Teaching How to Learn in a What-to-Learn Culture E-Book

Kathleen R. Hopkins

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 248

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Practical ideas for teaching students the skills they need to really learn This vital teachers' resource answers such questions as "Can intelligence be developed? Do teacher expectations shape student learning? How can I make learning 'stick' for my students?" Drawing from theory and research in learning, this book offers clear, practical guidance along with inspirational ideas to show how teachers can enable students to gain both the cognitive competence and confidence needed to succeed academically. * Offers techniques for students to develop their reading, writing, and math abilities * Provides suggestions for helping students build perseverance and diligent work habits * Helps cultivate students' reasoning skills for problem solving * Includes ideas for teachers to improve their students' verbal and written skills The book applies to any and all learners, including special needs students, and is richly illustrated with stories, activities, and examples from across the curricula.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dedication

ABOUT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING DEVELOPMENT

Foreword

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE - THE INTELLIGENCE DILEMMA

OPENING THE SKYLIGHT

A CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF INTELLIGENCE

DEFINING INTELLIGENCE

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

THE ROOT OF INTELLIGENCE

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

REFLECTION

CHAPTER TWO - A WAY OUT OF THE PRESSURE COOKER

THE PRESSURES ARE REAL

A SURVEY

THE NEED FOR MEANINGFULNESS

SURFACE VERSUS MEANINGFUL KNOWLEDGE

THE CASE FOR COGNITIVE MODIFIABILITY

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

REFLECTION

CHAPTER THREE - WHAT EVERY TEACHER NEEDS

A SURVEY

REFLECTION

CHAPTER FOUR - THE BIG PICTURE

ANALYSIS OR SYNTHESIS?

BACK TO THE CLASSROOM

THE POWER OF THE LIE

RETHINKING THOSE ROWS

REAL-LIFE CHALLENGES

THE CASE FOR HANDWRITING

AN EXERCISE

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

REFLECTION

CHAPTER FIVE - SETTING STUDENTS FREE

RATCHETING UP, NOT DUMBING DOWN

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS

REALISTIC DREAMS

REFLECTION

CHAPTER SIX - THE POWER OF ORAL LANGUAGE

THE SOCRATIC METHOD

THE RESEARCH

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

REFLECTION

CHAPTER SEVEN - MOVING BEYOND MEMORIZATION

MEMORY SYSTEMS

MEMORY TYPES

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

REFLECTION

CHAPTER EIGHT - THOSE INNER VOICES

INNER SPEECH

EXECUTIVE FUNCTION

ACTIVE WORKING MEMORY

PRACTICAL APPLICATION #1

THE CASE FOR GRAMMAR

PRACTICAL APPLICATION #2

REFLECTION

CHAPTER NINE - POTENTIAL OR PROPENSITY?

POTENTIAL

PROPENSITY

BUILDING CONFIDENCE

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

REFLECTION

CHAPTER TEN - REDISCOVERING THE JOY

WHAT IS YOUR SKYLIGHT?

WHERE ARE THE SCHOLARS?

THE POWER OF THE FABLE

CULTURAL RELEVANCY

STRUGGLING LEARNERS

CONSIDER YOUR CLIMATE

WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!

FINDING MARGIN

ONE MORE FABLE

PROFESSIONAL JOY RESTORERS

A FINAL WORD

REFERENCES

INDEX

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hopkins, Kathleen Ricards, 1944-Teaching how to learn in a what-to-learn culture / Kathleen Ricards Hopkins. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-58526-9

1. Cognitive learning. 2. Learning—Study and teaching. 3. Learning, Psychology of. 4. Teaching. I. Title.

LB1590.3.H675 2010

370.15’2—dc22

2009046004

PB Printing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Kathleen Ricards Hopkins has been actively involved in the field of education for over thirty years. She received her undergraduate degree in education from the University of Delaware, her master’s degree in education from Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and her doctorate in education from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Since 1991, Dr. Hopkins has been the executive director of the National Institute for Learning Development (NILD) based in Norfolk. She presents workshops nationally and internationally on topics related to the enhancement of learning ability. She was instrumental in establishing NILD community-based centers serving students of all ages who desire to go beyond tutoring and develop their abilities to learn.

To my family of educators: Ralph, Susannah, Kristin

ABOUT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING DEVELOPMENT

The National Institute for Learning Development (NILD) is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to build competence and confidence in those who desire to improve their ability to learn. Nationally accredited by the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training (ACCET), NILD trains teachers to improve their craft in teaching how to learn, not just what. Numerous dissertations have been written affirming the effectiveness of NILD’s methods. Since 1982, NILD has trained thousands of teachers who have used its methods with tens of thousands of students. Transformed lives speak most clearly of the success of NILD’s mission.

