I recently had the opportunity to hear math guru Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) give the best example yet of why we should avoid the Curriculum Delivery Model in our schools as much as possible (See also What is Your One Wish for the School Year?). Our current curriculum delivery model of education, in which teachers are the center of the classroom and whose job is to fill the minds of the students with what they need to know leads to what Meyer equates to being a “spoiler” to the energizing discoveries, and therefore thinking, that could have taken place.
This analogy resonates because everyone can relate to a “spoiler,”something that ruins the surprise, in some form or another be it for a book, movie, or even a gift. Meyer used several examples of potential spoilers. As a Star Wars fan, I related best to the big reveal of the 1980’s that is to say, when we found out Darth Vader was Luke’s father. I had a reaction similar to this precious moment caught on video: Reaction to Empire Strikes Back Big Reveal. This reaction would have never happened if someone ruined the surprise by telling it before it was discovered. In our house the funniest spoiler took place years ago when my wife was totally immersed in the “Twilight Series” and one of our kids innocently asked, “Did you get to the part where Jacob is a werewolf yet?” She was devastated when that opportunity for surprise was inadvertently and innocently taken away from her. Do you remember a surprise revealed that spoiled a big reveal for you? Meyers point was that we do this to the young people in our classrooms when we “tell” them rather than allowing them to make the connection/discovery for themselves. As teachers, we don’t mean to spoil the surprise, often we think it is our job to tell, but in reality we are playing the role of spoiler by taking away the opportunity to think. So, if telling takes away the opportunity to think and therefore learn, how do we help our young people to think?
Our first step is to understand how thinking works. Dr. Derek Cabrera, an international metacognitive expert from Cornell University, created a thought provoking TEDTalk titled, “How Thinking Works.” In it he points out that “we are, as curriculum designers, teachers, and educators, over engineering the content curriculum and surgically removing the thinking, so are kids are simply following instructions, painting by the numbers, and getting the grade.” We often inadvertently, though with good intentions, “spoil the surprise” for the young people in our class by over scaffolding or straight out telling what is important to know instead of allowing our young people to make the connections that reveal the surprise on their own. As a result, when our young people graduate from high school and college they are great test takers, but not prepared for life to be thinkers and learners. We need to design our classrooms in such a way to provide the opportunity for our young people to be put in situations which allow them to make the connections on their own. Dr. Cabrera suggests four universal thinking skills that research shows has a positive impact on thinking:
Make Distinctions- by encouraging young people to make increasingly sophisticated distinctions between ideas, objects, and things. This leads to a deeper understanding through the creation of these distinctions.
Look at the Parts & the Whole that make up Systems- When we try to understand something we tend to either break it down to look at the parts individually or lump the parts together to understand the whole picture. Our young people need to be flexible in their thinking to be able to do both and therefore we must help to change the OR to AND in order to promote better thinking.
Recognize Relationships- Schools tend to isolate subject areas, but we need to help our young people to recognize relationships, see patterns, and make connections between subjects as well as within a subject. The world is interconnected and our young people need to be able to make those connections. This can’t happen in isolation.
Take Multiple Perspectives- Looking through multiple lenses promotes empathy, compassion, and even leads to developing better skills of negotiation. In short, by putting our young people in situations that allow or force them to have a different perspective we are promoting their ability to think different.
These are all examples of helping our students to be more metacognitive which is one of three major characteristic of meaningful reflection. “Metacognitive reflection can be used to develop resilience in the face of challenge” (Pahomov, 2014, p.110). By putting our young people in situations to be more metacognitive and asking questions which promote metacognition we demonstrate that we are not concerned with assessment (grades), but instead with self-improvement. Meaningful reflection also needs to be applicable. Reflection that is in the moment (formative) is more powerful than one that is after the fact (summative) because it is more applicable and therefore more impactfull. When this takes place in class, “reflection suddenly has a real and immediate purpose” (Pahomov, 2014, p. 112). Learning is social and in order to promote thinking and learning young people must be able to talk and reflect with each other. A classroom which promotes sharing, the third characteristic of meaningful reflection, will create a culture of thinking. Young people love to share their ideas, I see it all the time in our elementary schools, but by the time they get to the high school it is like pulling teeth to get them to share. Somehow we have stifled sharing over the course of their journey through school. We, as educators must be cognizant that sharing is a necessary component of meaningful reflection/thinking and therefore must promote dialog within our classrooms. Whoever is doing the talking is doing the thinking.
Thinking lies at the roots of democracy. Public education, when designed to promote thinking, can nurture those roots. It is more important than every to design classrooms that provide opportunities for surprise (avoid the “spoiler effect”) which naturally lead to our young people making their own connections. Through the promotion of the aforementioned universal skills of thinking we have some steps to create such a culture. This really can be energizing for the young people in our schools. A picture is worth a 1000 words, so I will end with stating, once this comic is no longer funny to the public (see below) we will know that we are making thinking a part of our schools.
References
Pahomov, Larissa (2014). Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Student
Through Inquiry. Alexandria,VA: ASCD.
