I recently finished reading Seymour Papert’s book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer, and I’ve got lots to say formally about it. But I only have a minute at the moment and I wanted to ask a question. In the book, Papert forwards the idea that we should have as big a body of knowledge about learning and how to learn as we do about teaching and how to teach. (He even postulates at one point that “learning theory” is much more about teaching than it is about actually learning. And I agreed with him. Too often, we think of education that is something that we can do to someone, rather than with someone. We certainly can’t do it for someone.)
Since I’d never actually heard of the word before I read the book, I’m guessing that it’s not a big term/idea in teaching and learning circles. But I don’t know – perhaps I’m out of the academic loop a bit. It seems that the term does surface in some academic arenas, and has for some time, but I can’t get a sense of its meaning in those contexts. I guess I’m writing right now to both ask about your knowledge of the term as well as to ask if you think it’s true that we spend way too much time thinking about teaching without taking the time to think about learning. Or, rather, are we too busy teaching to bother to learn? I’ve read plenty of posts that suggest as much, and in fact, I think I’ve said it myself. If that’s the case, what are we going to do about it?
Papert says it, at one point, this way:
…participants thought of themselves as teachers-in-training rather than as learners. Their awareness of being teachers was preventing them from giving themselves over fully to experiencing what they were doing as intellectually exciting and joyful in its own right, for what it could bring them as private individuals. The major obstacle in the way of teachers becoming learners is inhibition about learning. (p.72 – from this page of quotes, which are worth reading)
It’s frustrating that this isn’t a new idea, but that it’s still revolutionary. Read the book. I’ll give it a more formal review later. Short version: Two thumbs up. Mindstorms is on my nightstand, now, sitting on top of my XO, which is appropriate for so many reasons.
13 responses so far ↓
Kevin // Mar 22nd 2008 at 2:07 pm
Bud
I would say too much time is thinking of “teaching” and not “learning” and so the focus is less on the individual child.
It’s interesting that this is the foundation of his approach and that technology might play a role in that. As you know with XO, the student is expected to discover and problem-solve and investigate as part of the learning.
The job of the teacher must be to establish a conducive learning environment for that kind of discovery and then, reflections of those discoveries: What does this all mean and how do we build on that knowledge?
I guess I gotta get the book.
Kevin
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Sylvia Martinez // Mar 22nd 2008 at 2:20 pm
I certainly think that teaching is often seen as the only variable in the “learning equation” that is controllable, therefore people pay a lot of attention to it.
To accept that teaching is only one part of the puzzle might seem to lessen it’s importance. It’s a bit of a blow to a teacher’s pride, and a definate problem if your job is to teach teachers – you are in a double bind. You also have to acknowledge a much greater degree of student agency and individuality than is usually accepted.
Constructivist teaching asks teachers to reevaluate what they do, and how they themselves learn. Usually it means less direct instruction. To ask a teacher to “teach less” is a paradox that is hard to figure out.
You might like this discussion of mathetics at the Math Forum
http://mathforum.org/~sarah/Discussion.Sessions/Papert.html
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Elizabeth Hubbell // Mar 22nd 2008 at 3:16 pm
What a coincidence! I just started reading Mindstorms not too long ago. I was inspired after reading “Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom.” (The author, Marina Umaschi Bers, was a student of Papert’s.) One thing that Bers points out is that too many people concentrated on the “computer” part of the subtitle rather than the “powerful ideas” part, a fact lamented by Papert himself.
I think we’re still working through this in education – creating an environment in which students are free to have and act upon their powerful ideas, rather than stopping at “computer integration.”
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Chris S // Mar 22nd 2008 at 4:30 pm
Bud,
This post is timely for me. I’m almost done reading From Blocks to Robots (Bers, 2008)–a student of Papert who has some gems in her book e.g. “If the curriculum ins limited to what teachers already know how to teach..the teacher is likely to be bored.” So simple yet so revolutionary to our notions about how teachers get “qualified” and how curriculum gets “set.” The book is about tech in early childhood ed, but I’m thinking that ‘everything I learned about learning I learned from Kindergarten’ .