FOREWORD

In July of 1993, the author of this book came to Israel to participate in our annual international Shoresh training seminars. She was the Director of NILD and a member of the Professional Support Team from the NILD (the National Institute of Learning Development—formerly the National Institute of Learning Disabilities). The group numbered approximately twenty individuals, comprising the leadership of that organization. I knew of them well before this event, but was pleased to receive them, and understood what their participation meant. During the years preceding, and in the time since, I was quite aware of how the NILD activities paralleled in many ways the development and implementation of our theory and approaches. They represented the “content” side of the dilemma of learning disability, while we were emphasizing the “process” side. For these reasons, and others, I am pleased to be asked to write a foreword to this important book.

While it is personally gratifying to be quoted directly as much as I am in this volume, and to have so much of what the author develops in the text attributed to my theory, it is more important to reflect that this book is a manifestation and materialization of where the NILD has been going, and how its development reflects so much of what is important to me.

It was my feeling as I interacted with the NILD team in 1993, and has been confirmed in the years since, that they were searching for a coherent theory to provide a foundation for their intuitively arrived at therapeutic techniques. Early in the development of the teaching techniques of the NILD, as they were influenced and taught by Deborah Zimmerman, it was understood that they were, to paraphrase and quote Grace Mutzabaugh (1999) in her history of the NILD, doing something much more than “academic skills” tutoring. According to her, the techniques of educational therapy that are applied by NILD therapists have as their primary value the stimulation of deficit areas in the brain. The goal is not to enhance content, but to “change areas of the brain that had not yet developed or were lying dormant” . . . “as the deficient auditory and visual/perceptual were stimulated, the cognitive areas of the brain, where higher level thinking takes place, would also be stimulated” (p. 43).

From this point of view, the title and content of this book become critically important. It requires that we think about the process of learning and the structure of educational enterprises from a cognitive perspective. In this context, the theory of structural cognitive modifiability (SCM) and its constructs of the deficient cognitive functions, the cognitive map, and the parameters of mediated learning experience (MLE) provide a very specific and functionally operational basis for grounding what is learned, why it is learned, and how the learning can be applied to new learning and the demands of a changing environment. Moreover, as our theory and applied systems—the Learning Propensity Assessment Device (LPAD) and the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) program—have developed and been used throughout the world with a wide diversity of populations, the basic premise that underlies them, the modifiability of human functioning through the changing of brain structures, has received strong confirmation by the new neurophysiological research. We now know that the brain is the most plastic of human organs, and that plasticity can and must be achieved through cognitively oriented interventions. The title and theme of this book directly relate to the implications of this state of affairs—that we must find ways of teaching learners how to think.

In a paper titled Thinking to Learn; Learning to Think (Feuerstein and Falik, forthcoming), the limitations of the teaching of content knowledge are described, and the need to teach learners how to acquire rules and strategies of thinking that can then be applied to specific content is emphasized. We emphasize that the demands of the modern world require that learners be adaptive and creative, and that the human organism is modified by exposure to cognitively oriented stimulation, presented in the context of a mediational learning experience, rather than the simple transmission of knowledge, skills, or learning habits. The dynamic for this learning process is exposure to a very systematic and focused interaction that we have called mediated learning experience (MLE). The learner is engaged in a systematic interaction with a concerned and focused teacher or parent who interposes him/herself in the learning situation, makes that which is experienced meaningful. Of particular relevance to the topic of this book is the role that MLE plays in facilitating a transfer of that which is learned (the specific content) through cognitive skills that enable the relating and elaborating of what is learned to other areas of functioning.

Throughout this book, the author describes situations of learning from a cognitive perspective—the how to learn—and the relevant relationships to the content—the what to learn. We believe that this process is an essential aspect of meaningful, adaptive, and sustained learning. To illustrate this process we propose the following metaphor:

There are two shores on the sides of a flowing river. The flowing river represents consciousness and awareness that accompanies a dual process: learning the thinking and applying it to different contexts. On the right shore the student is exposed to teaching, mediation, and develops a repertoire of skills, insights, and cognitive structures and strategies for thinking. On the left shore is the plethora of facts, details, specific instances, and information that are available to encounter. The learning on the right shore, developing strategies, overcoming and/or strengthening any deficient or fragile cognitive functions, then is “bridged over” to the left shore and used to address the domain of content. The learned content is thus solidified, organized, grouped, and understood in a deeper and more abstracted (rules, principles, applications, etc.) way.

In the FIE program, we call this process bridging, and build it into the structure of the lesson. In this process, the cognitive structures that are learned in the FIE lesson are bridged over to the content. If we teach well the processes of learning, with flexibility and insightfulness (learning the rules, formulae, general applications, etc.) we will find that the bridging to content becomes transformative, and the student approaches new content with a flexibility and awareness that goes far beyond the specific instance or encounter.

There is, however, another basis for the consonance between our theoretical and practical approach—that of cognitive modifiability—and the development of the approach to teaching and learning that is reflected in this volume. It is the role of need and belief in our response to the needs of the many children and families about whom we share concerns. While it is clear that the child with learning difficulties and their families, teachers, and the communities in which they live have needs, I am referring to our need as teachers, parents, and therapists to respond to them. I have formulated this in the following way:

The need creates a belief, and the belief leads to the search for ways to materialize that belief.

If we need to have children succeed, we cannot let the child fail. Our need will generate a belief that what we need to have happen is achievable. With this belief, we will search for ways to help the child learn, we will take responsibility, fight for options, not give up, and encourage, stimulate, push, and prod those who are in a position to help, and ultimately we will succeed. We will bring ingenuity, creativity, persistence, and an enduring faith that our belief will be materialized. We will search for the best methods and explore all options to confirm our belief. This was our experience with the thousands of children who survived the Holocaust and needed to be integrated into the society of Israel who gathered them in. It should be the response to all those students who are not learning, who are not fulfilling their potential, but can be helped and brought back into the educational structures and can take their ultimate place in society that their real talent and potential is suited for. Those of us who have had this experience, including the author of this book, know what “miracles” can be accomplished. That it feels so for the students who are helped, for their families and teachers, is testament to the power of the need and the belief, and all that flows from it.

In this sense, this book thus represents a very successful attempt to translate our theory of SCM, the new knowledge of the plasticity of the brain, and an awareness of the demands of modern society into practice. It does so in straightforward and accessible ways. Returning to the NILD roots that we see in this approach, and the success of the movement to infuse educational interventions with cognitive and mediational components, it is to the honor of the movement that it looks to understand why it succeeds and to continue to look for ways to improve outcomes. In this regard, it is my view that this book makes a major contribution.

October 2009

Professor Reuven Feuerstein Founder and Director International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential Jerusalem, Israel

INTRODUCTION

From my earliest school experiences I dreamed of becoming a teacher. Today, as a teacher of teachers, the fulfillment of my dreams has exceeded my expectations. To write a book for teachers is my “skylight.”

I have borrowed from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. the idea of the three-story intellect with “skylights” as a frame of reference for the ideas I present in this book. My original intent was to put tools into teachers’ hands to facilitate the teaching of how to learn in a what-to-learn culture. But my passion to see teachers grow in both competence and confidence and to find their own skylights returns again and again. I find I can’t leave it alone. So while I trust students will benefit from the many suggestions and ideas included here, this book is primarily for teachers, encouraging and affirming their professional and cognitive growth.

My colleagues around the world are under new pressures to perform in a global race for educational excellence. I have watched some fine ones fall. It is my strong conviction that teachers need more than just a pat on the back and yet one more new idea to try. They need to know that they are competent to teach.

The ideas presented here are challenging. I have not proposed easy solutions to the educational dilemmas in which we find ourselves. But I have placed great confidence in our teachers and prescribed a way through the plethora of time limitations and endless worksheets that seem to be defining our rush to confirm our instructional success.

The premise of the book is that oral language directs and supports thinking skills. These are not new ideas. I have drawn on the theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Feuerstein and their ideas of cognitive modifiability and mediated learning. Through their collective genius I have devised practical suggestions for teachers to use with their students while, in the process, becoming cognitively changed themselves. Each chapter builds on the preceding one, so it is helpful to read them sequentially.

This is a book about learning how to learn, a process that never really stops for any of us. But it is also about the great adventure of meeting a child in the midst of a struggle and having the professional confidence and competence to get through the struggle and reach a skylight.

The great good news for educators, it seems to me, is that both students and teachers can increase their abilities to learn. There is no ceiling, ever. Learning how to capitalize on this great news is what most of the book is about. It is written for all teachers at all grade levels. My hope is that in addition to middle and elementary teachers, many high school teachers will see its relevance in their content-driven domains.

I have selected Aesop’s fables to illustrate life principles for today’s youth. The time line of educational principles reaches back through the centuries. I have also woven my own story into each chapter. It tells of both triumph and defeat, part of every teacher’s story.

Ultimately, I have written Teaching How to Learn in a What-to-Learn Culture to inspire change, to restore a sense of adventure, and to fill weary teachers’ toolboxes with some fresh ideas. It requires a certain openness to try new things, a willingness to put aside some things that do not work, and above all a strong belief in the resiliency and propensity of the human spirit. My sincere hope is that you will close the book with a strong sense of “I can do this!” Happy reading.

CHAPTER ONE

THE INTELLIGENCE DILEMMA

“I don’t want to have the territory of a man’s mind fenced in. . . . Their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight.”

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

I CAN REMEMBER, as a child, seeing a skylight for the first time. The ability to see clouds and blue sky through the roof gave me a thrilling sense of delight. It meant the ceiling did not have the last word. It meant endless possibilities, imagination, vision, dreams. Today, as an educator, I have several skylights in my home that continue to remind me of a world in which there are no limits, only possibilities. That is what this book is about.

As teachers we operate in a world of limits. There are time lines, deadlines, tests that have ceilings, students who have limitations. We desperately need to find the skylights. What exactly are these windows in the roof in relation to our noble profession? I will try to build the case that skylights relate to thinking, learning, assessment, and intelligence.

OPENING THE SKYLIGHT

We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Formal education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do. Is it possible that the brain yearns to learn and that good teaching can actually improve the way the brain functions? This is the idea that the skylight represents. This opening in the ceiling implies a lifting of restrictions, unimagined possibilities, a transcending of the predictable. So what do I mean by intelligence?

Intelligence may be best described as an abstract concept, such as beauty or honesty, rather than one that is concrete. The attributes beauty and honesty are measurable, but with greater or lesser objectivity, depending on who is doing the evaluating. And it is certainly agreed that these attributes can change over time. So it is with intelligence.

Intelligence, I would argue, is not a concrete thing, like a house or an egg crate composed of rooms or cells. Nor is it a trait of an individual—such as blue eyes—that cannot be changed. Intelligence is better viewed as a state that is fully able to be changed under the right conditions (Feuerstein, 2007). A more complete and compelling definition of intelligence for our purposes as educators is this (Feuerstein, 2002):

Intelligence is more correctly defined as the continuous changing state of a person best reflected in the way that individual is able to use previous experiences to adapt to new situations.

The concept is in fact summed up by the words the ability to learn from what has been learned. This propensity for flexibility and dynamic unpredictability is within every learner. This assurance that each individual has the propensity for change becomes the real joy of teaching. In fact, believing in these new possibilities can help us adjust what might be an outdated concept in our own thinking—that intellectual potential is static, unchanging. Let’s begin to unwrap some new concepts.

A CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF INTELLIGENCE

We hear a lot about intelligence these days. Is it an important concept? What should we as teachers understand about it? Definitions of intelligence are controversial. We have certain beliefs based on prior experience that must be challenged in light of emerging knowledge in the fields of education and psychology. Let’s take a closer look.

If I asked you to rate yourself as above average, average, or below the norm in intellectual functioning, where would you place yourself? This is an important question. It has been said that teachers are the most fragile of professionals, often regarding their own intellectual competency as low to moderate. Examining your personal assumptions about intelligence may remove some misconceptions and provide new ways of thinking about yourself and your students.

Our beliefs guide our practice. It is necessary to examine our beliefs about our students, ourselves, and yes, even our own capabilities in light of current theories and research. As we dig a bit deeper into the theories, perhaps we will discover that we and our students are more intelligent than we ever dreamed. Let’s probe new insights and explore together the meaning of intellectual propensity. Hang in with me here. We are going to set the stage for some amazing discoveries. My strong conviction is that you will not be the same teacher when we have finished our journey together.

DEFINING INTELLIGENCE

How many times have you used the word smart to describe students in your classrooms, wondering if they might be just a bit smarter than you or at least may become so sooner than you would like? What do we mean by smart? Does it mean intelligent, witty, creative, or just clever? It may well be just the ability to adapt to one’s environment as in street smart. Does smart mean the same thing as intelligent? Cleverness may refer to the ability to cleverly adapt to changing circumstances. There seem to be great differences in interpretation among all these words.

There is little consensus among professionals on an operative definition of intelligence. For example, when two dozen prominent theorists from the American Psychological Association were asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen different definitions (1995). The concept is wide open to interpretation. We who are educators should understand some basics. For the sake of the intellectual rigor that upholds our profession, let’s explore the intelligence dilemma together and examine three prominent theories explained by Rafi Feuerstein (1997).

