Are our practices and methods in the classroom aiming to knowledge or understanding? That is the question we are likely to ask ourselves after reading Wiggin’s chapter “Understanding Understanding”.
To answer this question we must bear in mind the distinction the author makes between what knowledge and what understanding are. Through different examples the author tries to make the reader realize on the difference between these two concepts. On the one hand “Knowledge” is seen as a first stage, since it mainly refers to the memorization of facts, the “know by heart”. This stage is important since it is the basis of building up further knowledge or understanding, but even more essential is the process of “understanding”, which is defined as a “mental construct, an abstraction made by the human mind to make sense of many distinct pieces of knowledge”.
The goal of understanding according to the author is to take those pieces of information to produce or find something of significance, i.e. to use what is stored in our memory to go beyond the facts (meaningful inferences). Understanding is also seen as “transferability”, i.e. the ability to transfer what we have learned to new and sometimes confusing settings.
Having in mind the difference in the concepts and the implications of each, we, as a teachers, may wonder about what is going on in our classes. I am sure all of us want to make our students go beyond, have them make inferences and make relations with the information they are given, in other words, make them really think and be successful learners; however not all the time our methods, practices, and activities aim this purpose, and many times they result in misunderstanding or a partial grasp of knowledge. The crucial matter here is (as the author points out) there must be a coherence between our purposes, in this case develop in our students understanding, and the methods used.
To answer this question we must bear in mind the distinction the author makes between what knowledge and what understanding are. Through different examples the author tries to make the reader realize on the difference between these two concepts. On the one hand “Knowledge” is seen as a first stage, since it mainly refers to the memorization of facts, the “know by heart”. This stage is important since it is the basis of building up further knowledge or understanding, but even more essential is the process of “understanding”, which is defined as a “mental construct, an abstraction made by the human mind to make sense of many distinct pieces of knowledge”.
The goal of understanding according to the author is to take those pieces of information to produce or find something of significance, i.e. to use what is stored in our memory to go beyond the facts (meaningful inferences). Understanding is also seen as “transferability”, i.e. the ability to transfer what we have learned to new and sometimes confusing settings.
Having in mind the difference in the concepts and the implications of each, we, as a teachers, may wonder about what is going on in our classes. I am sure all of us want to make our students go beyond, have them make inferences and make relations with the information they are given, in other words, make them really think and be successful learners; however not all the time our methods, practices, and activities aim this purpose, and many times they result in misunderstanding or a partial grasp of knowledge. The crucial matter here is (as the author points out) there must be a coherence between our purposes, in this case develop in our students understanding, and the methods used.
I liked the question you start your comment with.What are we doing....I think sometimes too much pressure is put on our shoulders and we HAVE to privilege knowing over undersatnding or we simply loose our jobs.Sometimes those tacit rules floating in the school atmosphere tell us that our students must do well in their examinations, no matter if they understand or not.Going beyond that is our challenge , to make our students something more than memorizing machines.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment ;)
Vicky
thx
ReplyDeletesp
I also like the question, it is true, what are we doing?. We always try to do our best for our studentes, we change methodologies in order to make them understand the idea but sometimes is too difficult, not because of students but school´s pricipal, UTP, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame, but for our society is more important the mark you get than the understanding you get.
Marks not always represetn the knowledge a person have.
In fact, in order that learning takes place, there must be a big degree of coherence. It is not a matter of having our learners memorizing facts or empty decontextualized-out of the blue contents. Although cliché, as everybody uses and abuses the well-known 'learning to learn' or rather 'teaching how to learn to learn', it summarizes what is behind current Chilean and global educational issues, as in the case of EFL. In order that changes occur, teachers are the ones who have to accomodate their views and show true commitment to teach.
ReplyDeleteAs you said one of our main purposes when we teach is to make our students “successful learners”. In order to get that aim we teachers have to perform our tasks in the right way, i.e., we have to teach in context in order to transform that knowledge into “meaningful” knowledge which if it is put into practice, becomes effective learning and therefore, real understanding.
ReplyDeleteAngelina
Marianella
ReplyDeleteGoing beyond trivialities is the most important goal which teachers have to follow in order to success in finding understanding. Starting from the very beginning with the design of the methods that are going to be used, taking into account the final result that are going to be expected from the students. In addition, transferability has to be promoted in the classes to help students to understand.
I don’t take your point when you said that you were sure that all of us wanted to make our students go beyond. Are you talking about MA in TEFL students or in general? I agree with you that there are a lot of teachers who want to improve education promoting understanding using transferability in their classroom. However, there are some teachers who insist on using memorization as an essential process.
What do you think?
Dear Holly cow,
ReplyDeleteI quote you:
"However not all the time our methods, practices, and activities aim this purpose (understanding), and many times they result in misunderstanding or a partial grasp of knowledge."
There you can see how huge are our misunderstandings regarding our lessons plans and how to make that really effective and coherent with our own goals. It is clear that we need to improve our own techniques to set our goals out. How to be very concise and precise about objectives and include the kids in these decisions and let them know also that this is part of their development and include them also in these decisions. So they can get active part in their own process towards autonomy and understanding.
xxx
Claudio
Miss,
ReplyDeleteYou have pointed out several captivating issues to reflect on.
First of all, it is quite simple for students and it makes everyone's lives easy to have them learning things by heart; however, there is no learning at all, and there's nothing new about that. Teaching and modelling learning techniques which become an asset for learners is a good way to start making a difference.
About the lack of coherence between the purposes we set and the actual teaching practice, it is sad that classes do not reflect what has been prepared due to several reasons. Reflection in / on / about action and obviously improvement opportunites are to be considered, then.
Certainly, what makes a difference is the activation of previous knowledge which is meaningful for students, because they become part and doers of the class itself (and that is what we look for, don't we?)
Finally, the aplication of the new knowledge into different known or unknown settings is the acid test. If everything went well, they surely will show off their understanding.
L.
Marianella
ReplyDeleteCoherence rings a very noisy bell in the teaching field, since we tend to go beyond our students' real needs and focus our attention where "we" want to get to. Therefore, our working plan is designed according to those parametres. This situation not only excludes our students from their lesson planning, but also make them fail at the end of the course for not accomplishing objectives that never suit theim in first place.
Marianella,
ReplyDeleteI entirely agree with you when you mention that not all the time our methods, practices and activities aim this purpose of making our students transfer their knowledge into different settings. This is not something easy, and teachers must be aware of that; we need permanent training, we need to be in contact with the new tendencies in education and the new approaches we might use in some of our lessons. Unfortunately, not all teachers are willing to apply new ideas or approaches in their classrooms (others don’t have the opportunity to do it) but the thing is that it is essential for us to learn as much as we can, and then try new methods and activities, again and again, until we see real improvement in our students learning process.
As I see it, concrete, coherent and contextual lessons may help us to achieve the goal of our teaching and students' learning.
ReplyDeleteI have also asked myself about my practices and methods in the classroom, are they aiming to knowledge or understanding? After reading this chapter, I think this question will frequently arise . It could be a good 'warming'...
"to use what is stored in our memory to go beyond the facts (meaningful inferences)"....the key I think.
thx
Hi Marianella,
ReplyDeleteI liked the question but I would like to add Will our future practices and methods in the classroom aim to knowledge or understanding???
The thing is what we can do from now on to improve the way we teach all the things we are learning now, how are we going to manage to transfer our knowledge to our sudents.
As you stated in your comments, the problem with the notion of ‘knowledge’ is that is taken as the final goal in education, however after reading ‘Wiggins chapter’ we can realize that it is only the first stage which gives the basis of building up further knowledge or understanding, being the most essential one the process of ‘understanding’ which allows students to make sense of many pieces of information given. Therefore we have to guide our students to discover the real use that it can have in different instances
ReplyDeleteMarianela points out our methods or teaching practices may sometimes be on the wrong tract considering we are aiming at understanding. I also believe almost all of us, teachers, wish our students learned to reason and think about the concepts and not just memorize them by heart to forget them afterwards for good. But I would doubt the fact that many school teachers may be working towards developing understanding in students. Taking into account the number of students per class, it is an inevitable temptation to fall into just knowing ideas rather than understanding them. For example, it is certainly easier to have control over discipline just focusing on knowing. Understanding objectives require excellent class management which is more easily attained in smaller classes.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading everybody's posts I can gladly see we are in the right path towards understanding and effective learning. Nevertheless, there are two things I want to mention. i) How do we take all this into practice? ii) How do we transfer this knowledge to our colleagues and the educational system itself? The first, it is absolutely achievable if we fight to find the methodologies and strategies that allow our students to link what they "understand" with a real context, reaching transferability/effective learning. The second is a huge task that seems to fight back the article's proposal; therefore, we are going to be alone until one by one, all the teachers/components of this educational chain understand this is the way to teach not only some contents but "high-level" thinkers.
ReplyDeleteBye!