I read Papert a while ago, but always mistakenly looked at him as an historic figure and not quite so relevant today.
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Richard // Mar 23rd 2008 at 11:06 am
Yeah, this seems like a no-brainer to me, Bud. I have a good reputation as a teacher, and the fact is I’ve always centered my approach on the students’ learning styles.
I’ve seen far too many teachers at the front of the room “telling” students what they need to know. I try to throw something out into the class–a math problem, perhaps–and then see what happens. Somehow I model the correct curiosity that rubs off on them, causing them to solve problems just for the sake of solving problems.
I also must admit: I play a lot of video games and get my info from the net in ways that are fast-paced and “hyper”. I think that’s an advantage. When I do presentations on my laptop (using Linux and Open Office Impress), they tend to have the same mood as an episode of Mythbusters or an MTV promo or something.
Notice that all of my above secrets rely on one thing: the student being interested. That approach will take you far in today’s classroom.
I also take the advice from a former Principal of mine who recommended 5 minutes of fun bonding in every 90 minute class–his approach was to have a “joke break.”. I usually have something (a video game, a viral video, a cartoon) that I add in each class that provides a nice transition between any two heavy topics.
Richard
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Anna-Melissa // Mar 23rd 2008 at 9:18 pm
Considering learning styles is a huge part of trying to make sure that all students have an opportunity to do their best. A teacher needs to be able to marry whatever teaching style they have to their students’ learning styles. I believe having such a tall order is what causes many teachers (including myself ) to revert back to teaching style they are comfortable with.
As far as what Richard mentioned about “telling students what to do”, the problem that I frequently run into is that the students expect me to tell them what to do and get frustrated when I won’t because that is what they are used to. A great example is in math. I teach 6th grade and a major part of class is them exploring and working in partners or teams to come up with solutions. Many of the students want me to tell them exactly what to do to solve the problem and get mad at me when I let them struggle. I try to get across to them and their parents (who frequently think I am ignoring their child’s needs) that the best ideas come out of frustration. It is okay to be frustrated. I am going to look into Mathetics, this is the first I have heard of it as well. In fact, I had to add it to Word’s dictionary.
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Eric // Mar 24th 2008 at 6:57 am
Interesting thoughts here, Bud … in the post and in the comments. The question you raise is probably also the central problem: where do we go to find the most reliable information about learning that hasn’t been over-simplified or blown out of shape for pop consumption? If you find an answer, let us know!
I would probably take this a bit further and say that we should focus more on learning theory than on teaching theory because our theories about how best to teach should develop *out of* our understanding of how individuals learn. Content-specific goals should be placed *after* that, or at least only *in context* of that. Yet most of us don’t know much about learning theory (with any real depth), and the educational system chugs along, concerned primarily with the what (and simplistic versions of the what, at that) and rarely with the how or why.
Yikes.
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Eric // Mar 24th 2008 at 7:20 am
For example, articles like “Bridges over troubled waters: education and cognitive neuroscience” sound great, but they’re not generally available or known to those outside the profession. Popularizers like Eric Jensen seem helpful, but some question his legitimacy. Are there people or groups doing the work of making the findings of cognitive science accessible and applicable to education? How about doing so without a political/educational agenda skewing the output?
Double yikes.
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Christopher D. Sessums // Mar 24th 2008 at 12:24 pm
So we readily assume that teachers have “content knowledge.” The question is: How did they “get” it? Were they taught it? If so, that says nothing as to whether or not they “learned” anything, no?
I like design metaphors, i.e., teacher as designer. The fact still remains, formal education requires someone to guide or lead us, thus, the role of teacher is born. But what if teachers approached teaching and learning as a designer, i.e., asking themselves “what do I need to know in order to learn a task or preform an activity?” How can I create effective, meaningful, learning activities that 30 hormonally charged 14 year olds will digest and find useful?
What students need as they pass through formative stages of understanding is to see how things are made, how knowledge is constructed, what that process looks like.
