So what is important for students to learn?

(My disclaimer is that I do not have an answer to this question!)

This question is something that I have discussed repeatedly in my educational career, and it may be one of the most important questions that schools need to analyze if they truly want to change.  One to one learning is one way to enhance what students learn and the ways that they learn.  It can turn teacher centered classrooms into student centered classrooms.  More importantly, it can move students from the bottom of Bloom's Taxonomy to the top level where students create.

 Unfortunately, one to one could also serve as a tool to promote the ways things have always been done.  Computers can serve as an amazing set of encyclopedias, and they are obviously a great organization tool for most individuals.  I cringe when I hear about students that are using technology in this way, but it is happening. 

So how can schools use technology to transform education?

One recommendation is to truly identify what students should learn and make those things the focus of everything the school does.  On my post from last week, I wrote about the core values from the Science Leadership Academy.  Those values pictured below were present throughout the school, and I don't mean that they were present solely as posters on the wall. You could see those values demonstrated in everything that staff and students did.

Schools need to genuinely evaluate the things students are learning in school.  How much time should you spend on something that students can find on the Internet in a few seconds?  How important is a concept if most adults don't know the information?

An idea to get this conversation started at your schools would be for teachers to bring one of their tests to a staff meeting and pass those tests out to others to see how your staff does with tests from other subjects.  More than likely, teachers will do very poorly on the assessments from outside of their content area.  This idea can generate some good questions that may get staff thinking about what students are learning in their classes.  If a group of successful adults can't answer the questions, is it really that important that students can?

Comments

[Marshall]

Much like your disclaimer of no answers, my perspective offers no solutions or answers. Ideas and questions, however, I offer freely. This is similar to a post of mine on Beating the Dead Horse as well. The post here is essentially talking about how technology can make transformational changes in the way we do educational business, and I agree. It is more applicable, however, to the paper, pencil, interpersonal, and print world than is given credit here. Yes, technology has had a lot to do with that by making things readily available and making it much easier to find necessary data. That strand continues at BTDH.

Basically, my concern is that we assess (and therefore teach and emphasize) a lot of material that is really resources for thinking. With the availability of information through technology and a myriad of other outlets, knowing facts and figures holds less power. Although it has its place and can be beneficial in a lot of ways, basing our learning on this level primarily only reduces the time we have for other, deeper topics.

[Simon Oldaker]

Thanks for this. This really struck a chord because I've been thinking about this for some time. How many teachers outside the math department could do even the simplest things that our pupils are asked to do in math class? How many adults outside the history department could cough up the information that students are required to?

I have a sneaking feeling that we are wasting a lot of everyone's time. Why don't more people ask your question "How important is a concept if most adults don't know the information"? There is, of course the point that adult ignorance could be a justification for teaching a particular topic: school as an agent for social change. Otherwise, your question seriously calls into question much of what we do in schools.

There is another question you ask here, though, that I'm going to have to take issue with. "How much time should you spend on something that students can find on the Internet in a few seconds?"

I'm a teacher, mostly of language, and I spend all my working time doing just that. Most of what I teach can be looked up in seconds, but that's irrelevant. Finding out how to kick a soccer penalty is a fairly minor step on the road to being able do well at penalty kicks. You get the picture?

I'm in the business of helping people learn, and that means helping them to be able to do things that they couldn't do yesterday. School was never supposed to be about information - that's what we had libraries for. School was supposed to be about learning.

Those "deeper topics" are important goals for education, but you can't get there before pupils have a lot of ballast on board. Lots of basic information needs to be automatized before you can meaningful debate or critical thinking, or any of the things we're really after.

[Nick Sauers]

Simon-Thanks for your comment.  You make some very good points.  I would actually not disagree with your comment about students needing to learn some basic things so that they can master much deeper topics and higher level skills.  With that being said, I think we spend way too much time teaching those basic facts and students rarely get to deep understanding.  Most students spend nearly 80% of their day doing things at the very lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy.  That doesn't seem like a very effective way to prepare students for today's world.  The question, "How much time should you spend on something that students can find on the Internet in a few seconds?" can hopefully be used as a conversation starter.  Educators need to become much more conscious about what is taught in schools.  When I reflect back on my time as a Social Studies teacher, I realize I spent too much time on those basic facts.  The drive to "get through" the curriculum can easily result in a total lack of depth in any content area.  I'm not calling for the elimination of all factual knowledge, but we need to closely examine all of the things that are taught in schools.  The most important part of this entire conversation may simply be that educators need to have this conversation!