or solve a problem subjected to continuous evaluation? (Many teachers who expect their students to bear up under, and even benefit from, a constant barrage of criticism are themselves often extremely sensitive to any suggestion that their craft could be improved.) Indeed, educators ought to make a point of trying something new in their own lives, something they must struggle to master, in order to appreciate what their students put up with every day.”
While I sometimes forget, I try to remind myself to put myself in students’ shoes and remember the points mentioned above. I think that most of us, students and teachers, as well as employees and supervisors, take pride in our work and like to have our efforts at least recognized. If evaluators don’t recognize positive efforts they can create a barrier to communication and can create a negative atmosphere that is not conducive to learning. However, by acknowledging the positive, it is possible to stimulate interest in growth and receptiveness to constructive criticism or dialogue that helps individuals improve.
I am so with you on this, Theresa. As you know, I started the mini-movie commentary project two weeks ago and it has been stressful to teach something completely new. There have been so many questions I couldn’t answer and had to work out with the students… yet so many opportunities to make a student an expert who knew more than me.
One other revelation: how intoxicating it is to create. I made my mini movie along beside them and wanted to work on it all the time. I kept watching it, tweaking it, thinking of something new to add, and each time I made a change I had to watch it again. It is composition in a whole new light. It has been good for me to jump into the cold water not sure if I could swim.
While reading the article I had to stop and pull out my notebook and jot down quotes that I found extremely powerful because they rang true, and too often truth is elusive. I loved “Teaching is mostly listening,” by Deborah Meier. I thought of something I have said for years, and that is that I do my best teaching of writing in the individual writer’s conference… no great shocker there. And I remember the year, my third one teaching, I think, when I turned a mammoth corner in my ability to hold effective writing conferences with students. It was through the writing of Donald Graves that I came to the better place of real listening to writers. I found myself, after reading Graves thoughts about the conferences, taking them on like an interview. Ask the student questions and listen to their answers and then coach them to their own directions for how to change their writing for the better. That practice is so vital, so much at the center of how and what I teach. I think the writers I work with view that practice as some type of guided learning because I see the evidence in the voice and the images and the conviction and passion and trouble found within their writing.
I also came up with this thought in response to the article: The best teachers are the ones who walk in another’s shoes long enough to understand the world from a different place than their own shoes. The people who can empathize are truly the people who can best understand new perspectives. Understanding new perspectives, new findings really, is on the path where learning travels.
I have a hair cut appointment and have to go. See Ya.