Theory One: Cast Building

It has long been held that there is a measurable general intelligence factor common to all people. Intelligence quotients (IQ’s) have been widely used in educational, business, and military settings. This first theory assumes that there is one basic factor responsible for thinking, or a general mental energy known as “g.” This one factor “g” is presumed to be related to all thinking abilities. Because of its rigidity, this theory could be referred to as “cast building,” as in building a concrete wall. Intelligence is seen as a global capability that causes an individual to respond similarly in all situations, or to all concepts or ideas. Those holding to this theory conclude that intellectual capacity is a relatively easy thing to measure and one that remains fairly consistent across an individual’s lifetime. Is this your belief?

Theory Two: Brick Building

A second theory is a bit more flexible. Rather than cast building, it could be described as brick building. This theory refers to intelligence that has a number of factors responsible for various thinking abilities, and these factors are separate from one another, like bricks in a wall. Separation is due to the content involved in the thinking processes, as in Gardner’s (1993) multiple intelligences theory. This separation of process and content implies different ways of thinking relative to different subject areas. For example, you may have a spatial intelligence that helps you design buildings and find your way in a strange city but not be able to read very well.

A problem, according to Feuerstein, in considering intellectual ability as separate areas, or “bricks,” is that one area of intellectual competence presumably has nothing to do with any other areas of cognitive strength or weakness. That is, this second theory presumes that the systems that support the ability to design a building or read a book have no overlap. Nevertheless, it does introduce some flexibility into the intelligence dilemma.

Have you landed on a specific position yet? Can you be supersmart in one area and really dumb in another? Or are there supporting systems such as flexibility of thinking that underlie both?

Theory Three: Mosaic Model

A third theory could be called the mosaic model. This model resembles a colorful, creatively designed mosaic tile as opposed to a concrete or brick wall. The theory is more flexible than the cast building theory and more general than the brick building one. The mosaic model integrates the features of the other two by proposing:

• Intelligence is built from many factors within an individual, both cognitive and experiential.

• These many factors are general and can be related to all cognitive behaviors (like designing or reading).

• Intelligence can be described as either fluid or crystallized (Cattell, 1987).

You could picture fluid intelligence as being the background on which the mosaic tiles are placed. Fluid intelligence consists of thinking strategies that are separate from the content being learned. In other words, it is how one thinks, not what. Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the specific knowledge learned by the individual or the content or body of knowledge that the individual has mastered. It is the mosaic tiles themselves that represent functional cognitive systems.

In other words, this theory assumes intelligence that is separate from the knowledge learned or content measured by many IQ tests. Fluid intelligence—the how to learn—can cross over into many content areas and is open to constructive change. For example, strengthening visual processing could contribute to greater fluency in reading, thereby improving comprehension skills. In fact, improvement in fluid intelligence can contribute to content mastery or crystallization of knowledge. This is great news for all educators. It means that limits that were previously set now have a skylight—a window in the ceiling formerly imposed by intelligence predictions.

Let’s return to our skylight analogy. According to Holmes (1993), there are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. Those who only collect facts are one-story individuals. Two-story individuals compare, reason, and generalize, based on the facts of the fact collectors. Three-story individuals idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. If we can begin to understand that intelligence is wonderfully open to change throughout a lifetime and that, as teachers, we can influence intellectual development though our teaching, then the how to learn will take new priority over the what.

In one sentence, write what you believe about intelligence.

Now, apply your belief to your own intelligence and the way you function cognitively. Do you think the way in which you learn has an impact on what you learn or master? In other words, does your fluid intelligence, your basic cognitive functioning, provide for the acquisition of knowledge?

Let’s take an example. Suppose you are having difficulty finding your way in a strange town. You have a map but cannot seem to orient yourself to the street directions. In fact, you are confused about left and right. Based on past experience, you know that stopping to ask for directions may confuse you even more. Then you remember a strategy to deal with this problem. You stop the car and turn the map in the direction that you are traveling. All turns then can be handled easily, because you have oriented yourself in space.

This same remedy, reorienting either yourself or the material, can apply in other contexts. This is an example of fluid intelligence because it crosses categories. In other words, the correct orientation of visual information is useful in other tasks, such as reading, regardless of their content. If good teaching can contribute to structural changes in fluid intelligence, then the content to be learned will become crystallized more easily whatever the subject area.

Are you with me so far? We will add meat to these bones in succeeding chapters.

Let’s get practical for a moment. All theories must be tested in the classroom. Engage students in an activity that will affect fluid intelligence in the realm of visual processing.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

First, copy a series of pictures onto a transparency.