This article on principles of
instruction did a great job explaining each strategy and then providing an
example from the real world. Having said that, some of the principles that were
covered are well known axioms, which makes the article a very dry read. For
example, “the development of expertise requires thousands of hours of practice.”
At first glance you might say, “Of course that’s true. Why do I need someone to
tell me what I already know?” My answer would be this: to reevaluate the values
that we place on these principles and to gain a deeper understanding of their
implications. Let me put it this way, if I never swam in my life and decided to
start teaching myself without a guide or mentor, then chances are that my form
wouldn’t be correct and that I would probably be exerting more energy then I
need to in order to get the same results. In sum, practice makes permanent, not
perfect.
What does that mean to us as
prospective teachers? For me, it means that I have to be more critical of the
strategies and principles that I integrate into my teaching style. Additionally,
I need to abstain from becoming too complacent with my notions of “good
teaching” and instead need to qualify what I thought to be sacrosanct in pedagogy.
For you guys out there: What strategies, principles, or methods do you not
agree with or think need more careful scrutinization before adoption?
Another part in the article that fascinated
me involved research regarding cognitive science and our
understanding of working memory and its limitations. The excerpt goes like
this: “Daily practice of vocabulary can lead to seeing each practiced word as a
unit (i.e., seeing the whole word automatically rather than as individual
letters that have to be sounded out and blended.)When students see words as
units, they have more space available in their working memory, and this space
can now be used for comprehension.” I thought that was incredible insightful. It’s
like learning to ride a bike for the first time with the expectation of
following all the road signs. Of course you’re not going to be able to
multitask well because you need to be able to commit the former skill to memory
until it becomes a reflex before you can connect it with another one, in this case
following the rules of the road.
If anyone is interested in
learning more about memory, I would recommend this book called “Moonwalking
with Einstein.” What the book does well is it dispels the myth of geniuses and
explores strategies for increasing one’s own memory capacity.
As a bonus for this week, here's a comic I found that I think my Spanish teachers will enjoy:
As a bonus for this week, here's a comic I found that I think my Spanish teachers will enjoy:
Kris
ReplyDeleteNice response. I too found it interesting reading about the cognitive research part and the limitations of our working memory. Actually, when reading this article, I thought about how because I know the English language with so much "automaticity," i.e. I don't really have to use any "working memory" to read this article, or to process the specific words, yet my brain is just doing it for me. It's an important point for me to take note of being that I am going to be teaching Spanish, and I will have to be very aware that until students become very advanced, that Spanish language is going to take up a large part of their working memory. Therefore, it makes sense to incorporate some of the techniques explained in the article to make sure students have the opportunity to move some of that language from their working memory to a more fluent state.
Kris, I also enjoyed reading the bits about working memory and how to help students reduce the amount of cognitive demands that are placed on them at one time. As I was reading this, I was asking myself what information it is good to tell students upfront and what information you should allow them to explore for themselves. Some of the suggestions in the article contradicted what I have been told by professors about letting students explore first, as opposed to the traditional "I, we, you" method. Thus, I am now trying to figure out if a mixture of these two is best, and if so, when it is best to lead with exploration, and when it is best to lead with demonstrations. As of now, it seems like it is best to lead with explanations/demonstrations when the students do not yet have the appropriate background knowledge to explore, but I am interested to hear other insights about this.
ReplyDeleteHey Kris,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I love the fact that you included that cartoon! Hilarious! I think all of us should do more of that whenever it is our respective turns to blog. Getting to your commentary, I agree that as teachers, we must remain flexible in our instruction methods, and never become complacent with teaching lessons the same way for 30-40 years. Adapting and overcoming is the way to both become, and remain a great teacher.
I think having an understanding of how the brain works when it comes to memory and comprehension is good knowledge to have as a teacher, because it allows you to use concrete science in order to better aid a student's understanding of the material. It might not help you on a day to day basis, but I think it is good to know. Great post!
Hi Kris,
ReplyDeleteLove the cartoon!
