There can be Too Much teaching! May 29, 2011
I just read an interesting article about how young children learn. The two possible answers laid out in this research article were that
1. children learn when they are taught by teachers, and
2. children learn by exploring and constructing their own understandings of their world.
And the correct answer is: number 2.
To repeat a mantra I’ve believed in for years: There is no causal relationship between teaching and learning. Now, as a result of these clearly presented studies of young children approaching unknown tasks with and without teacher instruction, I add a corollary to my mantra: Teaching can absolutely get in the way of learning.
In the studies reported by Slate, researchers showed two sets of preschool children a new toy. With one group the researcher explained how it worked, then left them to play with it; with the other group she acted as though she had no idea how it worked, said “maybe I could try this” a couple of times, and left them to play with it.
The “instructed” children imitated what the teacher said was the way it worked and did not explore further; with the other group the children applied their own ideas and strategies to the task and discovered – or constructed – a way for it to work.
Waiting for children to explore and learn needs time, for both the teacher and the children. Time seems to disappear in direct proportion to class size: when there are fewer children, there is generally more time for each one. One advantage of a class where children are constructing their own knowledge is that the teacher/adult doesn’t have to spend as much time putting out the fires that spontaneously combust when children have little ownership of what is happening in their school day.
None of this is to say that teaching and teachers are not useful, important, necessary: nothing is further from the truth. Children’s minds are delicate and burgeoning all the time, and must not be overridden. (This is one of the many reasons why technology is not good for children…but that is another topic for discussion.
Katie-
ReplyDeleteWhat then is the role of the teacher in learning?
I much more like this discovery type of learning when teaching movement to children. Give them some parameters that are going to keep them from getting hurt and turn them loose.
However, regardless if students are learning to perform skill "correctly" or "incorrectly", they are still learning when repeating trials over and over.
When and how should the teacher intervene in a student's learning? Is it the contention of the research that age appropriate performance for skills will emerge out of exploration as student's discover that it is the best way to get things done?