My Thanks …
My thanks go to Tomaz Lasic (blog: http://human.edublogs.org , twitter: http://twitter.com/lasic) for prompting this post.
“I Have Had Kids Tell Me …”
Tomaz’s original tweet was “I’ve had kids tell me I suck as teacher because ‘I don’t teach them anything’ (i.e. tell them the ‘right’ answer). Think sunshine!” which set me to thinking very hard about my own style of teaching.
My Own Teaching Experience
I was perhaps extremely fortunate in my early teaching experiences (both voluntary and professional) in that the students were always motivated, and I unconsciously expected them to think about whatever it was they were learning about. I was also extremely comfortable with those students challenging my own thinking processes, and saying to me, in effect, “Justify your statement!”. It came as something of a shock some years later to start working with youth-at-risk and those not as blessed with cognitive powers as their peers.
I found that if even there is the smallest desire to learn, I can harness that spark, and help the student to achieve. (I regard myself as a resource to be utilised to help students achieve. If the student repeatedly and consistently refuses to work, then I cannot bring myself to waste myself as a resource on them while there are others in the class who I know will benefit from my efforts.)
“Think, Sunshine!”
Do I encourage my students to think? You bet I do! Having said that, my expectations of the level of thinking is predicated my assessment of their cognitive powers. (As an aside, I have not observed any correlation between cognitive powers and a desire to learn.) So for somebody who is working at Certificate IV level, I expect them to be able to think at a high level of abstraction; after all, they need to be able to do that for any Certificate IV qualification. At the other end of the cognitive spectrum, I still expect them to think in response to very simple questions, such as “What would you feel about [going there to have a holiday]?”
Your Thoughts
Is encouraging students to think good, bad or irrelevant? Do you have any other thoughts on this issue? I invite to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Hey Phil
Glad you found that tweet useful – we never know what noise will be interpreted as a signal do we 😀
I find that many times (with at-risk kids) isn’t so much the cognitive ability (or rather lack of) but the sense of learned helplesness that prevents them from asking questions and being more responsible and adventurous in their efforts.
But I tell you, I’d rather push that and, to start with, look like we are ‘learning nothing’ at the expense of busy work that is shallow but looks good. Because once these things do realise that they CAN and bloody well should ask questions … it changes so many things (reminds of Jamie McKenzie’s paper on questioning as the most powerful technology ever invented).
I can’t claim I am always successful and I fail often (so the complaining kids might have a bit of a point …) but it is something I passionately believe in. As you say – use even a skerrit of interest and spark and take it form there. EVERY kids has it, we just need to draw it out (see what the Latin word ‘educare’ stands for ;-D )
Not encouraging kids to ask questions and to think is unprofessional and unethical. Just as busywork is (but gee it looks nice). Let’s get messy!
Cheers
Tomaz
I think a greater awareness of “educare” would well serve everybody in the teaching environment. (I was introduced to the concept in year 10 and it informed my own learning to teach 3 decades later.)