Thursday, January 24, 2008

Death by Lecture

At every technology or educational conference I've attended a speaker announces we need to stop being the sage on the stage and instead be the blah blah blah...As if this little nugget of wisdom was an epiphany spoken only to them from a burning bush atop the mountain of public education.

Anyone familiar with my teaching, writing, or LECTURES understands I support a constructivist approach to education. However, we often become hung up on the tool being used to teach and lose sight of the power of the teacher who weilds it.

“The best saw swung as a hammer does little good” ~Herbert Wahlberg

According to Ken Bain, author of "What the Best College Teachers Do", there are five elements critical to effective instruction:

1. Create a Natural Critical Learning Environment
***Students learn to think critically when presented with authentic tasks involving subjects of interest.

2. What is the significance of the questions being asked?***Students can endure any what if they understand the why...better yet, the effectiveness of learning is increased when the learner is trying to answer their own question. What does this question have to do with the Big Picture.

3. Engage in higher order thinking skills
***Even as we plunge head first into the 21st century, the words of Dear Ben Bloom still ring true.

4. Create a supportive environment for finding answers
***Don't ask questions just to show YOU know the answer...aid in the discovery process.

5. The students should then ask "What's the next question?"***Part of the reflective process on learning.

Bottom line, a bad teacher could use all the digital technology and constructivist pedagogy in the world and it would still be bad teachning. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear...On the other hand, good teachers can and often do LECTURE with great success!

Am I right?

Can someone in the blogosphere convince me it's time to step off the stage?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

These comments come from people who are not effective speakers. Most professors are introverts. Therefore they cannot effectively teach using lecture.

Lecture is clearly the most effective way to impart information to a large group of people. If someone is confused, they need to develop a periferal educational skill of raising their hand to ask a question.

This a dis-information spread by someone who doesn't like public speaking.

Anonymous said...

These comments come from people who are not effective speakers. Most professors are introverts. Therefore they cannot effectively teach using lecture.

Lecture is clearly the most effective way to impart information to a large group of people. If someone is confused, they need to develop a periferal educational skill of raising their hand to ask a question.

This a dis-information spread by someone who doesn't like public speaking.

Pub Ed said...

I agree the onus for effectiveness clearly lies with the practitioner and not the practice. However, it can be intimidating for any student, let alone a minority
student or socio-economically disadvantaged student to raise their hand in a large lecture auditorium. Remote responders, aka clickers (http://www.einstruction.com/)
are an excellent way to allow all students to participate.
Can’t afford the hardware? You could follow the lead of a Notre Dame professor who encouraged students in his chemistry class to participate by holding arrows up
or down to indicate their answers. I purchased a box of popsicle sticks and glued cardboard cutouts of emoticons to them. These were great icebreakers for my literature class. Sometimes I would group students together who had similar emotional responses to a reading.
Other times, the students would be grouped heterogeneously.
Thanks for comment anonymous, we all have a voice and it should be heard.