This teaching tool seems so obvious, I wonder why it took 25 pages to explain. Of course students learn better when they can apply the new thing they are learning to something they already know. If I have a student that enjoys wrenching on cars and I can show how life is related to carbureators, then the learning process will be so much more effective, duh. Perhaps it's my simple mindedness but I'm glad I'm a teacher and not a writer of learning theory. The one thing that was useful was the idea that we need to know our students much better in order to help them learn. We all believe that what we teach is important and so we should be willing to do what it takes to get it into the lives of our students.
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This is the second time I'm trying to leave a comment. Unfortunately it didn't work the last time. But I just wanted to say that I agree with you. Though I think what he had to say is important and that we need to know what are students know so that we can help them, I think that the article was overly long. We do need to be able to do what ever our students need us to do.
ReplyDeleteDerek
hmm, interesting...some students said that was the best article so far this semester. Well, anyway, remember that meaningful learning/CIP evolved as behaviorism was the dominant learning theory, so it was rather revolutionary to think that people's prior knowledge and actually connecting to it mattered since behaviorism focused solely on overt behaviors.
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