Claus Von Zastrow, calm and steady as always, looks at “the dark side of student engagement” at Public School Insights. Like “high expectations” it’s one of those standard education homilies that deserves a closer look. For starters, the question of whether or not a teacher is effectively engaging students tends to drown out important discussions about school discipline. “We should also be careful not to confuse engagement with mere entertainment,” he observes. ”Like all work, school work does not always offer instant rewards. The ability to delay gratification is an important life skill. There is way more to motivation than engagement.”
Claus cites a recent Teacher Magazine interview with Rafe Esquith, who gets to the heart of the matter:
I think the absolute key is that learning, the education of a child, is a long process, and we are now in the middle of a fast food society. We want instant everything. We even have books now like Algebra Made Easy and Shakespeare Made Easy. But I want teachers and parents to remember that it’s not easy! To be good at anything—anything!—takes thousands and thousands of hours of patient study.
This is of a piece with our ongoing debate over choice vs. challenge in literature class and the readers workshop model, which I believe swings the pendulum too far in the direction of engagement over discernment. Lincoln didn’t say it, so I will: You can engage some of the children all of the time, and all of the children some of the time, but you can not engage all of the children all of the time.
At least not without making education impossibly thin and superficial.
Thanks to you and Claus for helping bust the thought-cliches of the education world.
Comment by Ben — September 2, 2009 @ 5:39 pm
I am auditing a physics class, partly to learn physics (I took physics in high school but not in college), partly to see how physics is currently taught. There is a big push towards a “workshop” approach to physics, supposedly to engage more students.
I would rather hear the professor talk. I loved the lecture part of the presentation. Then when he had us do a “turn-and-talk,” my heart sank. My “talk partner” was very nice but had only a little more of a clue to the answer than I did. The professor then gave us some stats on how students change their minds about the answer to a problem after talking to each other. About 41% change from a wrong answer to the right answer. The rest change from a wrong answer to a wrong answer,change from the right answer to a wrong answer, or give no answer at all. I’m not sure where those stats come from, but they hardly support the idea that students learn well from each other.
The professor talked briefly about the “new” approaches to physics instruction and the research that says there has been too much “chalk and talk,” too much “sage on the stage.” (I kid you not. But he had a sense of humor about it.) The sad thing is that he knows so much and presents it so well that a pure lecture format would be fascinating. Of course it should be supplemented by discussion sections, etc., but it should not be replaced.
It seems that students are no longer expected to listen and think, even at the college level. They are no longer expected to struggle with concepts on their own. Immediate engagement replaces deeper engagement.
Comment by Diana Senechal — September 2, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
Just thinking out loud here, Diana, but is it possible we can come up with a name for students like you who take in information best by listening and thinking?
Is it possible you have a *learning style* that we must differentiate for? We are obligated to reach EVERY learner, aren’t we??
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — September 2, 2009 @ 11:31 pm
Targeting the Barron’s “Made Easy” series may score the cheap rhetorical point, but in fact “Algebra Made Easy” (and its Trig and Calculus sequels) are extremely good resources for demystifying aspects of high-school level mathematics. They are beginning to gain traction in homeschooling circles because because of their success in conveying math concepts to middle-school level students.
Comment by o.h. — September 3, 2009 @ 8:34 am
If there’s a cheap rhetorical point being made here, perhaps it might be titling a book “Algebra Made Easy”?
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — September 3, 2009 @ 8:43 am
But it’s not as if the title was chosen by the writer, or gives some sort of insight into the pedagogical philosophy of the book. Barron’s has a “Made Easy” series, and hired someone to write the math books for it. The person who write Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus for Barron’s happened to write good texts for those subjects, in an odd and idiosyncratic narrative form completely unlike the other books in the series.
I will grant the point that Barron’s may have been trying to attract the lazy when it established the series. I don’t even want to ponder what the publishers of the “For Dummies” series were thinking. But to single out what turns out to be an excellent math book seemed an unfortunate choice by Esquith.
Comment by o.h. — September 4, 2009 @ 8:35 am
“write” = “wrote”. They have a “Spelling Made Easy,” too.
Comment by o.h. — September 4, 2009 @ 8:36 am
I’m very much like Diana. I like listening to good lecturers and taking notes, not just writing down what the lecturer says but adding my own extensions and questions about what he or she is saying. I find working in pairs and small groups positively maddening when there is one person in the room who is paid to be there and teach me something. I want to learn from the expert!
I take dance and yoga classes, for example. I assume that the teacher is the expert. We don’t work in groups to teach each other the steps or the asanas; the teacher talks and demonstrates, and we follow. Lo and behold, it works!
Comment by Miss Eyre — September 4, 2009 @ 9:37 am
Miss Eyre, I am with you here. There is something absorbing about listening to the teacher. It gives you room to think of questions and ideas.
Robert, you bring up an interesting question. Why don’t we differentiate to the learning style of “listening and thinking”? The “listening” part is supposedly covered by the “auditory” learning style, but “thinking” isn’t even on the learning style list! Did they forget to include it when they were brainstorming?
Comment by Diana Senechal — September 4, 2009 @ 3:19 pm
I think the key is the difference between engagement and entertainment. Engagement involves thinking about what you’re learning, but that’s not so necessary for entertainment.
I think lectures can be engaging — for the most part they engaged me in high school and college. But I also know that they don’t seem to engage a lot of students — if they did you wouldn’t find so many students dozing and playing solitaire on their laptops.
Comment by Rachel — September 4, 2009 @ 3:39 pm