23 Things I wish I knew Earlier
about teaching, learning, and education.
Here’s a list of things I’ve changed my mind, over the years, about teaching, learning, and education.
Learning is messy, unpredictable, and invisible. Yes, and for these exact reasons teaching must not be messy, unpredictable, and invisible.
You might have a messy classroom (from a learning perspective) but you can’t have a messy classroom (from a teaching perspective). That’s a recipe for failure.
I wish I had known this important distinction between learning and teaching.
Most students (even at the master's level) grow up with the idea that “learning has to be fun”. Adult students also have Hollywood/Bollywood references of “amazing teachers” in their minds.
In my early days, I was too invested in making every class “entertaining” and “fun”.
I still have those entertainment elements in the class but I like to shatter that belief in students piece by piece, now. Fun for the sake of fun is such a waste of time.
Most students come to the class not just with prior knowledge but also with prior judgment - about the class, subject, and teachers. Meaning, they have their own biases. They also come with their self-concepts related to the subject (eg: I am taking this course because this is a mandatory one. I will do just enough to pass it.)
You as a teacher can’t help this. Some of those biases could be positive, some negative. You will have to hit these biases on the head right away as you start the class. If you don’t, you will face frustrations.
Most of the student feedback is about how they “felt” in the class. Not about how they “thought” and “learned” in the class. Knowing this, I don’t take student feedback that seriously now.
(I still get feedback like “Your classes were so fun” or “I felt good in your class” from many students. I appreciate their feedback though.)
I now aim for learning reflection and frame the questions accordingly.
I thought engagement meant students are talking, interacting, making noise, and working in groups. And, as a result, they are also learning. I assumed so.
I wish I had come across Rob Coe’s presentation on “Poor Proxies of Learning.”
Most students don’t want to be autonomous, self-directed, and self-motivated learners. Even at the higher ed level. (Most, not all.)
I used to be annoyed and even resentful about this. Now, I don’t blame them. It’s just human nature. Learning is effortful, and we naturally want to avoid it.
Yes, they might enjoy “choice” but to sustain their action based on their choice is almost impossible (except in some rare contexts).
Now, my rule of thumb: All students need a lot of guidance, direction, and external motivation (especially from their teachers).
All students are different (eg: physically, mentally, socially, etc). BUT all students learn in similar ways. Their learning pace and depth of understanding might be different but the process is the same.
If they didn’t learn in similar ways, the teaching and learning process would be impossible.
Most teachers have vague ideas about how learning happens. Eg, the difference between learning how to speak one’s first language and learning how to speak a second or third language.
Some learnings are biologically primary (speaking, walking, dancing) while most of the learnings schools are supposed to teach are biologically secondary.
One of the biggest confusions in the education system is not being specific about the purpose of a formal school. Especially on the type of “teaching” process necessary for biologically secondary skills and knowledge.
Almost every teaching approach or pedagogy works. I had this mistaken belief about what is “traditional vs progressive” “active vs passive” or “teacher-centered vs student-centered” ideas. What a waste !
The primary job of a teacher, now I believe, is to understand the “conditions of learning” and figure out what works most effectively under what condition?
In a similar vein, there are no “best” practices. There are only “effective” practices.
What works for me with the students in that particular context may not work for you with other students in your particular context.
Similarly, there are no magic wands and silver bullets to solve the challenges teachers face in their classrooms.
Teachers, most of the times attending workshops, don’t like this though. It’s difficult to make them realize that there are no prescriptions. They need to figure it out themselves.
Earlier, I was rather prescriptive about tools, approaches, and methods. Now I focus more on learning principles, teaching principles, and how learning happens; and make the teachers think and plan to explore appropriate tools for their context.
Learning styles are a complete joke. Years ago, I thought I was a visual learner.
Try asking the students. They will also say, “I’m a visual learner” almost all the time. But that’s not their learning styles. That’s their “preference” for getting the content/input.
Finding out each student’s learning styles, grouping them into Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. And, trying to match your teaching according to the student's learning styles is a waste of time and resources.
Also, I figured out that admins, principals, educationists, and journalists love this idea because it makes sense for non-teachers and parents. It’s rather futile trying to make them check the research on how invalid this idea is. I have given up on this.
The first class is about “defining the learning culture” you want in the class. Establishing the rules, structures, and expectations. And following them consistently even when students make up “cute” excuses or turn aggressive towards you.
I have made the mistake of starting the first class by jumping into the content. And neglecting the culture part. And getting frustrated, hating the students, and hating my job. Not anymore.
(In rare contexts, you can also let students create a few rules and expectations. But after doing it for a while, you will be able to predict what rules and expectations students will come up with most of the time. So, let them do it.)
I used to think, a teacher’s job is to “facilitate” not “teach”. Now I have realized, that a teacher’s job is to “teach” which entails so much more than just “facilitate”.
Now, whenever I hear someone say, “I’m not a teacher, I’m just a facilitator”, I remember how naive, superficial, and wrong I used to be.
The whole “traditional education vs progressive education” debate or argument is meaningless to me.
I am more focused on how learning happens and what can I do to enhance learning in the students without falling into the philosophical, political, and trendy educational buzzwords.
(Also, it’s easier to blame any bad teaching as traditional than to explore the reasons and conditions of bad teaching.)
In my “youthful” days of teaching, there were times when I winged it. Went to the class unprepared because I thought, “I know the content inside out.” There’s no fun planning it every day, I used to think.
And when I did that, I could literally and figuratively feel the class crashing into utter hopelessness. Only on rare times, winging-it was fun (by chance) but most of the time, it sucked. I could see in the eyes of the students.
I will never go into a class without preparation.
Quotes are not prescriptions. The education world is filled with feel-good quotes by amazing scientists, educators, poets, and philosophers. But most of the time, they are simply quotes. Abstractions. Generalizations. And, completely out of context.
I have made terrible errors by assuming those quotes were about pedagogy. Like this immortal quote by Rita Pierson, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” Or this one by my favorite science person ever, Richard Feynman, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
Thinking happens in the context of a certain content (subject). It does not happen in a vacuum. So when I hear “Critical thinking” as a generalizable skill we need to teach right from the primary level school, now I know the peddlers have succeeded in making education dumb.
I wish I had known that critical thinking depends not much on the “steps” or “procedures” or “inquiry” but more on prior knowledge and experience.
Novices are not little experts. Kids don’t learn like adults. The foundational premise is mental models in kids’ brains are simple, shallow, and blurry while adults have complex, deeper, and clearer mental models of the world around them.
The “adultification” of learning at the school level is a complete joke.
On a similar note, the way teachers (adults, experts with knowledge and experience) learn during workshops or universities is different from the ways students (novices with less knowledge and experience) learn in the classrooms and school.
During workshops, as a teacher developer, my task is to help teachers “think harder” about why, how, and what they do in their teaching practice. And, the activities that happen in such workshops may not be that relevant for the students as well.
Teaching is a heavily communication-based process. Thus it is easy to create “cognitive overload” in the students’ minds through over-teaching.
One of the skills of an effective teacher, now I believe, is to be able to streamline the communication process with the students.
Eg, how to explain without making their heads hurt; how not to overload their “working memory”, how to give instruction without confusing the students; how to not create “noise” in the learning process.
Teaching is both an art and a science. But for me, teaching is more of a science than of an art.
If I focus on the science part (how teaching happens, disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, cognitive psychology, etc), I can gradually develop the art part of teaching (making choices with instructional design, approaches, techniques, and strategies; and expressing who I am as a teacher).
Learning has both visible and invisible sides.
It’s easier to feel satisfied by focusing on the visible side (activities, students doing something, talking, interacting, discussing, etc) and neglecting the important invisible side (what are the students thinking while doing such activities, and how are they making connections between concepts and information).
When I was a novice teacher, needless to say, I only knew how to focus on the visible side of learning.
To reiterate the last point: one of the biggest myths I used to believe in without question was: teaching and learning are identical processes.
However, there are at least three contradictory realities:
Learning is invisible, but teaching is visible.
Learning is unstructured, but teaching is structured.
Learning is uncertain, but teaching is certain.
Teaching and learning processes are contradictory.
I want to do a similar list next year in 2025. I am keeping an open mind about teaching and learning, especially now in the age of AI. I want to keep challenging my own beliefs regardless.
I invite you to share yours too - things you have changed your minds about teaching and learning.
I once worked with an external trainer whose premise was that the most important thing about a training session is that the trainees should have fun. She and I clashed - I argued that the most important thing in a work training session is that at the end of the session, the trainees can do the thing we are teaching them to do.
Re learning styles - when I was a baby trainer in the 90s, we were taught about learning styles but the gist of it was 'everyone has different learning styles, so put all training modalities in your training session so there is something for everyone'.
This seems to have morphed into 'people have learning styles programmed into their brains from birth and any training for that person must be conducted only in their learning style'. Which doesn't make sense to me.
I had this tab open for a while -- just found time and read it more carefully. Thank you for sharing your journey and your teaching ideas, Umes. This post was super thought provoking.