“The common idea that we can teach thinking without a solid foundation of knowledge must be abandoned, notes Lauren Resnick, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, in a new report from Education Sector, Measuring Skills for the 21st Century. “So must the idea that we can teach knowledge without engaging students in thinking. Knowledge and thinking must be intimately joined.” The report is by Ed Sector’s senior policy analyst, Elena Silva, who notes:
The belief that there should be a solid, specific, and shared core curriculum, an idea advanced most notably by the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, founded and led by former professor and literary scholar, E.D. Hirsch Jr., is not at odds with this approach. The Core Knowledge curriculum supports the point that learning factual knowledge and the ability to apply, analyze, and solve problems go hand-in-hand. Teachers using the Core Knowledge approach do not stress rote memorization of facts; they use an array of strategies including workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups because they know that students will learn best if they are exposed to both subject knowledge and ways to apply this knowledge at the same time.
The full report is here. Silva is hosting a weeklong online discussion on it with Eva Baker, director of UCLA’s Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, and Paul Curtis, chief academic officer of New Technology Foundation, on Ed Sector’s website here.
The more people who reject the false dichotomy between knowledge and skill, the better. Silva demonstrates that people who advocate 21st-century skills are not necessarily beating a retreat from content knowledge.
The quote by Elena Silva in this post includes something that jarred me a bit. She says Core Knowledge teachers “use an array of strategies including workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups . . . ” This seems to be a statement in support of the immediately preceding statement that Core Knowledge teachers “do not stress rote memorization of facts”. That juxtaposition gives me pause. It sounds like there is an underlying assumption that the way to go beyond rote memorization of facts is by including “workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups”, and that if we’re not including those things we must not be going beyond rote memorization.
My perspective on these things is quite different, and I always assumed my perspective would be very similar to the perspective of Core Knowledge teachers. My perspective would be that there is very little to be gained, and much to be lost in terms of time and opportunity, by using “workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups”. Can’t we say it this way? “Core Knowledge teachers do not stress rote memorization of facts. They go beyond that, as good teacher have always done. They carefully explain ideas and connections, they know when practice is needed and how much, they use carefully crafted homework assignments and tests, and they give extensive feedback by grading those assignments and tests.” That would make a lot more sense to me.
I agree.
What you are describing may work for some in the short run, but does little to solidify learning for all. How do you see “workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups” as a waste of time or opportunity? An ounce of doing is worth a pound of explaining, or, perhaps more aptly stated, one class of doing is worth a day of explaining. True, the above mentioned do take more initiative and preparation on the part of the teacher, but they make learning richer all around.
The problem, I think, is not with “workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups” but rather when it becomes more important to do those things than to ask why we’re doing them. Poorly executed, they become code for good teaching. For example, I had an AP who would wander in my room from time to time. If she saw kids working in groups and using math manipulatives, she was happy. That was the alpha and omega of her interest and input. I could have been teaching them that 2 plus 2 equals 17, but she wouldn’t have care — unless I was trying to do so without manipulatives. Why did this matter so much? “Because Ms. B (the district instructional superintendent) wants to see manipulatives in every math lesson,” she explained. That was it. Really. Why did Ms. B want to see that? God only knows. Maybe it was tantamount in her mind to differentiated instruction. Maybe she never said that at all, but that’s how a comment was interpreted by the AP.
When how you teach something becomes more important than what you teach (or even if you teach) we have clearly lost our way. How you teach something ought to be a function of what it is you’re trying to teach.