Thanks to Mark for the reminder on this. One of the things that I’m really enjoying here in the Faculty of Science is that people are asking as much about the technology as they are about what is good teaching about. So when these conversations come up, one comment that is almost always to be included is a lament on how students don’t take what they are learning in earlier classes (or even earlier in the same class) or other disciplines and integrate it to the problem at hand as readily as they should (as a whole) if at all. To this end, I present some strategies for encouraging transfer but I’m also looking at how assignments are built to help that transfer along as well.
So when I was reading the interview this passage hit square in the eyeball:
The problem is that a century of study in the psychology of learning suggests that this just isn’t how it works. Complex thinking of the kind that characterizes expertise isn’t simply lots of basic pieces put together. You can’t teach a bunch of facts and skills and then expect that people will reassemble them as needed.
Very well said David! We don’t get the transfer because we don’t teach the transfer, and those that are able to do that on their own are only sometimes rewarded (I still remember having to redo a science assignment because it was “a little to Social Studies” – it was an STS (Science, Technology and Society) assignment!!).
I think that we should really start looking into the teaching of these “combinatorial” skills. It’s not as many people might think “just another way to spoonfeed the kids”, it’s something that fits with the whole Active/constructivist/PBL ethos. One thing however that I don’t think we should do is train people for positions in the workforce, as by the time they graduate, the new positions that will come about (totally new, not derivative) will put us behind again (as it is we are already eternally behind). Having students apply a combined approach to classic problems might be the better way to go… I have no idea what these are right now, especially if we are wanting to be field independent.
So in the reworking of our educational system, so far the themes that have come up are:
- must be passion based
- must be integrated
EDIT – Feb 14 – Also take a look at Konrad’s PBL post for more on Passion Based Learning.
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