A Quote
Often school is a long apprentiship in learning to be taught, rather than in learning to learn. So it’s not surprising that a lot of people come out of school … not very powerful learners … but maybe good at getting qualifications and passing exams.
(Source: Guy Claxton, in an interview with James Mannion on the Rethinking Education podcast.)
A Thought
It took until my second stab at university - the first one straight out of school hadn’t been too flash - for me to realise what it meant to be a learner.
I remember when it happened: a history tutorial. I’d lucked into being in the group that was taken by the course lecturer, and I really admired and respected her.1 But the tutorials were fairly dull. This was no fault of Giselle, who kept probing and prompting, trying to spark us into life. It was us. All she got in return was answers, and while they were generally good ones - firmly anchored in evidence, well thought out, and expressed clearly - everything was wrapped up too nicely: there wasn’t much to say after.
Boring.
I mostly listened. All the others seemed so smart and certain; I wasn’t confident enough to put my own answers out there. I didn’t feel especially inspired by them anyway.
Then, in this one tutorial, I asked a question instead of giving an answer. Giselle’s eyes lit up and the discussion fired up. New avenues of thought opened, thanks to her engagement.
My curiosity had been taken seriously.
And suddenly, I felt confident in my thoughts and motivated to learn more. My interest in history has remained and deepened.
Questions are wonderful things - if the learner gets to ask them and the teacher works with them. The best questions lead to new questions, and so the point of learning can’t be knowledge, but a quest to push further into the unknown (which is a bit messy).
Perhaps this is one of the ways in which a testing dominant educational culture undermines learning and emphasises the dominance of teaching: it forces us to keep looking for full stops, those markers that wrap up what a kid knows and can do.
Instead, if we want our classes to be places where learning dominates, not teaching, we should be alert to ellipses
…
and responsive to where they can lead.
An Action
Inject a spark into the …
Who in your class can see beyond the answer?
What can you offer them that shows you value their questions?
Giselle Byrnes, who would go on to much greater things like being the editor of The New Oxford History of New Zealand.