The educational goals listed at the beginning of this article had me hooked immediately because they are the same goals I struggle with on a daily basis. The idea of teaching students to learn and not memorize, or teaching students to apply the principles of spanish grammar to everything they have learned and not just to today's exercise is a problem I deal with on a daily basis. It is also overwhelming to them that what they learn today, they have to be able to apply tomorrow, next week and next year in all different situations. In fact, I tell them that what they have learned in 6th grade must be readily accessible in their minds during 12th grade, for example.
This theory seems to deal exactly with that goal. As I read the article, and looked through the EASE website, I was very impressed with the idea. Learning history, historical concepts and terms through ads, cartoons, pictures, etc, is phenominal. I think it truly embodies the idea of presenting information to a student without giving him all the "answers". The student must look at the information, synthesize it, have an opinion and apply it to different situations.
Unfortunately, I was selfishly disappointed because I would love to find a similar way to teach the spanish language. I would love it if someone could give me the tools to teach a language in the same way. Hopefully through further investigation, the answer to my question will become apparent. After all, I completely agree with the conclusion to the article, when it says that these types of skills are essential in order to preform in 21st century-type jobs.
5 comments:
I enjoyed reading your comments. I agree that the theory is ideal. I know that we would all love to find the magical easy way to do the best teaching. Since there isn't one perfect way to teach, we continue to learn and grow through our experience. Bloom's Taxonomy, Gardner's Multiple Intelliegences, and Cognitive Flexibility Theory are all superior theories and ideas. Applying these theories, along with everything else that we are expected to do, can be daunting as a teacher. Imagine how the students feel! Good luck with finding your tools for teaching spanish. You are a good teacher and already have many great tools.
As a speech and langugae pathologist I also struggle with the same goals. Many of my students do not understand what they are learning therefore they try to memorize it. It is a real struggle to try to teach them to not memorize but rather understand the information so they can retrieve it at a later date. if you find the secret to doing this let me know.
I am sorry to hear that you had surgery. I hope you are feeling better!
Thanks Ivy! Hopefully I'll see you on Saturday. Not sure I'm up to it, but I'm going to try.
The Wineburg and Spiro articles have a number of things in common. Both are interested in everyday thinking, for example. Since we aren't able to have standard operating procedures for most events we have to be able to think more nimbly, more adaptively, more flexibly. CFT is designed to support the crisscrossing of domain knowledge. Like Suzanne said, the goal is to be pragmatic- to examine the situation, and apply the most useful bits from different perspectives, and apply them to the situation. Ivy makes a good point. We know that experts are able to fluently and automatically retrieve information. Having strategies is important. This chapter from How People Learning talks about this area of research. http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch2.html
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