Today’s post is the written result of ongoing mental grappling about an issue (issues?) that I find endlessly fascinating: Teaching and Learning. To me, at the heart of every discussion about any proposed school reform on the educational horizon there lies a single burning question: If we implement reform x, how will it improve the teaching and learning going on in classrooms? If the answer is “It won’t!”, then why bother with the reform? Now let’s delve a little deeper: In order to determine if a reform will improve teaching and learning, we should probably agree on what good teaching and learning looks like. So what does good teaching and learning look like? Now here’s where things get interesting!

First, let’s consider the words themselves. In an interesting article in Edweek called “It’s Not What We Teach, It’s What They Learn,” Alfie Kohn argues that educators often concern themselves more with what they teach than with what students learn. They (or should I say “we” because I have been guilty of this offense on numerous occasions) prepare and perfect lessons and lectures to deliver to students who, we assume, are like empty pails waiting to be filled up with the knowledge and skills we pour into them. If only it were that easy. In fact, cognitive psychologists will tell you that students learn by making sense of things for themselves. They don’t absorb knowledge – they construct it. (And if they do “absorb knowledge”, they’re probably just memorizing information to be regurgitated later on a standardized test and then forgotten. Should we even consider that learning?) One of my favorite oft-repeated mantras that I learned from Deborah Meier is “teaching is mostly listening and learning is mostly telling.” Such a simple phrase yet so powerful – it literally turns the classic image of schooling on its head. While understanding this statement is one thing, implementing it in schools and classrooms is quite another.

Thanks to George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act,  many public schools across the country feel compelled to obsessively prepare students to pass high stakes standardized tests. (See previous post here.)  Given that standards, curriculum, assessment and pedagogy are inextricably linked, when you have very broad standards that cover many topics, standardized tests that assess students’ extensive but shallow knowledge of numerous facts and skills, and curriculum designed to “cover” all the material, teachers are practically forced to teach by “dumping” knowledge into students and drilling them over and over again to make sure they retain the information – at least until after the test. Even the best public schools struggle to find a balance between “covering” all the material students should know, while still giving them opportunities to delve deeply into subject matter, grapple with complex problems and issues, and develop “21st century skills”  like critical and creative thinking. (Not to mention time for self expression through art and music). Unfortunately, teaching to the test often wins the day.

What’s most challenging, I think, is that learning is a complicated thing. And when you consider the fact that children have different ways of processing information based on previous knowledge and past experience which varies from child to child, teaching teachers to engage and challenge classrooms full of children to maximize their learning potential is not easy. Further, designing curriculum and assessments that develop and measure complex skills is a lot more difficult than producing the standard text books and bubble tests we’re so used to. So when it comes to improving teaching and learning nationwide, where do we begin?

I’ve come to the end of my post and feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Stay tuned as I continue this train of thought in future posts.

In the meantime, takepart by reading a terrific blog on Education Week’s website called Bridging Differences (Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch blog back and forth to each other on issues related to improving schools.) Also, check out a few of my favorite books on teaching and learning here, here and here.

(Photo: cliff1066’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons)