Connectivism Quotes

If active learning is such a good idea, why is it so seldom seen?

Powerful forces sustain the traditional teacher-centered approach to education. For simplicity, these forces can be grouped into three general categories: political and institutional barriers, epistemological barriers, and practical barriers.

[Question: which category of barriers are you most interested in removing?]

1. Political and institutional barriers. Administrators perceive active learning as an expensive proposition (i.e. small, intimate classes and low student-teacher ratios). [This can be solved with good design. How do you get active learning with large group of students? Start by hiring a good architect.] Incentives often point in the wrong direction: they elevate research over teaching, or suggest that little is to be gained by excellence in the classroom. Experimentation with unfamiliar teaching methods takes time, and, especially at secondary schools, time and energy are at a premium. Most instructors are already spending long hours, both in and out of the classroom, grading papers, preparing exams, reviewing lesson plans, and meeting with students. They have little time left for wholly new efforts, or for the emotional involvement that is required in active learning. This approach demands a willingness to meet students on their own terms and to get to know them as individuals; both responsibilities exact a heavy emotional toll. Moreover, school systems and state universities are often subject to tight centralized control, with governing boards that dictate content and regulate instructional practices by imposing standardized tests or uniform requirements. In such settings, the traditional teacher-centered approach is clearly the path of least resistance for many instructors.
   
   Students are often equally uncomfortable with the new approaches. From the students’ perspective, active learning is risky: it requires a change in roles and responsibilities, but with an uncertain payoff. Especially where these methods are rarely or partially practiced, students tend to resist their introduction, fearing that they will learn less in their classes. After all, the argument runs, if the teacher speaks less, isn’t less information being conveyed? And won’t learning be correspondingly reduced?
   
2. Epistemological barriers. Followers of the traditional model and believers in active learning hold fundamentally different assumptions about knowledge, the learning process, and the role of education. On the surface, the disagreement appears to be about the day-to-day details of classroom management; in reality, it reflects opposing premises and educational philosophies. Thus discussion is confused, the underlying issues are obscured, and resistance to the new model persists because it is far easier to change methods than it is to alter fundamental assumptions and beliefs.
   
   What are the core assumptions of the teacher-centered model?
   • sees information transfer as the primary goal of education;
   • assumes that facts and concepts can be learned without experiencing or directly applying them;
   • insists on the primacy of content and subject matter
   • regards the classroom as the instructor’s private preserve (not open to observation or criticism)
   • instructors are the hub around which the classroom revolves
   What are the core assumptions of the student-centered or active learning model?
   • focuses on skill development, the integration and use of knowledge, and the cultivation of lifelong learning;
   • wary of “inert ideas … that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.” (Whitehead)
   • gives equal weight to process and classroom climate
   • sees teaching as important enough to be subject to the same standards of oversight, assistance, and review as scholarly research
   • grants students far more authority and autonomy than in the traditional model
   
   There are more epistemological barriers: the Pygmalian Effect (Rosenthal). What you get from students is what you expect. Instructors who were told that their students were unusually talented produced better results than instructors who were told that their students were average or mediocre, even when there was no real difference in student mix. Apparently, instructors were communicating their prior expectations through inflection, tone, and nonverbal behavior, and students were responding in kind.
   Similar results are likely when instructors merely go through the motions of active learning. Students will quickly sense a teacher’s lingering doubts; and absence of real interest in their comments, perhaps, or an uneasiness when some point in the lesson plan does not emerge spontaneously in a discussion. If the instructor lacks faith, students will wonder why they should trust themselves to an unfamiliar and unproven approach.
   
3. Practical barriers.
   • EVALUATION. It is difficult to measure and document the success of this approach, especially over the short time span that most schools, colleges, and universities use for evaluative purposes. Many of the desired objectives—creativity, willingness and ability to continue learning, enthusiasm for education, greater personal initiative and self-direction—emerge slowly and tentatively over time; they are hard to detect with the usual standardized tests.
   • LACK OF CLEAR PRECEPTS FOR PRACTICE. Teaching of this sort is exceedingly hard to do. It requires a shift in the role, preparation, knowledge, and skills of instructors. Yet relatively few reformers have dealt with such operational matters, or have translated their lofty goals into the gritty details of classroom management. For the most part, they have argued educational philosophy, rather than effective implementation.
   • LACK OF PRECISE TERMINOLOGY, a vocabulary for talking cogently about the teaching process
   • MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS about active learning persist, for example, the view that active learning is identical to the Socratic method, that student-centered discussions are unstructured bull sessions, that active learning eliminates the instructor’s responsibility for mastering content, or that facts cannot be communicated successfully using this approach.