Short story: I struggled as a writer throughout my primary and secondary school days. When we read books, we never saw how the author worked, the revisions, the tensions, the resolutions, etc. All we saw was this perfectly refined, finished product. I used to ask teachers: How did the author do this? Every time I try to write it comes out messy and ill-formed.
It wasn’t until college that I saw a few examples of my favorite authors’ manuscripts and early drafts. I was amazed! Look: T.S. Eliot scratched out 12 of 15 lines in a draft of a poem! I didn’t know authors like Eliot “made mistakes.”
Do we teach teachers how to learn in colleges of education? Not in many cases. But there’s a general shift in the zeit geist of many education colleges that is putting more emphasis on learning, rather than solely focusing on pedagogical techniques. Pedagogy is still important, but it’s only one facet of many that needs to be addressed.
Teacher education still has a long way to go to catching up to reality, but people are working on moving it in that direction every day!
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Clay Burell // Mar 24th 2008 at 1:29 pm
I don’t remember much from my teacher certification courses about how to teach, probably because it was “pretend” learning: “pretend” you’re going to teach a unit on x, y, or z.
I don’t remember much that I learn from pretending. And that’s what most school learning is: pretend: Speech and Debate Club? Pretend debates. Student Government? Pretend politics. Model United Nations? Pretend political action.
I didn’t read it anywhere but in the book of my experience: I learn by trying to get something right that I want to get right, be it knowledge or skill.
And I normally learn those things without being assigned them.
In an educational system that prescribes what is learned, I’m not sure where that leaves learning as just described. Probably, as Prensky recently wrote, “after school.”
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Carolyn Foote // Mar 24th 2008 at 2:52 pm
Bud,
Intriguing question.
I tend to agree. I wonder if it is because we see careers(any career) as about being “x”. Not about “becoming.”
I think the shift to teachers thinking of themselves as learners could really be a significant one. I think allowing students to see that we learn is so important–seeing that we have a true curiosity about things.
It also derails the notion of a “teacher” as the sage on the stage, so to speak.
And it enables us to be more of a community of learners.
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Don Berg // Mar 24th 2008 at 3:17 pm
I did not go to teacher-school, but over the course of about 15 years of teaching kids everywhere except the formal classroom I decided that learning is automatic, unconscious, and impossible to avoid. The question is NEVER whether I am learning something or not, the question is WHAT am I learning. The way that I distinguish good teachers from bad ones is that good teachers have the ability to facilitate my process of focusing attention on the subject rather than on them or other irrelevant information.
The lessons that are always taught in every situation are the power structure by which we control our own and other people’s behavior fort he common good, the patterns of exchange by which we meet our needs, and the processes of consciousness that result from being embedded with those structures and patterns. Subjects and content are add-ons to these fundamental unavoidable lessons.
A good teacher enables students to focus their attention on the portion of reality that they are studying rather than getting distracted by the infinite number of other portions of reality that are also available to the student (in their minds if not in the world.) That means that if the power structure is not relevant then the teacher needs to ensure that the ways that they exercise control needs to be invisible to the students. A sophisticated challenge, needless to say.
Here’s a link to a page I wrote on my leaning theory:
http://www.teach-kids-attitude-1st.com/learning-theory.html
Enjoy,
Don Berg
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Gary Stager // Apr 5th 2008 at 2:55 pm
Bud, et al…
The person who suggested that “Mindstorms” is really more about powerful ideas than computers is correct. You should also know that Papert didn’t expect teachers to read “Mindstorms.” He was also horrified that the square/triangle/house example used to describe turtle graphics became “official” curriculum around the world. From that incident forward, neither Papert, nor the company he founded, LCSI, every included another screen shot in any of their publications.
I always tell my grad students that Papert wanted “The Children’s Machine,” to be called, “A Word for Learning,” but the publisher insisted on a computer on the cover. Why do you think “A Word for Learning” would have been his preferred title?
How did so many of you come to read Marina Bers’ book? Just curious???
-=Gary
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