I also enjoyed reading your commentary and how you dissected each piece. I also agree with what everyone has been saying on the blog and all of these wonderful readings, but I still think that everyone needs to experience and grow in order to become an effective teacher. Sometimes I also find myself confused as to what is "good" teaching and what is not. Everything contradicts itself. As educators, we all have different philosophies, and we will teach according to what we believe is best. I have yet to observe a teacher that implements all of these strategies.
Ah Kris,
ReplyDeleteI love your responses. Always well thought out with a hint of awesomeness. I also am fascinated by this idea of memory. What kind of threw my off thought was, and I could've missed this so I apologize if I did, but the article doesn't tell us the subjects and who was used in the study. Now this doesn't make the study bad or irrelevant but, as most of us know, there is a difference between an urban school with very little funding and a lot of students versus a private school in a rich suburban neighborhood.
What also kind of bothered me was this idea that we somehow needs students to know vocabulary words and to consistently repeat them in order to memorize them. I felt that a lot of these examples and strategies where aimed at grade school or middle school.
Overall I did enjoy the article and my criticism didn't stop me from seeing the benefits in what the article was trying to get at. I have come to learn that there is a time and a place for everything and there is certainly a time and a place for these strategies whether or not I like them.
I'm going to chime in as another appreciator of the human memory, and to also give Kris his due props. Wonderful response, and I like how you were able to make real life comparisons to some of the concepts discussed in this article--especially the example of a swimmer's form. "Practice makes permanent", I like that and think it's a great reminder for teachers. Unless we, like you said, reevaluate our choices we make as teachers, it is certain we will become complacent with the choices that lack the necessary components for improvements.
DeleteNate, I was also bothered about the repetition of vocabulary words as a form of good recall. For some reason, that just strikes me as something students would come to hate and, in effect, become ineffective. But growing up, I always assimilated the word "review" with the day before a big unit test or something--the day, hopefully, all the answers to the test are trickled out. I really like the idea of starting a lesson with a few minutes of review, not to necessarily drill in knowledge, but to refresh and to get students back into the flow of things. Reviewing concepts and ideas that act as a connector from this lesson and the last rather than the memorization of words or facts is, in my opinion, a better use of time.
Hey Kris-
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response- I love what you say about "practice makes permanent" and complacency with teaching methods that are assumed "best practices." I think being daily/weekly/quarterly reflectors is or should be a part of our job description as educators. We must constantly be questioning ourselves. Even the little things- such as bathroom passes, because everything we do is sending some kind of message. My mentor teacher was telling me earlier today about how Juarez is asking teachers to stop letting students go to the bathroom because some fights are breaking out in the hallways. She balked at that, and made her own rules. As long as they sign out and use the designated hall pass, they are free to go to the bathroom whenever they want (after the first 10 minutes and before the last 10 minutes of class). She said that she didn't want to be the kind of teacher that has authority over every little aspect of the students' lives- she believes they still deserve the basic human right of going to the bathroom when they need to, without having to ask. However, last year she held the same theory in her mind, but in practice it looked completely different. They did have to ask, and they had to get a paper pass from her each time. She reflected over the summer, and determined that her belief in allowing the students' basic human liberties did not correlate to her bathroom policy. So, she changed it, and continues the way she believes is right and most reflective of what she believes.
This is a small example of the teaching methods/management strategies that we must consistently reflect upon. But everything we do in school is magnetized and scrutinized, and our basic, daily actions and policies send messages to the kids, whether we are aware of them or not.
Good evening, Kris:
ReplyDeleteI, too, am fascinated with the concept of memory. Rosenshine's concept of enhancing student learning through a teacher's repeated a questioning, regimented learning segments, and guided practice all seem to be founded on the premise that students ought to avoid "errors in the process of constructing this mental summary. " Further qualifying this, Rosenshine says "These constructions are not errors so much as attempts by the students to be logical in an area where their background knowledge is weak."
I would like to submit that we as educators start to look at these "errors" or "attempts to be logical" not as unproductive, incorrect steps towards learning, but as a fundamental kernel in the process towards committing a concept or an idea to one's long-term memory depository. Robert Bjork (see video below) has posited that "variability, spacing, using tests rather than presentations...sometimes reducing feedback to the learner" should be understood as "desirable difficulties," things that do not give off the instantaneous recognition to the student that they themselves have mastered the material; rather, these are "difficulties" because they impair initial acquisition, but in setting up this initial obfuscation, Bjork believes that the ability to recall information will be enhanced due to a more sustained engagement--problems, are, after all, processes-- with a concept or idea.
In other words, while I am sympathetic Rosenshine's idea that "we connect our under- standing of the new information to our existing concepts or “schema,” and we then construct a mental summary," I do not think we need to be so afraid to let students experience their own failure when first trying to master a concept. Yes, this could mean that the background knowledge is not adequate for a connection to be made between new knowledge and the necessary prerequisite, but maybe these breaks occur because of the past preponderance for the student to produce results quickly; maybe if we slow down now, we would save a future teacher from the type of regimented practice that is encouraged in Rosenshine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtmMMR7SJKw#t=166
Hi Chris,
DeleteInteresting take on the article. You mentioned that allowing students to "experience their own failure when first trying to master a concept" may not necessarily be something we always want to avoid, as Rosenshine makes it seem (or at least labels it as "ineffective teaching"). Your point reminds me of of a podcast/news piece I listened to/watched a couple of years ago (I forget which form it took) that discussed the difference between Eastern and Western school environments. According to the piece, in countries like China, the learning process--which includes problem-solving, deep thinking, and of course, a lot of failing--is emphasized as an earmark of success, rather than the reward (the solution). There, a "good" student is one who has worked long and hard at solving a problem and respected the journey without obsessing over the end result.
I found this piece really intriguing, because I think it shines light on a fundamental cultural/philosophical difference between East and West. Of course, it's not as simple as East vs. West, and doesn't magically "explain" everything. I do think that here in America, we have a deep-rooted cultural fear of failure/vulnerability, and our idea of success is oriented to achieving some end. That's not great for us as individuals, needless to say our students. It's also not anything we can change overnight. Our students are going to want to get things right, they're going to want to feel "rewarded," and if they don't feel supported enough in the classroom, they will shut down.
So, taking Rosenshine's perspective, I can see why allowing students too much room to fail could be problematic. With models/worked examples, guided practice, scaffolding, and "I Do, We Do, You Do" strategies implemented regularly in instruction, we can help save students from going too far down the road of misconception. It can be really discouraging as a student to know that you made what you thought were legit and logical connections were actually not, and that can, as I cautioned, make students--even what we'd consider "good" ones--shut down. Also as teachers, we don't want to have to spend extra time undoing students' misconceptions. As Rosenshine also points out, it is most effective to work WITH students when mastering new material, ask meaningful questions, and point out potential future errors that students could make to prevent them from doing so. That does not mean feeding students answers or not allowing them to fail. When we give students "wait time," for example, we allow them to think about an answer in their own head--and maybe "fail" in the process. But, if they state their answer, we can immediately confirm/assess if they're going in the right direction, and help guide them there. Having this interactive and guided approach to teaching makes the learning process so much more fluid, without making it a walk in the park.
Great discussion Chris and Emily,
Delete@ Chris: I like how you locate some of the difficulties with Rosenshine's version of "failure" in that she seems to identify an "error" as "not errors so much as attempts by the student to be logical in an area where their background knowledge is weak." The example she gives next is "science" and she seems to be thinking of science more as an accumulation of knowledge than as a process or practice. Your example of productive errors is definitely an apt one in viewing learning as a process. For example, it is important in a philosophy course to know why Plato thinks "X" but it is even more important to know why he thinks "not Y" ... meaning that the process of thinking through "X" necessarily involves grappling with a failure/error of "Y" and that this process is the only means to really understand "X." Concretely, I can give the definition of the "Heaven of ideals" but if I don't practice the actual activity of error/failure then the definition is made static/flattened/reduced to meaninglessness because it hasn't been worked through in a dialectical way. I guess a different way of saying this is "Finding out what it is like when the shoe is on the other foot" or maybe the E.M Forster line "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"
@Emily, I almost forgot! If that is the "Eastern" way of learning then it is def better! Great example. Sounds kind of like a Hegelian dialectic thing to me... where the Socratic dialectic also involves failing but is more "Western" in that it aims at a final/objective/universal solution.
