In this chapter, we can see what is the real importance of making students go beyond the information given by means of ‘essential questions’ that have as purpose to stimulate the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes, habits of mind, and understanding on the students. The idea is that they find a real sense to what is learned in every one of the units through its application in different contexts. However to attain this aim, it is necessary to change the way in which our students are using the information, together with the focus given by the different textbooks, because learners frequently work on questions which stimulate neither thought nor their capacity of inquiry. That’s why our mission consists on framing work around such questions which allow them to explore beyond the boundaries of the topic given, and the use of connections that promote the transference of their ideas from one setting to others. Regrettably this aim is not entirely fulfilled in our current system of education, because of the lack of a clear proposal by the curriculum in order to stimulate and encourage the constructivist thinking among the Chilean students. A clear example of that situation is the training received by most of the teachers which includes neither the achievement nor the development of these competences, together with the lack of material that supports them.
Actually the questions formulated in the different textbooks do not help to get to the heart of the things (the essence). On the contrary they frequently stimulate the memorization of the content without giving the possibility to be transferred across other disciplines. This happens because the students can find neither the usefulness nor the purpose of why they have to learn that, causing confusion and lack of commitment by them. Personally I consider that behind the learning and teaching process should exist a reason for, in order that knowledge be enough meaningful to cover most of the students ‘need. If we have a clear target in education, we will surely be able to make the suitable questions which provoke in the students a deep thought, a spirit of inquiry, support their ideas, spark meaningful connections, and transfer power. The idea is to propose a challenger in every one of them in order to put in practice all the previous skills to solve problems, going from the most general questions (overarching questions) to the most specific ones (topical questions). The mixture of the different types of ‘Essential questions’ such as: open and guiding as well as topical and overarching allow the accomplishment of understanding and application of a determined content, because when we have identified one or more topical questions, we need broader questions to take the students beyond the topic’s boundaries, improving their capacity of argument to produce knowledge. Based on that, it is a mistake to consider students as passive actors of the process; on the contrary we must focus our teaching in giving them the right tools to become active ones. If we have clear, what is the role of essential questions, we will see that they are not only used to teach stuff, but to frame our goals in the current system of education.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
assignment
‘Understanding Understanding’.
This article is focused on clarifying the term ‘understanding’, because from the earliest times, many curriculum writers have avoided the notion, producing confusion mainly among teachers. However, others have tried to give to this term a definition but without the accuracy required because of the existence of different degrees of understanding, what brings serious difficulties to provide evidences, in order to define this nebulous term.
For example, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, ‘understanding’ refers to the ‘commonly sought’, ‘but ill- defined’ objectives. This obstacle provokes that teachers, in most of the cases, confuse whether their students are only able to internalize knowledge or indeed understand the contents taught. The difference seems slight but it is not, that is why many authors have highlighted the distinction that exists between ‘understanding’ and ‘know’. According to Bloom the first term is defined as ‘the ability to marshal skills and facts wisely and appropriately, through an effective application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation’. In simple words, it is the capacity that students should have to transfer what they have learnt to a new setting or situation.
Based on that, it is fundamental to help the students to learn how they can transfer their inherently limited learning to many other settings. If we take in to account the latter, we will see that transfer must be taken as the aim of all teaching in schools, and not only the fact of storing information that in most of the cases is just forgotten by the learners.
Undoubtedly, it is a mistake to think that ‘the more I cover, the more they will learn and the better they will do in a test’. It proves that quantity has nothing to do with the success in terms of application of knowledge. This misunderstood has broken out that most of the teachers focus the lessons in just conveying information without considering the application that it may have in other issues or problems. Thus, coverage should not be seen as ‘a virtue in an educational context’, but rather as ‘a flaw in the current system’, because it leaves the students with no sense of the whole what affects the development of their intellectual capacities, producing confusion in the information given. The other crucial stage in this process is the way in which the understanding is showed, because there is also a wrong focus on our tests. Commonly teachers tend to measure only the superficial knowledge acquired by their students and not their capacity to transfer information. As we can see, the misperception of the word ‘understanding’ has drawn us to make serious mistakes related to the aim of teaching and learning process. There is not doubt that this way of thinking should change from now on, because the fulfillment of these practices will help us considerably to improve the quality of Chilean education, giving the right and necessary tools to students to be applied by them in any setting.
This article is focused on clarifying the term ‘understanding’, because from the earliest times, many curriculum writers have avoided the notion, producing confusion mainly among teachers. However, others have tried to give to this term a definition but without the accuracy required because of the existence of different degrees of understanding, what brings serious difficulties to provide evidences, in order to define this nebulous term.
For example, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, ‘understanding’ refers to the ‘commonly sought’, ‘but ill- defined’ objectives. This obstacle provokes that teachers, in most of the cases, confuse whether their students are only able to internalize knowledge or indeed understand the contents taught. The difference seems slight but it is not, that is why many authors have highlighted the distinction that exists between ‘understanding’ and ‘know’. According to Bloom the first term is defined as ‘the ability to marshal skills and facts wisely and appropriately, through an effective application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation’. In simple words, it is the capacity that students should have to transfer what they have learnt to a new setting or situation.
Based on that, it is fundamental to help the students to learn how they can transfer their inherently limited learning to many other settings. If we take in to account the latter, we will see that transfer must be taken as the aim of all teaching in schools, and not only the fact of storing information that in most of the cases is just forgotten by the learners.
Undoubtedly, it is a mistake to think that ‘the more I cover, the more they will learn and the better they will do in a test’. It proves that quantity has nothing to do with the success in terms of application of knowledge. This misunderstood has broken out that most of the teachers focus the lessons in just conveying information without considering the application that it may have in other issues or problems. Thus, coverage should not be seen as ‘a virtue in an educational context’, but rather as ‘a flaw in the current system’, because it leaves the students with no sense of the whole what affects the development of their intellectual capacities, producing confusion in the information given. The other crucial stage in this process is the way in which the understanding is showed, because there is also a wrong focus on our tests. Commonly teachers tend to measure only the superficial knowledge acquired by their students and not their capacity to transfer information. As we can see, the misperception of the word ‘understanding’ has drawn us to make serious mistakes related to the aim of teaching and learning process. There is not doubt that this way of thinking should change from now on, because the fulfillment of these practices will help us considerably to improve the quality of Chilean education, giving the right and necessary tools to students to be applied by them in any setting.
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