Teaching and Learning: “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”

“I sent an email to my boss (I am on study leave) for the first time last night to update him. After telling him about Harvard and my courses, I described T440 in particular. I wrote: ‘47 minute periods, rank orders, and regular common assessments do not fit with my evolving views of what should be happening in schooling. Across the world society accepts a contradiction between the stated aims of schools and the outcomes. With an international focus on accountability, standardization and centralization, I am not inspired. I have always had a crisis of conscience in terms of my beliefs about schooling and what I need to surrender in my practice. I am thinking far too much here…” (journal, October 27, 2010)

At some stage in the future I believe that formulaic teaching and high-stakes standardized testing will be widely regarded as deeply immoral. Education is about far more than accumulating large repertoires of facts and routines. Over the past semester I have been profoundly mesmerized and inspired by Professor Eleanor Duckworth’s T440 course, which focuses on how people learn and what anyone can do to help. She views learning as developing understanding, and teaching as helping learners construct their own understanding. Just as Piaget argued that to understand is to invent, Professor Duckworth views the having of wonderful ideas as the essence of intellectual development. However, there are disturbingly few occasions in schools where students have the opportunity to come up with their own ideas.

Banking

Freire (1993) was critical of the way that teachers fill students with deposits of information that are detached from reality, and the way that education makes people fit in instead of questioning the world. In his writing about the banking notion of consciousness, he described the teacher-student relationship:

This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)…Education is suffering from narration sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. (p. 52)
Similarly, Professor Duckworth’s criticism of ideas being oppressed in classrooms (class November 9, 2010) reminds me of all the times as a teacher where I have short-circuited an avenue of inquiry by bringing a student’s curiosity back to the immediate syllabus and the requirements of the approaching high-stakes test. I recognized in my journal that:

“Testing has become the driving force at the expense of the true purpose of education…Too much emphasis is placed on predictable outcomes…it makes me angry about recent national curriculum reforms in my own country which are very much content-laden” (September 5, 2010).

One can only surmise that the purpose of school is to sort, sift and grade students rather than teach them. I have become deeply critical of a system where, as Duckworth puts it, “a number is accepted as an adequate representation of learning” (2006, p. xi). Teachers seem to have an unpleasant choice, they either drill students to succeed in standardized public examinations or they refuse to play along with the system. This is not an easy decision because, as Schneier (1986) reminds us, “Those test scores follow students. They are judged by them and, tragically, often judge themselves by them also” (p. 21). In my journal I acknowledged that,

“Much of my success has revolved around producing students who nail the public examination” (October 27, 2010).

As a teacher I have spent countless hours assigning work and marking student essays. It gave me pause to reflect when I read that while Murray (1979) used to mark papers diligently, he has since learned to teach the students and not the paper (p. 15). The emphasis on assessing, grading, marking, ranking and judging students in today’s schools can only damage a learner’s inquisitiveness and learning spirit. I am beginning to form a view of grades that sees them as profoundly unethical and n my journal I noted that,

“I am beginning to realize the damage that grading does to a learning mentality. The pass/fail nature of this course is important” (November 2, 2010).

In our class section meeting, we discussed the importance of the pass/fail nature of the T440 course and how it freed us up to explore and experiment with ideas rather than feel the need to guess what the teacher wanted us to reproduce. I had always considered a pass/fail course an easy option. It has been eye-opening and refreshing to discover that this has been my most challenging course.

Curriculum

Hawkins (1974) suggested that we don’t want to cover a subject, we want to uncover it. Simply telling students information does not allow them to develop their understanding. I have come to realize that the teacher’s role is to design learning experiences that engage learners in deep thinking about the complexities of subject matter. The expertise of the teacher is crucial in preparing the ‘testing ground’ for the learners. The testing ground is what the learners refer to in order to test out their ideas. The testing ground has to engage the learners, it has to have sufficient depth to enable learners to get at their thoughts about it, and it has to allow learners plenty of scope to choose their own path to understanding. Duckworth (2006) emphasizes that the subject matter for the testing ground is not contained in books, it is in the world. The teacher’s role is to collect and build a store of interesting curriculum materials that open up parts of the world which learners may not think about on their own. Technology and the internet make this easier than ever before.

It is important that subject matter is offered to learners in its full complexity. Teachers tend to feel that their role is to simplify subject matter for learners, often turning it into “empty shadows” (Schneier, 1986, p. 15). When teachers simplify subject matter they can make it incomprehensible and meaningless to learners because there is nothing left to connect to. In my journal I noted that,

“I like the explanation of the world as subject-matter and people as sense-makers” (September 14, 2010).

The learner’s role is to make meaning or sense from the curriculum. Learners need opportunities to establish meaning that holds true for themselves. According to Ramsay (2000), “When prompted to ‘solve’ puzzles that are not puzzling, the potential for meaning-making is limited: students are rendered technicians performing sterile operations” (p. 2). It is through the very complexities of subject matter that learners gain access to it.

The role of the teacher

Everything that a teacher does either supports or diminishes a learner’s reliance on their ability to think (Schneier, 2001). It is only by thinking that people get better at thinking. The teacher’s role is not to simplify the subject matter for learners, but to keep the learners engaged with and connected to subject matter. In my own history teaching I now realize that by taking students straight to detailed secondary sources, I often cut them off from the primary sources that would often enable them to make meaning out of the secondary sources. I learned the importance of engaging the learner in the testing ground during my final fieldwork. I had selected six iconic photographs from the Vietnam War as an entry point, but I had not anticipated that my learner, from Egypt, would be totally unfamiliar with every photo. In my fieldwork report I commented that:

I was really surprised that she could not place any of the photos at all and she knew nothing about the war. On reflection, this should not have been surprising. I wonder how many times I have made this assumption about students in the past? (November 11, 2010).

Colgan (2002) asks us to “trust the content and trust the minds of the learners” (p. 1). I began to realize that once learners are caught up in the subject matter, it is the most potent source of knowledge for them. Once the learner is engaged in the subject matter, the teacher’s priority shifts to keeping learners focused on the subject matter and following “the evolution of the understanding and the engagement over time” (Duckworth, 2006, p. xi). Because learners develop their understanding in a vast array of different ways, teachers need to build their experience in figuring out and appreciating other people’s ways of thinking.

Listening

In one of my journal entries I commented on the relational and affective aspects of critical exploration:

“The Magau chapter about working with teachers was powerful and I was particularly struck by how Bonolo explained how critical exploration made her feel so close to her children. The relational and emotional aspect of critical exploration is fascinating” (October, 20, 2010).

This was something that I sensed early in the course. After my first fieldwork report, Victor’s feedback suggested that I needed to be more involved in the process. In class, I carefully observed how Professor Duckworth got right down on the floor with the children when she modeled ‘Going to the Movies’. After my next fieldwork I reported:

“I noticed from Eleanor that she got right down on the floor with the kids last Tuesday, so I made a point of being physically present and attentive to what Ludovic was doing”.

[Teaching Faculty] Victor’s Response: “This is an important insight relative to doing critical exploration. You might want to reflect on why I might be saying this” (September 27, 2010).

I was learning the importance of being present and enthusiastic, and working really hard to find out what my learner’s thoughts and feelings were. However, I still expressed some confusion about this in my journal:

“I am still wondering about the role of a teacher in this process: as a learner? A co-learner? Some form of expertise seems important but it revolves around engagement and facilitation” (September 27, 2010).

I gradually came to understand that the teacher’s role is not to translate the knowledge for students, but to facilitate their connection with the subject matter. As Schneier (1986) states,

This is a fully active role on my part: I choose and often construct the form in which to present the subject to them, I take an active role in exciting their interest…, in keeping them engaged, in supplying support for and challenge to their ideas, but I don’t often paraphrase for them the subject matter that they are studying. (p. 191)

Effective pedagogy is more about listening than teaching. Professor Duckworth exhorts us to follow children’s thinking instead of leading it. She conceives of education as being where teachers do the listening and learners do the explaining. This means having learners articulate their own thoughts and then “see where they run into conflict with themselves” (Duckworth, 2006, p. 118). I learned so much about teaching and learning by listening to my learner during my final fieldwork sessions. Teaching her one on one and observing her develop her understanding of the topic was incredibly revealing.

“I learned an enormous amount and, after 18 years of teaching, I have never watched someone learn this closely before…It did not go according to plan, but it was amazing watching Sarah learn!” (journal, November 2, 2010).

Questioning

To teach well, one has to be able to learn from others. Teachers need to really listen for, value, and try to understand learners’ thoughts, experiences and insights, and then use them as a starting point. A teacher needs to be curious about what sense a learner is making and how a learner understands something. This requires learning how to ask questions without steering a learner towards a pre-determined answer. Too often the conversations in my classroom have revolved around students attempting to guess what I am thinking. Duckworth (2006) warns that, “We cannot learn anything about what children think if we signal to them what we hope they will say” (p. 162). This was demonstrated convincingly when Victor uncharacteristically spoke up and vigorously contributed to our section discussion one week. What he was demonstrating to us, is that the teacher is in a privileged, powerful position and by actively leading discussion, the power dynamics in the class tend to shift to focus exclusively on the teacher’s ideas. I recorded of our following section discussion that,

“We seemed to come to an agreement that it is not possible for a ‘teacher’ to step out of the external role and into the group as an equal” (November 2, 2010).

