Being Pseudotaught

I'll be honest: I've had some extreme difficulty developing this post. I eventually ended up looking back through the original pseudoteaching posts, and this is what I found:

"The key idea of pseudoteaching is that it looks like good teaching. In class, students feel like they are learning, and any observer who saw a teacher in the middle of pseudoteaching would feel like he’s watching a great lesson. The only problem is, very little learning is taking place." (John Burk, Pseudoteaching: Hunting Monkeys) 

To me, the key phrase in that quote is, "In class, students feel like they are learning...." (Perhaps that's just my bias as a student, though.) But, I know the feeling of being pseudotaught. It's that feeling of sitting in a class, typically watching, as has been mentioned many times before, a lecture or a video (complete with demos!) and truly believing that I understand what's being presented.

And then...I try to apply it. Suppose that wonderful classroom experience was a demonstration on fluid pressure. Two hours later, I'll be walking down a hallway and see some objects in an aquarium when thoughts along the lines of:

"Now, that one on the bottom is under more pressure, because...no, wait, let me think...no, that's not right...huh?"

Immediately, that familiar sinking feeling of frustration and loss comes back to me. And once again, I know--I really have no idea what's going on beneath those waves. It's not a good feeling! It only goes to reinforce the struggle that many of my fellow students have with learning.

This frustration is one that comes to many students throughout our educational careers. In fact, I mentioned to a friend that I was struggling with a post on pseudoteaching. Her response, of course, was "What's that?" I sent her through the FAQ, and once she was done reading it, she turned to me and said, "There's a lot of that in La Junta." (She's right, of course. Not having attended any other schools, I don't know how we compare in terms of volume of pseudoteaching, but I would assume, from reading various other  edublogs, that many other schools have this problem.)

I have spent an incredible amount of time thinking about how to write this post. I spent the entire Saturday at a track meet, and when I wasn't running, my mind kept coming back to this. And the whole time, I've been wondering if the reason pseudoteaching is so bad but looks so good isn't that the student isn't learning, it's that the student does not retain what he or she has learned.

Let's consider a theoretical student, Jack. When Jack sits through a lecture in his English class on the "correct" way to read a book, he really does get it. He understands the method and the techniques and the why. But when he's outside of that classroom, it's gone--because he didn't retain it. His understanding was there, but not solid. And as a result, over even a short period of time, it doesn't deepen. Instead, it leaves him.

Now, I think this is why lectures, videos, and demos tend to be so ineffective. They don't give the student time to process the information they're being given, and as a result, even though the student may understand the material in the here and now, it's not there when it's actually needed--in the future.

At least, that's how it seems to me--and that's why I'm here, isn't it? 

Scripted Learning

Looking around the edublogosphere, it seems that many other edubloggers have their own catch phrase they use to build the rest of their blog around. Dan Meyer has his "pseudocontext," while Chris Ludwig has his "skills-based grading." I've actually had my own phrase in my head for the past week; I simply haven't had the initiative (or time or energy!) to type up a post about it.

Here it is: scripted learning. I admit it may not be an entirely original phrase (as a minute of Googling proves) but I came up with it myself, so I'll keep using it.

What is scripted learning?

At the risk of sounding too much like Jonathan Burk and Frank Noschese and their "pseudoteaching," I think there are two main signs of scripted learning:

1. The student is drilled in how to do something, with no real understanding of why this works or how to apply these ideas to other situations.

2. The student is then only willing to accept this method of solving a problem, because "that's how the teacher said to do it."

My sister was recently telling me about her preparations for the CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program) and she mentioned that she would "get in a lot of trouble" if she did not read through the questions first, underline certain passages and do everything "exactly the way [the teacher] said." 

Sound a little scripted to you?

Now, I recognize the fact that these are test-taking skills, not actual everyday instruction, but aren't scenes like this everyday occurrences in many classrooms? I'd be willing to bet that I am the only person in our school who has actually examined the proof of the quadratic formula. Even though it's right there in the textbook, a few pages away from the homework problems, curiosity has been squashed by this process of "do it this way. Don't ask why or how it works. Simply accept it."

Of course, no one would ever come out and say that. I don't think that's the intent, but often, that becomes the effect.  

Then, of course,  there's the second main warning sign of scripted learning: the assumed infallability (or maximum efficiency) of the given method of solving a problem. Time and time again, I will be working with a peer, and they will choose an elementary, clumsy, and roundabout way of solving a given problem. When I try to explain a more streamlined solution, I'm often met with, "But that's how (insert teacher name here) said to do it."

This, to me, simply demonstrates a lack of understanding to the deeper methods at work here. In the case of the quadratic formula, if you're going to derive it by completing the square on the general equation, you have to really understand the method of completing the square and why it works--otherwise, how can you solve an equation without any numbers in it?

Of course, I'm being undeservedly hard on teachers here. Students share just as much of the blame--after all, we're the ones who accept this. I have yet to meet a teacher who, when I began the "Why?" series, would not give me a valid solution.

But perhaps there is a better way. I'm here to offer my plea for bright students everywhere. I've often been asked by our district's GT advisor if I feel "challenged." Really, there's no reason why I shouldn't. I'm a sophomore in a plethora of senior/advanced junior classes. 

However, I think that the meaning of "challenged" is interesting here. If you want it to mean simply doing harder things--harder math problems, deeper essays, and more esoteric sciences--then of course I feel "challenged." But I like to think that there's a kind of "challenged" beyond that--beyond scripted learning, where the student has to really understand everything in order to simply survive. My biology class this year is a perfect example of this--it's the first class where I can say that I've really had to work so that I don't sink.

Why? It's because I don't have a teacher who tries to hold my hand and show me what they think I should know. Instead, I have a teacher who's willing to let me go where I want to. The poor guy may have students feel like they're teaching themselves, but hey...he's taught me more than I've learned in most other classes combined.

Now that's not scripted.