"The paradox of knowledge-in-action is that in order to learn something new, one must do what one doesn't know how to do. The way out of this paradox is to realize that learning is a social process: We can learn to do new things by doing them with others" (p. 108).
It seems so obvious doesn't: working with others to learn new things? I think we understand this, but how often does collaboration and cooperation for thinking and learning actually occur in our classrooms? Why? First, it seems to me that much of the systems in place in school are to control thought and behavior. Learning to work in groups effectively requires time and energy. I feel many teachers fear that students will not work well together. Thought and behavior must also be controlled because teachers feel they must cover the cannon, the lists, the TEKS, and/or the TAKS objectives. Teachers have little time to get to everything and also engage in authentic conversations for the purpose of inquiry and discovery. The type of knowledge-in-action instruction Applebee purposes is messy. It doesn't necessarily fit into a nice neat package. Administers like order; the state likes to measure "things". Thus, we find ourselves teaching in the front of the room; students passively "learning" while sitting in their rows.
This year my focus is to encourage my students to work together to discover and learn. I have repositioned myself as a facilitator rather then the expert, and I'm actively instructing my students on how to participate in groups effectively. I strive to have a classroom which is a true apprenticeship into the the academic discourse, but it takes time because my students are not familiar with this way to "do" school, but I teach middle school. . .I have the patience of Job.
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3 comments:
You make me laugh. I'm patient, too! I agree that it can take a lot of time to teach kids to "do" school in a different way than they may be accustomed. Cooperative group work is a good case of this. I can never assume that my kids know how to talk or work in small groups. Learning how to engage in the conversation was an ongoing process...
It was always so interesting to me how when I would ask 11th grade kids what starting point they wanted to take in a conversation about the text, or when I gave them choice in research topics, they looked at me in shock and confusion. When I would ask, "What's the problem?" They would respond, "Um..aren't you supposed to tell us?" So, I agree with the high school kids who think it is odd that we say we want them to be independent learners, yet in many classroom situations, we take all of their independence away for the sake of "order." I feel my most productive classroom time was spent in a sort of "organized chaos."
And then we wonder why pre-service teachers act exactly like the students they will come to loathe when they have a class of their own. Those challenges to the banking method of ed (a la Freire) are few and far between, so pre-service teachers have few sustained opportunities to learn anything different. And these are the students who have gotten very good at doing school so they enter into a classroom and work to get their students to do school in the way they have done school.
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