DeleteGreat blog, Kris:
ReplyDeleteWhat this article triggered for me in my memory was learning multiplication formulas in 4th grade. My mom, a music teacher, bought me the record- School House Rock. For those not familiar, they set all of the multiplication principles to song. I was able very quickly to crank out "3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30. A man and a woman had a little baby, that makes 3. There were 3 in the family and that's a magic number." Math was suddenly fun and I didn't have to worry about figuring out logistics because it was ingrained in my memory. I also loved naughty number 9. (I digress). I really like this article because it confirms what I've believed for a very long time: in order to learn a new skill or bit of information, a student needs practice and many examples. I'm also a huge fan of "the worked example." Seeing a teacher model a step-by-step demonstration, lets me visualize the assignment and ground myself in the activity. Without examples or modeling, I tend to get confused quite easily. That being said, I do agree with Nate above about not finding out the particulars of the students. My guess is they were not urban students. Not that urban students cannot benefit from these principles, they can, but there are other factors that need to be accounted for when students are going without meals, and having chronic tardiness/absenteeism. The other important information I took away from this article was that worksheets are BAD! VERY VERY BAD!
Hey Kris,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, and I love the comic at the end! (History teachers would fit right in there, too.) I agree that this article was a bit of a "dry read" at points, but overall, I was satisfied with its straightforward and pragmatic structure/tone. While some of these strategies may seem like common sense or old news, it can be really difficult as a new teacher to keep them in mind when actually teaching! Just like our students, we are learning--how to be effective teachers, that is. Even the most basic teacher instincts take awhile to settle in. I have found that in my past teaching/tutoring experience, I will look back on it a few hours later and think about all the things I could have done differently (and say "duh!" to myself). That's because the art of teaching takes thousands of hours of practice to get good at it. So, I find it really helpful that these strategies are laid out in such plain form, with plenty of examples and truly useful ideas to support them. I think in particular, the most important strategies are providing models (e.g. partially worked examples) and checking for student understanding by asking large amounts of purposeful, pointed questions. Also, having students explain their position is one concrete example of how we can check/assess their understanding, and gain a little insight into the schema they're connecting the material to.
Kris,
ReplyDeleteI agree that I need to be more critical of the strategies that I integrate into my teaching style. To answer your question later in that paragraph, there is a strategy that I have had multiple people tell me is effective in theory, but I just do not see it working in most practices. It is called a “redirect,” and you pretty much do it when a student is misbehaving publicly in class and instead of addressing the problem and having an honest conversation with the student there about what their behavior is doing, you would give them another (seemingly random) job to diffuse their frustration and trick them into behaving. For example, if a student has their head down on their desk during a group reading time, instead of telling them to join their group, you might ask them to clean the white board for you and once that is done you would ask them to join their reading group. Maybe it is just the students that I am most exposed to, (I work at an after school program on the south side) but I know something like that would not work for them. It is like wrapping a towel over a pipe leak, it may work for that time, but you took no significant steps towards fixing the problem at hand, which was getting that student to participate in class. It also, to me, feels dishonest, like I am tricking the kid into joining their reading group when that is what they should be doing in the first place. Thoughts?
Hi Kris,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing, love a good teacher comic. I, perhaps surprisingly, do not disagree with any of these principles of instruction. I do think that the broken down list of seventeen does have some contradictions (e.g. "Limit the amount of material students receive at one time" and "Provide many examples" (Rosenshine 19)), which points exactly to the only real issue with these principles of instruction: there are just too many of them to satisfy them all in one lesson. I think... I think many of these could be applied to certain types of lessons. For instance, in a whole-class discussion facilitated by the teacher, this format lends itself to asking large amounts of questions and asking students to explain what they learned (this is summarizing and checking for understanding); however, you are probably not going to be able to assess all students in this format, nor will you be able to always show a model of worked out problems. This final example could perhaps be done well in a whole class short lesson and a break out into small groups. My point is that these are good principles, but I think that some are better suited to some class formats than others. Thanks for writing.