It is clear to many educators that the way we are teaching is not as efficient as it was back in the industrial era. However, it really wasn't as effective as it could have been even back then. It is just a fact that students do not learn well from sit-and-get lectures and static memory-based recollections. This type of instruction is boring and not engaging. It is past time that we take a meaningful look at the best practices for learners. Maybe if enough educators band together, we can get through to policymakers that standardized testing and one-size-fits-all standards need to be thrown in the garbage. Not only do they not work in creating the best scenario for optimal learning but they are also a huge waste of money. Let's work to put that money to use in an area that will actually benefit learning and create a more meaningful experience for our students.
In his post, Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools, Roger Schank points out that there are twelve cognitive processes that learners go through to truly learn. These process categories include conscious processes, analytical processes, and social processes. In each of these categories, there are 4 processes that learners utilize to make connections and learn information in a deeper manner than static recollection of content. Roger Schank states that these processes have been used since the beginning of the human race although we did not know much about these cognitive processes when schools were formed (Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools | Roger Schank, 2020). However, now that we do know that learners learn through cognitive processes, it is time to revamp our education system. Why keep utilizing a system that does not work when we now know what does work?
As educators we can all see that children who have adventurous and worldly experiences have more knowledge of the world. Likewise, if a child has parents who frequently conversate with them they will have a more expansive vocabulary. This is cognitive learning. In infancy through toddlerhood children are learning vasts amounts of knowledge but they arent in school (Education Futures LLC, 2011). They learn through the cognitive process. I would have to say that they learn more information in this short period of time than in the school setting.
School is currently based on the teaching of subjects but ask yourself, what careers are dependent on the sole subject of english? English teachers, maybe? That is one career so why is it that we are requiring every student in America to sit through years of courses based solely on learning the ins and outs of English? This is true for all of the core subjects that are taught in schools. We need to teach them what they need to know in the earlier years and then let them learn through experiments and diagnostics for the rest of their learning journey. Robert Schank points out an eye opening theory, is it more important to have a doctor who can name every organ in the human body in thirty seconds or one who can accurately diagnose your symptoms (Education Futures LLC, 2011)? I will add on to that, is it more important to have a teacher who can accurately recall all fifty states in sixty seconds or one who can determine what a student needs, where they are getting off track, and what is causing this learning gap? This is also considered diagnostics. That being said, we can now see that it is of more value to teach and mentor learners on how to diagnose rather than sit and learn the specifics of content so that they can recite it back without having a true connection or meaning to the material.
Now that we have determined the most bang for our buck would be students learning through cognitive processes we need to ask ourselves how we can do that. It cannot be done through whole group teaching as it requires a one-on-one approach (Education Futures LLC, 2011). Focusing on the diagnostic problem needs to be front and center in this process with fact and theories trailing behind. This is backwards from the way traditional schooling is done, however, it makes all the difference as it is how the real-world is ran. Educators need to be able to mentor and dive deep with each individual student in order to get them to start thinking this way. Although this can be difficult to do in a class of twenty to thirty students, we now have technology that equips us with the ability to do this one-on-one teaching. Everything that we can do in person can essentially now be implemented through the use of technology. We need to take advantage of our available innovations. Another solution to this predicament is microschools. Microschools would incorporate the technology and one-on-one guidance from a certified teacher. Check out my article, Microschools for the 21st Century Learner, to learn more about microschools and how beneficial they are to the student and educator.
References
Education Futures LLC. (2011, September 15). Roger Schank on Invisible Learning. Educationfutures.com. https://educationfutures.com/blog/post/roger-schank-invisible-learning
Schank, R. (2020). Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools | Roger Schank. Roger Schank. https://www.rogerschank.com/teaching-minds-how-cognitive-science-can-save-our-schools
Comentarios