Teachers and Students as Learners
Learning is a lifelong process. No one would argue with that statement. However, I would guess that many teachers may have a hard time admitting that they could learn quite a bit from their students. Those who aren’t afraid to ask students for help may find, just as the teacher in the article, Teachers and Students Meet in the Middle….as Learners by Jim Moulten, that their students do have much to teach them. This not only meets a need, especially with technology, but it seems that it would build the student/teacher relationship. I agree with Moulten in that it should increase the engagement and investment in learning.
This article reminded me of the Learning Pyramid that illustrates retention rates for each type of learning activity. It shows that when students are able to teach others, the retention rate is 90%. I can see how this relates to both students and teachers as learners. When students show teachers how to do something, the teachers in turn show others and vice versa, creating a climate of support and confidence.
October 10th, 2007 at 5:39 am
I feel like such a meanie, but the “Learning Pyramid” is another - relatively harmless - myth. It’s allegedly based on Dale’s Cone but the numbers were added to the Cone sometime after Edgar Dale published it.
See http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/05/people_remember.html for a pretty good run down.
And as a sidenote. I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Robert Heinich a few years ago. He lives here in Colorado. In that interview he maintains that the Cone actually originated with Charles Hoban, Jr., but that Dale actually made it popular because he was a master of promotion.
Once more, this underscores that what we think we know is more myth than reality — more superstition than fact. Whatever we might like to believe, we have very little science on the side of Educational practice.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:00 am
The learning is a two way street between teachers and students. There are things that students know that we don’t know and vice versa. Taking the initiative to swallow your pride and ask your students questions about something you do not know is a healthy thing. One, it dispells the myth to students that the teacher knows everything and two it shows your humanity.
October 10th, 2007 at 6:28 am
[…] one that just came up on another blog — the so-called “Learning Pyramid.” (See Joe’s post for the background*). I left a link to the refutation, explanation, and dangers in using the […]
October 10th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
[…] that there is a “Santa Clause” (this was part of a comment on the following blog: » Teachers and Students as Learners Joe McConda’s Distance Learning 685) and many of the concepts are good and do work. No system is perfect; education is just like any […]