Information without intellectual is meaningless.
The purpose of education has to be more than obtaining a fund of information or learning sets of discrete skills. The survival of a society depends on its ability to respond intelligently and creatively to social, economic, political and environmental problems.
Humans are intellectual beings; we are made to think. And when we are successful in using our minds well, we feel intelligent----and are motivated to learn more.
This important premise applies to students as well. They feel personal satisfaction from using their minds well.
Some of the ideas I've gleaned from the reading:
A concept-based classroom is where:
Students are engaged intellectually
Learning experiences promote inquiry and move students towards conceptual understanding
An effective practitioner of concept-based instruction:
Goes beyond the presentation and extraction of information;
Designs lessons with questions and learning experiences so that students are investigating, building and sharing disciplinary knowledge and understanding. (active learning!)
*Designs lessons to encourage the realisation of additional insights and understandings generated by students.
Engages students emotionally, creatively and intellectually to instill deep and passionate curiosity in learning.
Is clear on what they want their students to know factually, understand conceptually, and be able to do in relation to skills in processes. (KUD)
Concepts CANNOT be an afterthought to be considered!
After a lesson, students will be able to:
Know (factually)
Understanding (conceptually), and
Do (skillfully)
[Note to self: think beyond the facts and skills and grapple with the "How?", "Why?" and "So What" of the content we are teaching]
On brain capacity:
Recent studies suggest that the capacity of working memory is decreasing
Consequently, we should:
Present fewer items in each lesson
Ask students to discuss them in more detail so that they are likely to remember them
LESS IS MORE.
When curriculum is organised around important, transferable understandings of a discipline, it becomes easier to select relevant facts and skills that exemplify the idea (understanding).
Having a Conceptual Lens:
Using essential concepts of a discipline to organise and prioritise information enables teachers to chart a pathway for students' thinking; providing a 'coat hanger' (or higher-order concept)/frame on which to hang new knowledge [John Hattie] because the mind does not relate well to unstructured data (1000% relatable).
Use of Guiding Questions:
[Conceptual lens: humanity & inhumanity]
Factual Questions
Why was the Holocaust a significant event in world history?
What beliefs did the Nazis hold that drove their actions?
What events led to the rise of Hitler's power?
Conceptual Questions [my understanding: extension of factual questions]
How do economic, political and social conditions shape views on humanity and inhumanity?
Why does silence often contribute to acts of inhumanity?
How are personal beliefs, values, and perspectives related to views of humanity and inhumanity?
Debatable Question [my understanding: no right/wrong; stir emotional reaction?]
Can one be inhumane and civilised at the same time? Explain your answer.
Students retain the factual information longer because the use of the conceptual lens requires them to process intellectually at a deeper level.
Also, because students are invited to bring their own thinking to the factual study, they are better able to make personal meaning. This invitation involves them emotionally --> they are personally invested --> hence motivation for learning increases.
Thinking:
1. Creative Thinking
Open-mindedness and curiosity - ability to reflect critically on incoming information, consider and "play" with alternative POVs, intuitively and flexibly look for patterns and connections between elements, propose novel solutions to persistent problems.
***Tasks, classroom discussions and assessments should not only reward right answers, but rather THINKING, because 'if you aren't prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original'
Ultimately, we want students to construct understandings that reflect the important, transferable ideas under study but also to understand HOW they arrived at these understandings. [metacognition?]
2. Critical Thinking
Seeking truths and understandings, being strategic, and being skeptical
Have an open mind to evaluate incoming information, determining the basis for and the validity of the views being expressed (given the slew of fake news)
Maintain a healthy skepticism towards information until all the facts are in; aware of the times when they are interjecting their personal bias into the evaluation of a situation, and attempt to hold their biases in check as they consider the evidence.
Use logic to solve problems - plan strategically for dealing with the issue by clarifying the problem and its components, by considering the validity of alternative solutions, and by laying out a timeline and sert of steps to achieve resolution.
3. Reflective (Metacognitive) Thinking
"Too often, students don't have much knowledge of the strategies they might employ to facilitate and direct their thinking"
4. Conceptual Thinking
Ability to examine factual information critically,
relate new learning to prior knowledge,
see patterns and connections,
draw out significant understandings at the conceptual level,
evaluate the truth of these understandings based on the supporting evidence,
transfer understandings across time or situation, and,
use a conceptual understanding creatively to solve a problem or invent a new product, process, or idea.
Note:
Students' thinking is inevitably directed by the messages we send about the value of thinking.
By explicit modeling and by designing learning tasks that require intellectual work, we provide a vehicle that enables them to evaluate their reasoning effectively and critically and to make connections between and among ideas, situations, and examples.
***Reflection on my current practice in a separate post.
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