Learning for Understanding and it's Obstacles/Last week's class

I'm at least going to break posts into two for this week, so expect another one on the How People Learn chapter soon.

Before I start going "not so fast!", I want to say that the Wiggins Mctighe article was a great restating of the problem of American education favoring covering content for its own sake versus educating for understanding (and, as the article could have put it yet more frequently and explicitly "for application").  It also gave a great outline of what such education should actually look like as it takes place over a class or term.  I especially like bookending things with a "hook question" and then revisiting the question later to emphasize how far the class has come as a productive group of people.  Now, I think we'll more or less all agree that the aim of this article was worthy and applicable, so let me attempt to wonder about what could stand in the way.

I seem to have found myself harping on the idea that, while its not right--in fact because its not right, we have to be cognizant of the fact that in a very big way, American education (at least as I know it and people in high school and college I personally know now do) is grading and ranking of students.  Parents (including mine) do not ask "can you apply your knowledge of mathematics?" but "what [grade] did you get in math?"

This doesn’t mean its right, it’s not.  But it’s slightly alarming when articles are based on a premise that “The mission of high school is not to cover content, but rather to help learners become thoughtful about, and productive with, content” as this article says.  If this were completely and unequivocally true, the article would likely not exist in the first place.   Beyond high school, even the GRE has sections based on recall.  The point is, it might be slightly misguided to say "education is about giving learners knowledge in a way thats actually going to make them productive" when--and I repeat that articles like this one are all the more important because of it--that's not quite true.  Usually.

As educators are typically very bright people with nothing but the best intentions for their students, and many of them are (I'm pretty confident) at least dimly aware that learning processes like the one outlined in this article help students apply knowledge and be productive rather than content for content's sake, there must be something in the way of learning processes like this being adopted in a widespread way.

To make curriculums geared towards learning for application really viable and sustainable nation-wide (I keep using application rathe than understanding...I think I'm compelled to because it seems to emphasize that application is a requisite for true understanding) the incentives and culture of schooling has to change in a big way. Beyond any political shifts (and these are needed to change the way schools get funded) parents need to accept that their children may not be getting drilled on facts and figures like they did.  Students also need to get used to it.  I think learning for application as opposed to “rote memorization” should be much more compelling for students in the long term, especially if they are started out on it from a young age and are used to it.   However, in a way, learning for application is more demanding, involves learning from mistakes, and requires more critical thinking.  For some students this will be even more “boring” (difficult, uncomfortable) than simple and safe memorization.  So, I think we and all instructors need to realize that it will take a bit of time for students to back new learning styles, and initial feedback for anything will not be unanimously positive.  I hope libraries can help facilitate this transition in a long-term and sustainable way.

Last week's class:

I'll make one specific point (the better to comment on). I liked how we talked about the fact that on a five point survey scale (5 being 'completely agree' 3 being 'neutral' and 1 being 'strongly disagree'), many kind hearts will never go lower than a 'neutral', thus skewing results so as not to highlight rough aspects of an event as much as they need to be.  I believe it was also mentioned that having a four point scale, without a 'neutral', might give people an incentive to admit they "disagree" with an item, perhaps because they might be nice enough to tell a little fib and put 'neutral' for an item they felt was lacking, rather than outright lie and say it was satisfactory.  I might caution that having only a four point scale could be even more damaging or skewing where kind hearts are involved, as I bet many will be so kind as to answer with an "agree" or "satisfactory" on an item where they feel the opposite.  From personal experience, I might also caution that a 4 point scale can make a survey taker more likely not to answer a question at all, perhaps because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, or perhaps because, as I find myself, they truly feel neutrally about a question and none of the responses provided apply to them.  So, as I think we assumed anyway, there are pros and cons to both a 4 and 5 point scale.