What IS 'Teaching'?
We think of teaching as the art of passing on information from an educator to students, but that perception is flawed.
Oxford dictionary defines 'to teach' as "[To] show or explain to (someone) how to do something". And it defines 'to learn' as "[To] gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught".
Notice with the definition of 'to teach', the only requisite is that the teacher show or tell the student the information, but the student doesn't need to learn it for it to be taught. The only mention of being taught is in the definition of learning.
This is to say that a teacher can be lecturing for hours, explaining to students a concept, and even if no one understands what the teacher is saying, 'teaching' is still taking place.
The problem with this scenario is that no learning is taking place. That's a problem in many classrooms throughout America, and I believe part of it rests on our understanding of teaching and learning.
Why Schools Suck
Schools are not for teaching, they are for learning. And yet they have been specifically designed to teach. A few dozen students are gathered in a room and sat down to listen to one person talk for a long period of time. During that period, the one person says a lot of things, and thus a lot of teaching gets done. But how much learning happens?
There's a common saying in Silicon Valley: "What gets measured gets improved". In schools learning is rarely measured. Teaching is easy to measure: the number of days and hours professors spend teaching is clear. But that only translates into learning (the important part) if the students understand and internalize everything that is said.
We are also getting better at measuring students' knowledge at a particular time (tests/exams). However these exams don't measure learning, they measure how much a student knows at a particular time. In theory the change in knowledge over time represents learning, but how much of that learning took place in the classroom? How much was from homework? How much was independent study? We don't have good ways to answer these questions.
(Side Note: One of my teachers, and only one, did do this well. She had a mini-quiz at the end of every class on what was just taught, so she always knew where everyone stood at the end of a lesson. There were a lot of quizzes, and all together they were less than 5% of our grade, but they still provided valuable information. Obviously this idea is only a start, and I'm sad that I've never seen anything like it in other classrooms.)
Why Students Don't Learn
We place great emphasis on educators, who have the role of teaching, but at the end of the day they are simply transporters of information. By that sense, most of us have a personal 'teacher' sitting in our pocket right now. The people who really matter in school are the students, whose job it is to learn.
Now, this is not to say that teachers are useless or should be discounted. They are still important, but their role as 'showing or explaining' things is outdated. Like I said, most of us have our own personal device to show and explain anything to us. And yet, even though each student has such an amazing 'teacher' 24/7, they have not all become Einsteins. Why?
Because simply having a way to learn anything does not mean you will learn everything, or anything at all. The tasks of learning rests with the student, and surrounding them with teachers is not a surefire way to get them to learn. And this is why educators are so important, just not by their traditional definition as one who 'shows and explains'.
Rather, the role of teaching needs to be redefined. The role of 'showing and explaining' doesn't work any more. Our strategy recently to improve teaching has been more showing (such as by extending the school year) and better explaining (maybe teachers just need better tools to reach kids). Those solutions are bound to disappoint, because they are simple more of the same strategy. Our strategy needs to change.
Strategies For Better Teaching
The problem with having the main task of educators as teachers is that teaching is an ineffective way to get students to learn. This is because learning is not inherent in teaching. I can teach (show and explain stuff) without anyone learning it (understand it). We need our educators to take on roles where learning is at the heart of everything they do, and inherent in their actions, not a fortunate side effect.
Fortunately, learning does take place in schools, and it happens in one of three ways. By emphasizing these three ways, we can make learning more common in schools. These ways are Discovery, Facilitating, and Mentoring.
Discovery Learning
Our phones are such great education tools because they allow for seamless discovery. Discovery is defined by Oxford Dictionary as "the compulsory disclosure [...] of relevant documents referred to by the other party." The key here is that the information disclosed (i.e.: shown or explain (i.e.: taught)) is not simply given. It is requested by the other party (the one looking).
To compare Teaching to Discovery: Teaching would be your phone constantly buzzing notifications that are important historical dates. You hear a lot, but you didn't ask for the information. In fact, the constant stream of vibration will probably get annoying, and you may turn your phone off. Now you don't learn anything.
Discovery is you searching for important historical dates, and the phone giving you the answers you are looking for. Learning is now engaging, and you were the one asking for it.
This difference is incredible. In the first, information is thrown at you (much like our current educational system). In the second, you seek it out and find it. You are also much more likely to remember (i.e. learn) from the second experience than from the first, because you wanted to learn, where in the first example you may not have. Learning is at the heart of discovery: you learn based on what you search for.
In schools then, we need to encourage students to discover more. Pushing them to ask more questions, getting them excited about finding out the answers, and giving them the tools to learn the things they want can help them take the initiative in their own learning.
Mentoring
Mentorships are different from teaching roles in two big ways. First, teaching is done to a group of students, which in universities could be as large as 300 or more. Mentoring is one-on-one. Secondly, and more importantly, since mentoring is one-on-one, it creates a personal connection between the older mentor and younger mentee, meaning the mentee can get much more personal advice, and is more likely to absorb it since it is delivered specifically for them, their interests, and with their needs in mind.
Besides being a better way for students to learn, students who have received mentorships have been shown to decrease illegal substance use, and even have better relationships with parents and peers. This might simply be the result of a strong role model that is their just for the student, as opposed to a teacher, who can't possibly be just the right person for every one of their 50 students each year.
So, since educators don't have the time to be a mentor to everyone, we need to help students connect with mentors outside the classroom. One example can be as simple as seeking out local professionals who have experience in a field a student is interested in, and helping them setup a Skype chat every week. Then the student can pick a professional's brain about their area of expertise, as well as many other areas of life.
Facilitating
Lastly, instructors can often provide students with better learning by taking on the role of facilitator. The idea behind this is that instead of one person more or less dictating a script, they instead facilitate discussion, conversation, and even debate on ideas between students. There are a few forces driving this. Firstly, humans are hard wired for telling and listening to stories and conversation, and it is far easier to have a conversation or story when it is woven naturally by people engaging each other, as opposed to a written script.
A second force is that there is more variety of ideas when thoughts are being shared by everyone, making students more likely to listen. Also, students are more likely to remember facts said by their peers that facts said by their teachers. Thus, why not have students talk to each other as much as possible, as long as they are talking about important ideas (hence why the instructor is now a facilitator).
There are many ways to do this. One of my teachers (on a leadership course) sits the class in a circle and asks everyone about their experiences with leadership, and really makes the entire lesson one big conversation, all the while guiding the conversation through the important points. Half the time others are talking, which brings a wide variety of ideas and examples, and the other half the teacher explains concepts or asks questions so everyone is on the same page.
Going further, facilitators can have each studnet study a particular area, and then teach the other students about that and be taught by everyone else on their niches. This method, a form of Peer Teaching, is actually pretty easy to encourage. This method engages students more, so they learn my self study, helping each other out, and teaching material themselves.
What All This Means For Students
The vast majority of our educational system revolves around lecture based teaching. This was an effective strategy when schools were first implemented, but times have changed. Students need school to be much more than a simple place to get information. In today's reality, we need to focus much more on the variety of proven methods that help students learn. Instructors are needed to make that happen, however they need to employ new techniques for a new challenge.
To everyone, students, instructors, parents, and everyone else: get involved. Many of these changes can happen right now in a classroom without a huge overall of the curriculum or a new school building. All that needs to change is a focus on how we help students learn.
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