Hi Y'all!
It IS admirable that a "thread" about learning and teaching styles has
persisted so long. From all the comments, the drift I get is that there is a
diversity of method, a diversity of opinion about whether or not the good
ol' days (whenever they were) are as good as the current state of the art,
and whether or not students are of a deserving mind or unworthy, but not
much in the way of conclusions or agreement about where the future (aka the
cutting edge) is or should be.
I suspect that most teachers will go on being pretty much as they are--some
sloggers, some dedicated, and students will continue to vary from the bored
to the enthused, from the rich to the poor, from the mediocre to the
exceptional. What I have no inkling of is in what proportions they will do
so. Where are the long-term data, assembled into a summary that will knock
their eyeballs out on a PowerPoint(R) frame? What else do we need to know to
"set" education policy for the rest of what's left of the 21st century?
Jon Stewart, perhaps today's greatest philosopher-without-portfolio, has
just (2010 Jan 25) told Bill Gates that "education is the most intractable"
[institution], and Gates responded with profundities about magnet schools
and measuring teachers. O mah lawd! Thar is a gawd! I think he should change
is name to "Pearly." Or can we rest assured that advanced technology (aka
control by oligarchy) will save us from our unanointed ways?
Let's face it--any true challenge to any entrenched habit always will be
firmly resisted. Certainly, merely challenging authority does not mean that
the challenger is right, but it sure doesn't prove that any challenger is
wrong. Posts, for example, to this or any other equivalent of the village
kiosk, that are strongly unfamiliar or "excessively" challenging are the
most likely to be ignored or banished. But I must say that there are more
open and active minds on this list than any other one that I know of. (In
the Renaissance, critics had to creep about in the dark of night to leave
uncomfortably critical notes and piles of excrement in village squares in
protest of the status quo. Let us preserve the tradition if not the
symbolism.)
So let us hear more from those lurkers out there, and let us hear more
strong challenges to control-obsessed hierarchies. Let us hear from the
minorities, the ones who are silent because they know their minority
challenges will be resisted. Man up and woman up! Step forward and
invigorate the discussion about the cutting edge of what may be the most
important (and ironically the most vulnerable) work in the world,
facilitating and accelerating learning.
The job is getting done, but is that more true because of the institutional
framework or in spite of it?
WT
PS: And let's be grateful to David for giving 10,000-plus subscribers the
most accessible listserv on the Internet!
"'Tis friction's brisk, rough rub that provides the vital
spark!" --Alexander Reid Martin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Amanda Arner" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] decline in education, comment on active learning
Hi all!
Long time reader, first time poster. I find it absolutely
admirable that a thread about learning and teaching styles has
made it this long! I work in a natural history museum as an
informal science educator, and my personal goal for my
professional career is to basically take all of the information
all of you have portrayed and make it available to everyone else.
Too many lecturers and professors miss the importance of "active
learning", while too many enthusiastic graduate assistants miss
the importance of a great lecture. As a student, I thoroughly
enjoyed the lectures that were informative and explanatory via
conversation-esque methods, with PowerPoint being used as a guide
and visual aide, not as a catch-all for notes. I use this sort of
lecture-style with the classes I teach, and it truly does work for
all age levels. Involving students in your lecture can often
times be enough active learning. Of course, it always helps to
know your audience. A room of upper level honor students will
always be fully engaged and do the prereading, while a room of
pre-med students just want to know what they need to memorize for
the test. I think the most important part is being able to convey
your enthusiasm and interest in the topic; if it's interesting to
you, and you're excited about it, then it's got to be at least a
little bit interesting, right? I had a physics teacher once who
got so excited about formulas that she would jump up and down. I
really hated the subject, but I felt compelled to learn the
information because if she was excited about it, then hey, why
couldn't I be?
In short, keep talking about what works and what doesn't....
because in the end, that's the only way we educators are ever
going to learn!
Thanks for reading!
Amanda Arner
Florida Museum of Natural History
[email protected]
On Mon Jan 25 18:34:34 EST 2010, Arti S <[email protected]>
wrote:
I rarely post my thoughts and hence may be did not articulate
what I wanted to say well enough. My apologies. Nevertheless, it
has been very interesting and a lot learned from reading the
exchange. And yes these are especially useful for many of us
struggling to find appropriate and effective modes of teaching or
conveying information to the audience.
Thanks a lot everyone!
Arathi
-----Original Message-----
From: David L. McNeely <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Mon, Jan 25, 2010 9:56 am
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] decline in education, comment on active
learning
Won't argue with any of what you say. I think some of the rest of
us have tried to make that point, with more attention to
specifics. Your post may have made it more effectively, because
it was more direct. I might disagree slightly about one thing. I
think that many teachers, some of them even good teachers, might
cause a good student to fail to learn particular material, if the
student is bothered enough by the teacher's approach to turn away
-- perhaps to seek a different path, while most other students
the teacher is working with are doing very well. On the other
hand, I have also seen students become more interested in a
subject, and pursue it successfully, because a teacher opened
their eyes to areas they had been little interested in before. I
don't suppose this would qualify as causing a poor student to
learn, but it certainly qualifies as leading a disinterested
student to interest and therefore learning. But yes, in general,
teachers, good or bad, can only successfully teach students who
choose to participate. Those who choose not to participate will
of course not learn. As you said, all learning is active. Some
others have pointed out that the teacher's choice of activity may
not fit every student at every time, even though the student is
active in the learning process (though the poster may not have
considered the learning as being "active" in the sense that we
have been discussing). I think that by participating in this
discussion, I have learned, actively. Some of the discussion,
especially some of the ideas expressed by some student and
recently graduated participants, I wish I had heard years ago,
when I was personally struggling with appropriate and effective
modes of teaching. Thank you, David Mc On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at
7:17 AM, Thomas Martin wrote:
First let me say that all learning is active, cause if the
student > doesn't get active about actually studying and trying
to understand the > material, they're not going to learn it.
Second, let me say that in my > experience, it would take an
incredibly bad teacher to keep a good student from > learning
just as it takes an incredibly good teacher to get a bad student
to > learn. Third, I would go so far as to say a majority of the
pro-active-learning/anti-lecture crowd (at least the ones I've >
encountered) paint an unfairly dismal picture of what a lecture
is. Lectures do > not have to be someone "spewing facts" as was
previously stated. In fact, if > you took the "lecturer" that
spewed disjointed facts at their students and > forced them to
do "active learning" my guess is that the result would be that >
they spewed disjointed activities. A good teacher has a feel,
for lack of > a better term, for what information is most suited
to lecture delivery, > or active dialog or inquiry, or tactile
experience, and acts accordingly. There is no one best
technique. Beware the true believer! Tom Martin Western Carolina
University
Amanda Arner
Wildlife Ecology & Conservation - UF CALS
[email protected]
(727) 798-0642
Intern
Florida Defenders of the Environment
"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach." - Aristotle
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