It was a powerful lesson.

The essential element of having the students do the explaining is not the withholding of all the teacher’s own thoughts. It is, rather, that the teacher not consider herself or himself the final arbiter of what the learner should think, nor the creator of what the learner does think. The important job for the teacher is to keep trying to find out what sense the students are making. (Duckworth, 2006, p. 184)

It is the teacher’s role to raise questions, to push learners to see where their answers hold up and where they do not hold up. It will take much experimenting for me to learn how to ask the right question at the right time in order to push a learner’s thinking. Some of the most useful questions that I have collated during this course are: What do you notice? What puzzles you? Can you show me? Where do you see that? What do you mean? Why do you think that? Is that the same as what (someone else) thought they saw? How did you get that?

Questioning enables learners to draw connections and deepen their understanding in ways that they may have never considered (Duckworth, 2006). By pushing the learners’ thinking in this manner, in order to try and understand their understanding, their understanding “increases ‘in the very process’” (p. 97). When learners are encouraged to take risks their confidence grows in their ability to develop their own wonderful ideas. The learners then become the teacher’s testing ground, and the teacher’s role is to provide a feedback loop that builds the learners’ abilities to educate themselves.

Schneier (2001) describes her role as “helping a group to develop a history of ideas” (p. 190), and the curriculum grows from these mutually reciprocal explorations (Hughes-McDonnell, 2009). The way that the T440 course contained ideas which continually spiraled back on each other through the classes, section meetings, readings and fieldworks was a demonstration of how curriculum should operate. Victor used our journals as sources to complete the feedback loop, often throwing a question out in section that had come from someone’s journaling. This has made me very aware of the powerful nature of feedback provided in response to student journaling. I wonder how the average teacher could provide sufficient feedback to 150 students to make it worthwhile? Could students provide peer to peer feedback? Could it be done online?

Confusion

In class, Professor Duckworth exclaimed, “To be confused is good. Glorify confusion!” (November 9, 2010), and early in the course I wrote:

“Very uncertain how it all fits together…Still quite confused about the direction of the course, but enjoying the opportunity to think things through” (September 14, 2010).

When I later expressed continuing frustration about my own confusion, Victor responded:

“My suspicion is…that you understand much more than you are fully aware, and can articulate. I tend to think, contrary to the presented wisdom, the kind of learning that Prof D’s work occasions is a much more efficient and economically sound way of learning than word-concept based representations of learning, as is the way of the dominant teaching/learning canon. Deep learning to me is far more dense than shallow learning, particularly when that deep learning has a self-generative quality about it, as this work does”(October 3, 2010).

Towards the end of the course it was interesting to be on the other side of the fence, observing my learner make sense of my final fieldwork. In my first final fieldwork report I wrote:

“When she reflected on things she expressed confusion about what was going on, she said she didn’t know who was against who and she was particularly confused about the role of the Vietnamese. She sensed that there was lots of activity but she found it unclear why”.

Victor’s response read: “Opportunity for you?!”

This brought home to me that confusion in the learner is a wonderful opportunity for the teacher. With this opportunity comes considerable responsibility, which I recognized:

“To observe a learner engage and express interest and confusion was really interesting to watch. I feel a strong sense of responsibility to help her through this confusion” (November 2, 2010).

Duckworth (2006) uses the powerful metaphor of the construction of a tower. A tall tower can be built quickly, but one built on a broad base or with deep foundations takes longer to construct. Students who come to depend on narrow, easy success will not learn. To learn is to be confused, to fail frequently and to try again until success occurs. Confusion and conflict are needed in order to learn, and failure is a necessary building block for ultimate success. Thinking is difficult and doubt is the basis of all good thinking. Exploring wrong ideas is always productive. A wrong idea corrected “provides far more depth than if one never had a wrong idea to begin with” (p. 70). By considering alternatives and working through them, learners come to master the idea much more thoroughly.

Teachers are often…impatient for their students to develop clear and adequate ideas. But putting ideas in relation to each other is not a simple job. It is confusing; and that confusion does take time. All of us need time for our confusion if we are to build the breadth and depth that give significance to our knowledge. (Duckworth, 2006, p. 81)

Group learning

I became very aware of the quality of the learning environment being prepared by Victor in section meetings, and commented in my journal:

“We seem to have developed an excellent rapport amongst all members of the section and I wonder how much this is due to the people in the section and how much it is due to the way that you run the section” (October 16, 2010).

Our individual learning was being encouraged, refined and extended by the group. The atmosphere was positively electric on many occasions as we connected with each other’s thoughts on a deep level.

“We had a great section meeting today. My brain was buzzing when we finished. There is a powerful atmosphere in the group and the collaboration of ideas is really working” (September 27, 2010).

By mid-way through the semester, several of us were in the habit of arriving up to an hour early for section meeting and commencing our discussions about teaching and learning well before section formally commenced. This was not a social get-together, it represented deep learning connections forged through our common testing ground. Kamii (1985) wrote about the importance of social interaction for the construction of knowledge, encouraging learners to exchange points of view critically amongst themselves, reducing the teacher’s power as much as possible, and having learners construct knowledge and learn not from but with each other. Learning is not within people, it is between them, and it is deeply important that learners are able to converse with others and play with ideas. Duckworth (2001) refers to this interaction of minds as the “collective creation of knowledge” (p. 1).

Autonomy

Victor was unable to attend our last section meeting and, comfortable with our dynamics and processes, we happily ran the group ourselves, On one occasion Victor had said that he felt that his role was to make himself redundant. The last section meeting proved his success. Our autonomy was not an accidental by-product. It had been “intentionally tailored and serendipitously welcomed” by Victor as part of his teaching (Ramsay, 2000, p. 425). This is the sort of environment that I want to create in my own classroom and in my work with other teachers.

Conclusion

As teachers, our role is to utilize our expertise to design powerful learning experiences and then listen carefully as our students help each other make sense of their confusion. The mark of our success is when our students are ready to continue their learning without us. Ultimately, there is a moral imperative to this approach. Freire (1993) warns us that we “must be revolutionary – that is to say, dialogical – from the outset” (p. 67) and DiSchino (1987) advocates that, “Education should be liberating – it should free each of us to explore and consider possibilities from our own unique perspectives” (p. 26). My own liberation is evident in a journal entry:

“My boss told me that I would not change the system from outside it. I am wondering how I can create change from inside the system” (October 27, 2010).

The answer to my puzzle lies in learning how to scale critical exploration with other teachers, so that both teachers and their students experience their own wonderful ideas.

References

Colgan, C. (2002). Journal Excerpt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.
DiSchino, M. (1987). The many phases of growth: One teacher’s experience of learning. The Journal of Natural Inquiry, 1(3), 12-28.
Duckworth, E. (2001). Inventing density. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “Tell me more” listening to learners explain (pp. 1-41). New York: Teachers College Press.
Duckworth, E. (2006). “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning. New York: Teachers College Press.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Hawkins, D (1974). The informed vision: Essays on learning and human nature. New York, NY: Algora Publishing.
Hughes-McDonnell, F. (2009). “I wonder how this little seed can have so much potential”: Critical Exploration Supports Preservice Teachers’ Development as Science Researchers and Teachers. New Educator, 5(3), 205-228. Retrieved from http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/education/theneweducator/upload/3rd-article-3.pdf
Kamii, C., & Randazzo, M. (1985). Social Interaction and invented spelling. Language Arts, 62(2), 124-133.
Murray, D. (1979). The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference. College English, 41(1). pp. 13-18.
Ramsay, L. (2000). Understanding the problem of un-prescribing the curriculum. Unpublished Manuscript. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Schneier, L. (1986). Dancing in the hall. Unpublished Manuscript. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Schneier, L. (2001). A schoolteacher’s view. In E. Duckworth (Ed.), “Tell me more” listening to learners explain (pp. 188-194). New York: Teachers College Press.

5 thoughts on “Teaching and Learning: “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”

  1. This is a wonderful piece of writing and thinking – it gives me hope for the future of schools. Thank you.

  2. Thanks for reading the whole thing Dale. It is a paper due tomorrow! I find that posting it one day ahead forces me to get it done and helps me refine. I have just loved the course.

  3. What a post!
    I didn’t know you when you wrote this so thank you @markliddell for tweeting this out.
    I’m going to add this as Further Reading in my recent post, Make Room.

    I think that you have certainly acted on what you’ve learned here. I am sooooo glad that you’re firmly part of my PLN.

  4. Malyn, thanks for commenting. I’m amazed that someone dug this up from a year and a half ago. It was a powerful, powerful course which my stilted writing does not do justice to. Eleanor Duckworth is one of my idols.

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