When somebody is learning, they process information through the 5 senses.
Taking out smell and taste, that leaves 3 senses for the majority of the learning.
Sight, Sound, Touch
Just with those 3 senses, the learner uses these 3 senses to understand and learn and it takes time to process the information on the part of the learner.
On the part of the teacher, they have to first learn the material (Science, Math, Literature, etc ) and then subsequently present it, most commonly using these 3 senses.
The rate or bandwidth that the material can be absorbed by any one person is far less than what it could be presented at. (A person’s voice has a very limited bandwidth). Even a video may need to be viewed several times to pick up additional details.
This does not even include the rate that any teacher has to learn the material at and then turn around and present it.
In addition, the amount of information available is expanding exponentially (Just look at Wikipedia as an example). Despite the early criticisms of Wikipedia, it has developed into a great reference for learning.
How can any teacher ever hope to be able to realistically learn and then be able to present sufficient information considering all these limitations?
Of note:
I have been through several train the trainer classes and the trainers did not have much in the way of suggestions on this aside from the Parking Lot concept where questions that the instructor doesn’t have an immediate answer for can be revisited later.
The other suggestion that was made by these train the trainers was to throw that question back at me as a challenge.
If one equates “learning” with “knowledge”, there is already a disconnect in the analysis. “Wisdom” is also a factor that needs to be accounted for. Possession of knowledge by itself is of no value unless there is selection of useful knowledge, and you can apply it to some furtherment.
Some knowledge is a prerequisite to wisdom, but the value of knowledge is not measured by bulk alone. Some facts are more useful than others in assembling interrelated parts to make a finished piece. It’s not about “sufficient information”, but about “relevant information”, along with logical guidance to apply it.
It isn’t a teacher’s role to pass on information. It’s a teacher’s role to teach his/her students how to acquire and process information, and how to think critically about that information.
Obviously, this applies to greater or lesser degrees depending on the level at which the teacher is teaching (second grade vs. Ph.D. candidate), but I think it’s still true across the board.
I don’t totally agree with this. I believe it IS a teacher’s role to pass on information. It is ALSO a teacher’s role to teach his/her students how to acquire and process information, and how to think critically about that information. (it’s a big task).
But it is also up to the student as to whether or how much information is to be “learned” (retained and available for future reference).
As to the OP, it is not the teacher’s responsibility to teach ALL knowledge about a given topic - only the amount that is “required” (per class description/objectives). And a teacher goes in knowing that a great deal of what is “taught” will not be learned. But there will be “some” (varying by student) that will be learned/retained, and that (has to be) enough.
Yup. IMO, either extreme leads to dangerous and counterproductive nonsense.
This week, I’ve started teaching my third graders about fractions. Some of the ideas in it, I want them to discover: I want them to realize things like “the bigger the denominator, the smaller the piece, given the same unit and same numerator.” This is something they’ll realize through experimentation: fold a strip of paper into two equal parts, fold an equal-sized strip into three equal parts, pretend they’re candy bars, and ask whether they’d want a single part of the first or the second.
Other things, though, I gotta teach them. The convention of putting the numerator on top and the denominator on bottom is ultimately arbitrary (I mean, it follows from left-right writing and division, but it’s arbitrary at its roots, let’s not spend too much time on that), and I’ll need to instruct them directly in that. Many other things in math are either arbitrary, or rooted in math theory and history that it’s unlikely the average third grader will grasp; I need to engage in direct instruction there.
Both parts are necessary. Teaching with no direct instruction tends to be formless; teaching with no investigation by students tends to be lifeless.
But do individuals need to know an ever expanding amount of information? What we need to know changes over time, but I don’t think the amount of information each person needs to know is expanding at the same rate. I know a ton of things my grandfather did not, but he knew a ton of things I don’t.
Right, but the things we chose to directly instruct on are based on the things a person needs to be an independent learner. So I’m going to spend a lot of time directly teaching my kids about the ultimately arbitrary conventions of academic texts specifically so that they can read academic texts independently. Our math program is going to spend a lot of time directly teaching kids calculus because they need to really get calculus in order to go out and independently learn about engineering stuff. I think of it as “high leverage teaching”–you have to make instructional decisions based on what will give them the most leverage for later independent learning.
This is a good way of putting it. I think about a science unit I just did, on force and motion, in which kids built vehicles out of everyday objects. It was great overall, but one unexpected outcome was that vehicles with “sled runners” worked way better than vehicles with wheels; I wasn’t prepared for how much trouble they’d have creating a stable spoke-and-wheel system, so I didn’t either directly teach or create lessons where they could learn about ideas as simple as washers.
The ideal, and what I’ll try to do next year, is to give students a simple lesson that isolates some principles about wheels, so that when they create their vehicles, they have make wheels that don’t wobble and fall off or otherwise impede their vehicles.
Sure, I could have them read a book about vehicles and draw a diagram of spoke-and-wheel systems. But where’s the fun–and wholly-realized learning–in that?
Learning never stops. It’s a process, and teachers are (usually, hopefully) further along in that process than their students.
I’m on career number 3, and I’ve absorbed a lot of learning and training. Each time I get to the point I think I really know something, the horizon recedes before me and I see further nuances and subtleties of the subject that I have yet to experience.
This realization is sobering, but not an excuse to never teach anyone anything. You teach when needed, and I always try to remind my students that I don’t know everything. I also don’t expect to be a good teacher for EVERYONE, but I try my best.
I agree that we have only the three senses to work with most of the time, but we greatly underutilise them in the classroom. We also underutilise students (and teachers) natural ability to create wildly imaginative narrative and use memory devices.
I am just embarking on a program with schools to add in the way teaching and learning has been done for thousands of years - and only lost in the last few hundred years of Western culture. I have 40 years in the classroom - mostly senior secondary mathematics and science - to build on, and these new approaches arise from interest generated in my PhD and subsequent books.
Non-literate cultures and then through classical, medieval and even into Renaissance times, used a swag of memory technologies which match the way the human brain naturally works. Song, dance, vivid stories (mythology) associated with memory palaces in the landscape and built environment, and handheld memory devices - all aided memory of practical information including the sciences, history, laws, navigation, astronomy and so on.
We will be using art to create characters to tell stories about our mathematics, using music to sing our science.
Critically, non-literate cultures ground their knowledge system, that is they have a basic structure providing hooks for ever more complicated layers to be built. We will build a timeline/memory palace in the landscape of the school which will not only serve history but link to many other aspects of the curriculum. This is all part of an Artists in Schools grant which we have been given for a primary school in Victoria, Australia, but is generating much broader interest. We will not be changing any part of the curriculum, just enriching it with song, dance, story and memory devices.
Non-literate cultures were dependent on their memories for all the knowledge they depended on for survival, both physically and culturally. We have a great deal to learn from them to enrich the way we learn in our literate society.