I believe the goal of education is to help students learn and expand their understanding of the material. So what does it mean to learn and understand? Bransford (2000) states, ”intuitively, understanding is good, but it has been difficult to study from a scientific perspective” (p. 8). If understanding is good but too hard to study scientifically, how am I able to show my students are learning? Or for that matter what even is learning?
Before we dive too deeply into this question, as a history teacher I believe a quick history lesson is needed. In the past learning and education was mostly viewed as your ability to store information and how quickly you are able to access it (Bransford, 2000). While memorization is a good skill to have it does not necessarily demonstrate learning is actually taking place. Today there is a large shift focusing on learning, knowledge, and understanding; as the ability to transfer and apply what a person has learned to a variety of problems and settings (Bransford, 2000). I believe this idea is important now more than ever because, let’s face it, pretty much everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket. With the ability to look up information almost instantly educators can focus on connecting ideas and diving deeper into specific content. Taking the information and applying it.
History and geography are two subjects often seen as being a process of memorizing and repeating. While basic knowledge is important students need to apply their learning and make connections between the past, present, and future. My big idea as a history teacher is to help students become citizens who will help society progress. Learning is not only applying knowledge but actively engaging in the learning process or metacognition. Metacognition is the ability of a learner to critically reflect on what task(s) they have accomplished and evaluate the learning process. This evaluation could be positive or negative but the important part is that the students reflect on what worked and did not work for them, in order to create a better learning process and drive their future learning (Bransford, 2000).
When discussing learning two distinctions of learners exist, expert learners and novice learners (Bransford, 2000). Only two categories, kind of scary right? Even ski resorts have intermediate runs. The beauty though is everyone is on the hill and often changes between expert and novice. Everyone is a learner with experts helping novices and in some cases novices bringing new ideas to experts. Just like anything else in the world, learning takes time, trial, and effort to become an expert.
What makes expert learners different from novice learners is their ability to chunk information. Experts are able to recognize specific patterns of information more quickly and efficiently than novices (Bransford, 2000). Expert learners are also able to better organize and recall information more quickly, while novices spend more time searching for information and making connections.
As a history teacher contrary to popular beliefs, I do not know the exact date of every major event that has ever happened. I actually do not emphasize dates very much in my classroom. Some are more important yes, but if you are off by a year or two on the date of the Civil War does it impact your understanding of the war? What matters is my student’s ability to make connections throughout history and see the big picture. Students should know slavery was an institution for over 100 years before the United States fought the Civil War and understand how the divide between North and South still impacts the United States today. The ability to recognize the big ideas and make connections between them is how experts are able to demonstrate learning. Not only does understanding the big ideas make someone an expert learner it allows them to make more abstract connections and apply their knowledge to a larger array of applications, not just the handful used to teach the concepts.
In a world with ever expanding technology, it is an exciting time to be an educator. New programs can be used to help students better chunk information and make connections. With the ability to search for basic knowledge anywhere technology can be used to push students to think more and dive deeper into the material. Technology allows for students to interact with more cultures, new ideas, and make connections between themselves and the rest of the world.
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References:
Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000), How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Alex Gorton 