I Covered That Material, But They Just Didn't Get
It…
Wednesday, October 10 (3:15-4:40) Buntrock 142
Chuck Huff, Psychology
Maria Kelly, Education
Amy Kolan, Physics
Most of us have had the experience of teaching material that we thought we presented in clear and engaging ways, only to discover later that our students never learned what we had taught. There are many reasons for this situation, but one of them has to do with what our students already know about the material.
Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has written, "...When I began teaching learning theory, our conception of learning was fairly simple. For any given learning situation, the "inside" of the learner was treated as more or less empty; learning was understood as a process of getting the knowledge that was outside the learner --in books, theories, the mind of the teacher--to move inside. We tested for the success of of learning by giving tests to look inside the heads of our students to see if what had previously been outside was now there." He goes on to note that we now understand that "the first influence on learning is not what teachers do pedagogically, but the learning that's already inside the learner."
In this CILA conversation, we will watch a short video entitled A Private Universe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics). It begins with interviews with Harvard seniors about why the earth is warmer in summer than in winter. Most get it wrong. The interesting question for the authors of the video is why. Chuck Huff, Maria Kelly and Amy Kolan will provide introductory comments from the perspectives of their respective disciplines.
Resources
- John D. Bransford (co-chair), How
People Learn: Brain, Mind , Experience and School, National
Research Council, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000.
- Robert E. Yager, "The Constructivist
Learning Model," The Science Teacher, 58(9), 1991, pp. 52-57.
- B. Y. White and J. R. Frederickson, "Inquiry, modeling and metacognition: Making science accessible to all students," Cognition and Science, 16: 90-91, 1998.
