Teaching

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Teaching

• for

Understanding
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?
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?
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Educating for the unknown
Effective education for the increasingly
complicated interconnected world that students
live in now and will live in 10, 20, or 50 years
from now.
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?
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• The Three Questions You can Never Ask in
  Classrooms

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George Carlin

• The seven words you can never say on television

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• _at_!!
• _at__at__at_
• !_at_
• !
• !

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The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

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The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

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Whats worth learning? A curious case

• The Ohms Law Man

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Whats something you understand really well?

• Ohms law!

• E

• I

• R

• Heating ducts

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Whats something you understand really well?
Alert

• E

• I

• R

Expansive
Adventurous
Proactive
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Whats worth learning? Maybe

• Understandings of Wide Scope

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Im smarter than the average bear
Im smarter than the average Ohms law

• E

• I

• R

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An understanding of wide scope

• Central
• Illuminating beyond the discipline
• Proactively mapped

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Mathematical modeling

• Basic machines

Ecology
Models of governance
Human rights
Civil protest
Ratios and proportions
Statistics and probability
Tragedy
Energy sources, transformation, and uses
The art of story
Globalization
Conflict and its resolution
Perspective taking
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Gardner, 2006, Five Minds for the Future The
disciplined, synthesizing, creative,
respectful, and ethical minds
Adler, 1986, A Guidebook to Learning
EducationGreat books, generalists not specialists

• Postman, 1995, The End of EducationGrand
  narratives spaceship earth, the fallen angel

HIDDEN
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Whats worth learning? What about

• Quadratic Equations

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Ax2 Bx C 0

• Quadratic equations

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Ax2 Bx C 0
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Ax2 Bx C 0
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Ax2 Bx C 0
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Whats worth learning? Maybe

• Quadratics Reframed

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Ministry of Education, Tasmania, July 2006

• Models of growth

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Mathematical modeling

• . . x,

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The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

28
The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

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Three kinds of knowing

• Retention and application
• A possessive conception
• The laptop tech rep
• Understanding
• A performative conception
• Engineering to specs
• Active adventurous use
• A proactive conception
• From Ohms law to heating

HIDDEN
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What kind of knowing it matters?

• Possessive Knowing

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The Magna Carta
Knowing a lot well
1066 1492
AaBbCcDd


The French Revolution

3 x 7 21

206 bones in the adult human body
Boyles law
E.Coli
IT
Omnia Gallia est divisa in tres partes
To be or not to be
E MC2
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What kind of knowing it matters?

• Performative Knowing

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• A Snowball Fight in Space

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Understanding asperformance
Understanding aspossession

• Have an understanding
• Possess an understanding
• Grasp something, apprehend something
• Getting it
• Either you get it or you dont

• Being able to think and act flexibly with what
  you know.
  

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What kind of knowing it matters?

• Proactive Knowing

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Im smarter than the average bear
Im smarter than the average Ohms law

• E

• I

• R

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What big understandings have you found especially
generative

• ?

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What big understandings have you found especially
generative? The French Revolution

• Through the French Revolution, I was able to
  understand the generalities of world conflict
  (for instance, how the lack of freedom, poverty,
  over-taxation, weak economies, the struggle
  between the Church and state, or social inequity
  has always being a reason to engage in war).

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What big understandings have you found especially
generative? Narrative
HIDDEN

• (1) learned that narratives are helpful in
  thinking about our world, (2) realized that
  nuances will inevitably emerge which may
  challenge our narratives, (3) understood that if
  we do decide to endorse/believe in a narrative,
  we had better be ready, willing and able to
  defend it, and (4where I am now), firmly believe
  that while narratives do have an unmistakable
  allure and are useful (see 1), it is nonetheless
  crucial to NEVER overlook evidence that will
  support a contrary position just because it is
  easier to maintain an original one.

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What big understandings have you found especially
generative? Architecture

• My previous academic training and experiences in
  architecture has enabled me to continuously and
  flexibly move from looking at a particular
  problem in minute details of the small scale to
  the complexity of a problem in relation to its
  bigger geographical, environmental, cultural,
  social, political, and economical context.

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What big understandings have you found especially
generative

• ?

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The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

43
The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Educating for the unknown

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

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So how might teaching be different?

• Teaching for Understanding

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• From a performative proactive point of view

• Learning for understanding is more like learning
  to think scientifically with the content of
  science than just learning content.

• Learning for understanding is more like learning
  to draw or dance than learning specific
  techniques.

• Learning for understanding is more like learning
  to engage works of art or literature deeply than
  acquiring information about the works.

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TfU Teaching for Understanding
1. What do you want learners to understand?
Generative topic / throughlines
2. What do you want learners to understand about
it?
Understanding goals
3. What will they do to come to understand it?
Understanding performances
4. How will you know whether they are
understanding?
Ongoing assessment
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TfU Useful Sources

• The Teaching for Understanding Guide, Tina Blythe
  and others, Jossey-Bass, 1998.
  
• Teaching for Understanding, Martha Stone Wiske,
  Ed., Jossey-Bass, 1998.
  
• WIDE World online and face to face teacher and
  leader development initiativehttp//wideworld.pz.
  harvard.edu/
  

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• http//wideworld.pz.harvard.edu/

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So how might teaching be different?

• Dancing Mitosis Designing a Fish

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• What is mitosis?

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The Mitosis Square Dance

• All join round and mingle fineShake hands now,
  its interphase timeMore join in and dance just
  fineAll clap hands, its interphase time
  
• Centrioles move outsideAll join partners- then
  face insideOne to the left- one to the
  rightJoin your partner- its prophase time
  
• Etc.
•  

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Choreographing mitosis
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Designinga fish
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• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

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• In Conclusion

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Effective education for the increasingly
complicated interconnected world that students
live in now and will live in 10, 20, or 50 years
from now.
57
Educating for the unknown

• Understandings of wide scope, not quadratic
  education

• Whats worth learning?
• What kind of knowing it matters?
• So how might teaching be different?

• Performative and proactive knowing

• Teaching for proactive understanding

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The three questions you can never ask in
classrooms
Lets Ask Them!