The one piece of interesting data I got today was a group of teachers planning an activity of Energy Theater on global warming to do with 3rd graders, or maybe 4th graders (there was a lot of discussion about whether the activity was too advanced for 3rd graders). They decided that the objects would be the sun and the earth, and the kids would be the heat energy and the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. One teacher asked, "So some people are energy and some people are gasses?" The first teacher said yes, and the other teacher went with it. She corrected her once, when the first teacher lapsed into referring to the thermal energy kids as "the sun", saying, "They're the energy, not the objects!" Otherwise, everybody seemed fine with this odd mix of people playing both energy and objects. Aside from the one lapse, I don't think they were actually confusing matter and energy, just confusing the rules of energy theater. But I could be wrong.
The basic plan was that the heat energy kids would travel from the sun to the earth, and then the greenhouse gas kids would try to leave the earth, and the heat energy kids would stop them. The activity definitely illustrates something, but not really what's going on with energy in global warming.
The really depressing part of this discussion was the part about how much the kids should be allowed to figure out on their own and how much they should be told. The teachers debated all aspects of this issue for a long time, but it seemed like every time they concluded that the kids would not be able to figure anything out on their own and should just be told what to do. At one point, a teacher asked if you should let them come up with their own representations and present them and come up with a consensus representation a la the Algebra Project, or if that was too hard. They all decided it was too hard, and they should just give the kids a representation. After all, it was hard for them, so it would be extra hard for their students.
This brings up an interesting general question: If something is challenging for teachers, does that automatically mean it's too hard for students? For these teachers, the answer was yes. My answer is probably yes for content, but no for process. If instructors are struggling with the content of a quantum mechanics course, it's probably too hard for students (and everyone in Maine will know what I'm talking about). But students are capable of a lot more complex processing than we give them credit for, and you don't need to be an expert at process to teach it.
I totally agree with you that
ReplyDelete(1) many teachers seem to assume that "if it is hard for me, then it will be hard for my students"
(2) the statement is not necessarily correct and
(3) the statement is depressing (or maybe just not hopeful).
The spirit of a puzzle-solver is that what appears to be hard is not necessarily hard at all. Or put differently, it must be assumed that the appearance of impossibility is deceptive. So, to apply a puzzle-solving mentality to teaching is to believe firmly that some accomplishments of learning for the students are made possible and even easy with (and only with) the right instructional design.
I am confused by what Hunter means by the "right instructional design."
ReplyDeleteThis post illustrates some of the dilemmas expressed by our Year 2 participants. Many of them felt that they really wanted to introduce energy theater after their first year, but in some cases felt overwhelmed by their lack of understanding of content (not process) and lacked enough confidence to introduce new instructional strategies that deviated from the teacher's guide in the kit. I know exactly how they feel (not just with energy theater, but with exposure to any number of new ideas).
ReplyDeleteAs someone who teaches climate change to 9th graders and who has done a lot of independent study to increase my own content knowledge, I know that these are very complex ideas for high school students and adults. Having a discussion about what is developmentally appropriate for 3rd and 4th graders is understandable.
I want to emphasize that I am not agreeing with the conclusion that elementary students should be told what to do or that information should be front loaded. However, the participants' experience with combining matter and energy was in the context of biological systems and they may not have had enough experience with matter and energy combinations to feel completely comfortable doing energy theater with them.
Since I feel proud of the work that everyone did this past week, I would like to focus on a few items to celebrate, even if we do not agree with the teachers' conclusions:
1) They are thinking very deeply about how to use energy theater in their classrooms
2) They are concerned about how to provide the best instructional environment for their students
3) They care very much about how best to facilitate student learning
I am wondering if the global warming conversation might have gone in a different direction if some of us had been there to ask guiding questions. All learners (including teachers learning new pedagogical approaches) will default to "prior knowledge" positions if they have not fully understood and integrated the new information. I have to confess that I still have not done energy theater with my students (although I had other issues besides those described above).