Ivan says:
>The problem between
>teaching and learning, at least in the US, is that must of us see teaching
>as a situation where I, the professor, talk, and they, the students,
>listen and learn.
Looking back over my many years of teaching, I find that I've steadily had
less and less to say. Now, it often comes down to my doing little more
than asking a single question, posing a dilemma, providing a single bit of
data, noting an anomaly, etc., and sitting down in the back of the room.
I look for "puzzles," the solutions to which seem to me to have great (no,
VERY great) explanatory power.
Of course, to accomodate this, I've had to make major changes in classroom
organization. I direct these "puzzles" to teams of 4 or 5 members each,
who do the best they can with them, then interact in various ways with
other teams to pursue ever-greater refinement. I tell them they're pretty
much on their own, but that I'll answer any precisely worded question to
the best of my ability.
I've never thought of it exactly like this before, but it seems to me
that, in a research mode, I'm paid to think; in a teaching mode, I'm paid
to make the students think. And I don't consider simple recall of
something I've said or had students read as requiring them to think.
A few years ago, in a Texas college that I considered above average, I
asked for and got permission to look at all the final exams in all
subjects for a term. More than 85% of the questions required students
merely to recall specific information to provide answers on both objective
and essay types of tests. It was a rare question that required
categorizing, hypothesizing, generalizing, synthesizing, valuing, or other
thought processes. I think the picture is about the same nationwide from
about the 3rd grade up.
I don't think that's defensible. I've quoted Alfred North Whitehead on
this subject before:
"The secondhandedness of the learned world is the secret of its
mediocrity."
Marion Brady
-- GMBrady@aol.com