One of the activities at the TA training today (which was not just my department but all departments) was learning about a constructivist model of teaching. Over lunch, by department, we were supposed to devise our own example of how we could go through the four stages of the model using a subject from our field.
I was wondering how to teach a statistical topic using the method, but someone in my group thought to use the intro-to-psych topic of operant conditioning. (This is the use of strategies like reinforcement and punishment - actions that are taken in reaction to an individual's behavior - to modify behavior. The most well-known example is probably training a rat to push a lever by giving it a food pellet when it does.) After we'd put together our little outline, someone wondered what the leader (a guy from the education department) would think of it, and I suggested that we should hope he doesn't say it's "interesting" (since he'd admitted that he uses that term a lot when he means that something is wrong but doesn't want to say it in such a bald fashion).
After our group spokesperson presented our model, he said... indeed... "Interesting." We, and everyone else in the class, laughed, and he said oh no, that he didn't mean that, but that it was interesting since classical learning approaches often use behaviorism but that constructivist/pragmatist learning is cognitive in nature and rejects behaviorism. So it was "interesting" that we used a non-behaviorist teaching style to teach something about behaviorism.
And yes, he did use the model to teach us about constructivism. We got to categorize rocks. It was fun; my partner and I tried color, weight/density, and crystal size to create categories in the "exploration" phase. (That part was oddly reminiscent of my free classification of cartoon faces project, actually.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Categorizing rocks reminds me of my Geology lab in college. Only, we really did have to figure out what kind of rocks they were.
Yeah, we had to determine the kind of rock also in a later phase of the process. We found out we were dealing with igneous rocks and then had to use color and crystals to identify them based on a chart that was provided.
Remember my junior high science experiment about rocks? I barely do.
Constructivism is a nice theory, but doesn't give much help when the purpose of the class is specifically to impart a common body of knowledge, like say most science and math classes short of graduate school, most primary and secondary classes outside of English lit, art, and music.
The "look it up in the chart" method looks like straight-up CBOK drilling of the material. "There are X types of Y. Here are the distinguishing features. Here are a bunch of Y. Categorize them. Train, don't teach, and don't 'facilitate'. What do Americans do well? Create superstars. How do we create superstars? By taking people who are exceptional, and teaching them at very minute levels of detail exactly how to do their thing the very best way they can do it, and then making them do it over, and over, and over, again under observation and correction. You don't become great by spending 10,000 hours doing something, you become great by spending 10,000 hours doing something under scrutiny by an expert.
Who does math well? Asian countries. How? Drill. Drill. Drill.
If anything, it seems to me that messing with stuff before knowing the CBOK is harmful - any coach knows that the first thing you have to do to teach someone how to do something well (as opposed to just how to do it adequately) is undo all of the damage that person has done by trying to figure it out trial-and-error. One doesn't win high school soccer games by sending the kids out to play soccer every day during practice. One uses, frankly, operant conditioning - make them do basic skills over and over under observation, correcting them when they are wrong, praising them when they are right, then building up more complex skills from the basic ones, until after many practices you might actually be ready to run controlled scrimmage. A good golf coach doesn't send you out with a bunch of clubs to hack around the course the first day before bringing you back to teach you how to swing a golf club, unless it is as an object lesson in how much the way the student does it now sucks. "OK, hit the ball". "OK, now do these twelve things over and over again." "OK, hit the ball. See how much better it is?"
I think my problem with the wikipedia account is the assumption that the 'framework' of learning is fixed. The whole point of learning is that you are extending your existing framework - the more new the concept, the more new framework needs to be built. The biggest bit of the framework is set by first experience, however, so letting someone muck around on their own just means they are going to develop their own (wrong) framework, and then you are just going to have to tear it down again to get them to learn best practices, and unlearning wrong practices is far harder than learning right in the first place. (See eating habits, American)
Or, closer to home - what is the hardest task of an Economics instructor? Undoing all of the dreck people learn from 20 years of watching what all the untrained people do and say about economics. (Including what they learn from most high school "economics" teachers, leave alone the en passant "training" they get from their other classes. RECYCLE! SAVE THE EARTH! REDUCE CO2 BY BURNING MORE CO2-BASED ENERGY TO RECYCLE PLASTIC THAN YOU WOULD HAVE MAKING IT FROM THE SCRATCH! PLASTIC IS EVIL BECAUSE IT LASTS FOREVER!)
Actually, the reasons behind the superior performance of Asian countries in math is complex.
In Japan, the TIMMS study demonstrated pretty well that Japanese schools emphasis exploratory aspects in math much more than US ones do:
"In contrast, the emphasis in Japan is on understanding concepts, and typical lessons could be described as follows:
1. Teacher poses complex thought-provoking problem.
2. Students struggle with the problem.
3. Various students present ideas or solutions to the class.
4. Class discusses the various solution methods.
5. The teacher summarizes the class' conclusions.
6. Students practice similar problems. [1, p. 42]"
Chinese schools do emphasize drill, but the teachers are very different from American ones:
"Key Findings:
- U.S. teachers tend to focus on procedures rather than understanding the conceptual foundations of basic math operations(in one testing situation, 83% U.S., 14% Chinese used procedural knowledge only)
- Impaired conceptual knowledge impaired U.S. teachers' abilities to understand student mistakes and apply math reasoning to new problems or scenarios."
I think golf training that looked like standard math education would involve sitting in a room being told a bunch of stuff about golf for a long time before being able to actually touch a golf ball or club.
But "constructivism" covers a pretty wide range of different approaches and techniques, of course.
Enlightening debate - thanks, you guys.
I think math is a bit conundrical in this respect, because you do need certain skills on a fairly rote level in order to proceed at a reasonable pace (you can't stop to re-derive how to multiply fractions every time), yet the central skill of math is looking at a problem, understanding what it's asking, relating it to your math knowledge and experience, and devising a way to solve it.
I think that's true both in "real" math (math research or whatever) and in the kind of everyday math we'd like everyone to be able to do. Learning to solve very specific types of problems is good for taking a standardized test (though not the SAT or GRE types of tests that are designed differently), and of course those skills CAN become tools in the arsenal, but...they also lead people astray or make them feel helpless when they see new problems.
Post a Comment