I really believe that Pink brings up some great points in his book. I think that we as educators must encourage our students to think freely and be creative. We must encourage our students to cross boundaries and try to see the bigger picture. So very often as teachers we are burdened with time constraints and may not be able to do enough creative teaching as we would like. We do have pressure to get results quickly which is sometimes why we are spitting facts out to our students so that they will be able to pass state-mandated tests. Also, with NCLB teachers may be afraid to be more creative because they are often stifled by teaching to the test.
I believe that testing is here to stay and we must not take this lightly. However, it is our job as educators to make are students critical thinkers. You can definitely still teach your curriculum so that students can pass the state tests while incorporating Pink's ideas in my opinion. We need to do more interdisciplinary projects that will help our students see why all their subjects are important and how they connect. You always hear students say, "What am I going to need this for?" Well a perfect way to show this is to cross boundaries in teaching and show how it relates to our global society.
We are in a vastly changing world where are students are going to have to be prepared to think on their feet. Some students innately have these skills, but for others it is a learned process. As educators, we must start this training at a very young age. We must find connections in the curriculum for students and relate them to other aspects of their lives. This way we will have not given our students a "tunnel vision" approach to the learning, but rather a broad spectrum of creative ideas and knowledge.
3 comments:
Mike,
Our curriculum particularly in the high school I feel needs to be revamped. We need to write curriculum backwards from the standards and program goals not just do as high schools have always done and teach the textbooks. The textbooks should be a resource for our students not the end all and be all of the course. Our teachers misunderstand their job which is to cause increasingly autonomous learning and transfer not just 'cover and test stuff.'
If we teach our students the proper skills within a context and teach them how they transfer across an array of topic or even everyday scenarios our students will be successful. Transfer of learning is the use of knowledge and skills (acquired in an earlier context) in a new context according to Grant Wiggins. Our students constantly tell us that they get a question wrong because they did not learn it that way. Students know more than we think but the harsh reality is that they have learned it out of context. We need to prepare our students to be able to use the skills we are teaching them and also make sure that they are LEARNING them. Just because we taught it doesn't mean that they have learned.
I completely agree that we need to make sure our students actually understand the information. Many times students are just learning to pass a test and then a week later they forget the information. If we teach and review, where we know and can see actual understanding then our students will have the tools to learn.
You mention that students should be "critical thinkers". What exactly does that mean in practice?
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