The argument is not about whether facts or skills are more important. Children need to learn a certain amount of facts and they also need to develop their skills. The real battle is actually an ideological dialectic on how learning is changing in the digital age.
The traditionalists are represented by Daisy Christodoulou who believes that committing facts to memory through instruction is the best approach for education. She says: "we can't just rely on the Internet to look things up" and argues that too much information overloads working memory. She gives the example of learning the times table, which she argues will allow children to perform better in mathematical calculation than if they rely solely on technology. She believes that teaching facts is the best way to establish this kind of skill.
The progressive side including Howard Rheingold, disagree. Rheingold argues that direct teaching is not the best way, but that in his experience, students learn better when they inquire among themselves (he calls this peeragogy) while they independently search for meaning. His peeragogy approach demands that he steps away from his students, and embraces social media as a route to learning, because this is where they tend to spend much of their time.
Who is right? Is it more important to be taught facts, and to memorise them; or is self directed peer learning, and reliance on technology the best way forward? Actually, both positions hold some merit, but both only tell a part of the story. We need knowledge and we also need skills to progress. However, ignoring technology is not the answer. Ignoring memory, and relying solely on technology is also a mistake. Working the two in powerful combination - that is using technology as a mind tool to extend cognitive abilities - is a better approach. It is an emerging phenomenon that few understand, and is easily dismissed. Today's society is increasingly engaged with learning through as well as with technology. Keeping up to date through this medium will become a part of the new social capital we will all value in the future.
The problem lies in relying on one or the other while ignoring the most important aspect of education - how children actually learn and how they become engaged in that learning. No amount of good instruction will be enough if students are disengaged with learning. By the same token, facilitating an environment where students are able to acquire new skills is worthless if they don't know how to apply them in the real world.
Several factors are important, including the relationship and interaction that exists between student and teacher, the relevance and meaningfulness of the content the student is learning, and the pedagogical skills and knowledge of the teacher. These are represented in the Venn diagram. The plain truth is this: facts remain facts unless they are transformed by learners into knowledge that they can actually use.
For me, the final word on this topic comes from Richard Gerver, and can be found in his excellent book Creating Tomorrow's Schools Today. He says:
'Information can only be power if you have the skills to use it to develop your journey and turn facts into knowledge. Knowledge is only powerful if it is important to you and your context.'
Photo and graphics by Steve Wheeler
Venn diagram adapted from original (source unknown)
Knowing and doing by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar