The final blog of this academic year will be short but—I hope—interesting
enough to make you think a bit over the
summer as you are developing/redeveloping your courses for next fall. The focus comes from a fascinating podcast
with Ken Bains, author of What the Best
College Teachers Do.
I highly recommend the podcast: http://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/ken-bain/
Bains talks of the importance of allowing students to
embrace failures, of giving them lots of do-overs before they actually get a
grade, and of stimulating their interest by involving them in a discussion of a
“big question” that draws them into your
course, whether that course be a gen ed requirement or a capstone in a major. He agrees that we need to set high standards,
but that doesn’t mean just setting the bar high and telling students to jump
over it or else; instead, our role is to help students learn by trying and
failing and trying again, having learned a little from each previous failure. And,
most importantly, we have to develop an environment in which students want to
keep trying. Bains believes that learning won’t take place until we cultivate “deep
intentions” in students, the desire to answer a big question because the answer
to that question is important in their life outside of class.
Good teaching, Bains argues, involves having students answer
questions or solve problems that they find intriguing, interesting, or
beautiful.
How do we do that even in an intro to math or economics or
art or composition course? What is
the “beautiful question” that drew you into your discipline that you can help
students want to consider, and answer, for your course?
“[As an advanced learner, asking for input from colleagues]… I would expect an environment in which I would try, fail, receive feedback… and do that in advance of and separate from anybody’s judgment or anyone’s grading of my work. (Ken Bain)”
ReplyDeleteFor “non-advanced learner” unfortunately grading maybe the ultimate deal breaker to this concept/ theory to work consistently in practice. What I also learned is that not all students can tolerate the pattern of “fail first and learn later” emotionally well even within the same learning environment. I place finding the right “Big Question” for one or group of our courses almost equivalent to solving what David Chalmers referred to as “The hard problem of consciousness.” This is not to suggest we should just give up and close office. I leave you with a message I sent to one of my student who is always intrigued by solving difficult problems and not scared of failing: “In education all eventually labeled easy problems used to be considered difficult originally if you keep going back in history.”
Ali B.
1. I am afraid Ali is right: "not all students can tolerate the pattern of 'fail first and learn later.'" It depends on what kind of students we have and whether they are college-ready.
ReplyDelete2. Before we try to answer the question: How do we do that (or whatever Ken Bains suggests)?, we should first try to find out whether Ken Bains is right.
3. I agree about the general value of failure and having high standards, as well as developing an environment in which students want to keep trying. In some ways, Ken Bains agrees with Kenneth Ginsburg (in his book "Raising Kids to Thrive") that "lighthouse parenting" (unlike tiger, helicopter or elephant parenting) could actually be the best way to raise your kids. "A lighthouse parent understands that sometimes kids need to learn from failure," says Kenneth Ginsburg.
4. Unlike Ken Bains, I think that good teaching could involve having students answer questions or solve problems that they do not find "intriguing, interesting, or beautiful;" because education is a learning process and questions and problems that students do not find intriguing, interesting or beautiful may be important or beneficial (to the students or others) nevertheless and students need to learn that.
Safro Kwame
Safro has great point. As he suggested there is value for students to learn also what they do not find "intriguing, interesting, or beautiful." For one thing, students' view of what is important or interesting can evolve as they become more advanced learners. There is great opportunity in general education programs to let students see all views. However the role of a teacher is very important in this. If teachers exercise dogmatic approaches of trying to force education to students, it could backfire and have negative results.
ReplyDeleteAbove was from Ali B.
DeleteBoth Safro and Ali B. make great points that are focused on the learning process and the pressures within it.
DeleteI have added a post on March 27, 2015 regarding SoTL. The teaching component to the research and discovery assignments in my Spring 2015 microeconomics class challenged students to write a structured analysis of a commodity market report. At first students chose to depart from the plan, cutting and pasting relevant and irrelevant content taken from the internet and ignoring the specific content they were required to generate, write in their own words, and connect theory with what the experts were saying.
The students felt that their cut-paste job looked great with the report format I asked them to use, without touching on the graphical analysis parts.
After reading the riot act on plagiarism, I sent them back to the drawing board to redo their work. I believe that some of them would get great satisfaction in doing original thinking and writing within each block of information they were generating and analyzing. Those students who ignored the assignment may have good reasons for doing so. There are 41 students in the class and not all sections of the same course have writing components.
Ganga. Ramdas.
Could modelling in class help to address the problem before it takes place. BYW, 41 students doesn't seem to help the situation. It takes the whole team, administration and instructors, to provide student centered instruction.
DeleteThis is a wonderful conversation so far, asking all the hard questions about asking questions! Thank you Ali, Kwame and Ganga! I wish I had some definitive answers to share but I don't, although since we're teachers maybe we just get to ask the questions. Ali, I agree that grading gets in the way of "learning by failing and trying again." At some point we run out of time, in a semester as well as in life But I think the more we send the message to the students, as you did, that hard things get easier eventually and the more we give them non-graded opportunities to try new things and then re-try, the more we will be helping them develop good lifelong learning habits. And Kwame, I love the idea of "lighthouse teaching." Of course as you all point out in different ways, sometimes children (and students) need helicoptering, sometimes discipline, sometimes the motivation of "beautiful" questions, sometimes the character-building of finding answers to questions that seem boring on the face of things or sometime, like Ganga's students, the chance to go back and do the assignment project "right.:. I guess the the trick is to match the right methods with the right students at the right moment. Wish I knew how--there's a best-selling book in there somewhere!
ReplyDeleteMaybe the issue is awareness of the blind spot(s) we instructors have in relation to of favorite or comfortable pedagogy in addressing students. Maybe we need to stretch more and use a combination of strategies that our outside our tool box?
DeleteWell when it comes to learning we must remember that everyone learns differently. I do agree that teachers should give a student many chances before failing a student. Receiving a bad grade in a new subject will make any student shy from the challenge. Make the information relatable and one will be able to digest and comprehend the information. I feel as though sometimes teachers know the information very well, but are not able to make the information relatable.
ReplyDeleteDamani Johnson
Well said, Demani. An article I was reading recently calls what you describe the "expert's blind spot," the difficulty people who know a subject well can have in figuring out how to break it down and make it understandable to the non-expert. It's something we teachers have to struggle with but once we realize the problem it's generally easy to make changes.
Delete