The ungrading community has been busy on Twitter this fall. These folks have taken grades (in the traditional sense) out of their courses, and (according to this posts) have generally been happy with the results. Students are doing work; they are learning. Some suggest students are more engaged and learning more. I have not taken Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
Elevator Pitch: Tech = Tame, Education = Wicked
Technology problems are tame because: we can all easily recognize them as problems (for example, the network doesn’t respond, so we can’t do our work); we have known methods of restoring it (we know how to isolate malfunctioning parts of the system and there are known processes for fixing them) we all agree when they are resolved (we get back Read More
Lesson Design (Rather than Planning)
When I was an undergraduate student studying to become an educator, my peers and I took great pride in our lesson planning. When I was a graduate student (I completed my masters degree at the end of my 12th year as a teacher), my peers who had yet to teach wrote lesson plans with great care. When I was teaching Read More
Yet Another Look at the Standard Model of Education
Stop reading this sentence and imagine a school. In your mind, enter a classroom where students and teacher are present, and class is in session. Look around. See the teacher in the room, see the students, and see what they are doing. If you didn’t play along with the preceding sentence, recall a movie or television program in which a classroom, teaching, and learning was portrayed. It doesn’t Read More
Some Reality About Teaching
Unfortunately for me (and all other educators and those interested in education), humans are variable creatures; cause and effect relationships do not exist in education. We cannot be assured “if I do this, then my students will learn that.” (Those who make their living selling “the next big thing” to educators will be disappointed to Read More
What Teachers Want
In the 2003 book Creating Significant Learning Experiences, L. Dee Fink described conversations with faculty that were focused by the question, “In your deepest, fondest dreams, what kind of impact would you most like to have on your students?” Faculty answers to this question did not mention remembering information. Faculty’s answers did include what they hoped students would do with their new knowledge, how they would solve problems, how they would interact Read More
Four Approaches to Teaching
To outsiders looking in, teaching seems a relatively simple endeavor. Even to some insiders who do not step back and try to understand what they are doing, teaching can be perceived to be a simple endeavor. The reality is that teaching should vary depending on the nature of the curriculum, the purpose of the teaching, Read More
Two Working Hypotheses for Teaching
If instructors and school leaders seek to create schools in which practices and structures are aligned with the realities of human learning, then they must work from two hypotheses: First, the students who arrive in schools are experienced learners. Their experiences are affected by their culture, motivation, academic, and personal experiences. Any list of the relevant Read More
Elevator Pitch on Teaching for Transfer
Scholars who study knowledge transfer differentiate “near transfer” from “far transfer.” Near transfer describes applying knowledge in settings similar to where it was learned, and far transfer describes applying it to settings dissimilar to where it was learned. Transfer does exist along a continuum and it is difficult to measure reliably. In these ways it Read More
On Scaffolding
When the curriculum is organized around problems and complex tasks, it is inevitable that students will encounter situations that challenge their current knowledge. There will be ideas they do not yet understand, tasks they cannot complete with competence, and resources they cannot comprehend, and tools they are unable to use. It can be reasoned that students who do not Read More