Meaningless Argument in Education

Progressive vs Traditional Teaching

(Memorable Teaching and Meaningful Learning go hand in hand)

If as teachers we truly care about learning, the ideas like “teacher-centered teaching is bad, student-centered teaching is good”, or “lecture based is bad, discovery based is good” or “a job of a teacher is not to teach but create an environment where students will learn” - all these are unhelpful, regressive, and idealistic ideas for us.

The whole debates, arguments, noise over “traditional vs progressive” or “transmission vs constructivism” or “banking model vs transformative model” are also unhelpful, regressive, and idealistic ones.

At the end of the day, yes, learning happens in the mind of the learners, and yes, when they are actively constructing meaning and understanding in their minds, while actively doing something with that knowledge.

Teachers can’t do the student’s learning. Yes, constructivists, I agree 100%.

But many educators exaggerate this “constructivism” and devalue the teaching process:

For learning to happen, students need to construct their “own” knowledge in their own way. And thus teachers should not “feed” knowledge to the students. Let the students construct their own knowledge by letting them discover it.

This is where constructivists start to get absurd.

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Teaching and Learning

What most educators misunderstand (or are unaware of) is teaching and learning are two separate incomparable ideas.

(When we make this teacher-centered vs student-centered comparison, we are essentially making apple juice vs black coffee comparison. And that’s stupid.)

In reality, these two run in parallel contradiction.

Teaching is INSTRUCTIVE while Learning is CONSTRUCTIVE.

For learning to happen, Teaching is the INPUT and has to be instructive.

Meaning, teaching is about

• structuring the content knowledge/skills in a series of instructions,

• setting up both external learning environment (eg: classroom) and internal learning environment (eg: securing attention, managing working memory, etc); and

• following up with assessments every step of the way.

Plus, teaching is hierarchical because almost all the concepts and knowledge that we learn are hierarchical.

Meanwhile,

Learning is the PROCESSING of

• sense making,

• meaning making, and

• memory making

so that students can apply and transfer the knowledge and skills, eventually beyond the classrooms and in different context. This is why learning is constructive: it’s the combination of both thinking and doing.

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Delete the Labels

If meaningful learning is not happening, no labels will justify the whole arguments going on in the education world.

Remember,

“Progressive education” and “Traditional teaching ” are superficial labels to pit teaching and learning against each other. (Of course, there’s a political and profit aspect to this labelling. This is meant to be divisive for a reason. But let’s not go that direction.)

For meaningful construction of learning to happen, teaching has to be INSTRUCTIVE.

In the context of formal education, for CONSTRUCTIVISM to work, teaching has to be INSTRUCTIVE.

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On a side-note, taking an idea from Gurwinder’s post.

Semantic Stopsign:

“One way people end discussions is by disguising descriptions as explanations. For instance, the word "evil" is used to explain behavior but really only describes it. It resolves the question not by creating understanding but by killing curiosity.“

Descriptions are not explanations. And the purpose of a semantic stop-sign is to disguise as something that doesn’t need any further explanation. Its purpose is to kill curiosity.

Therefore, when we hear “traditional teaching”, this already insinuates that it is a less desirable form of teaching. And, traditional teachers are bad. Similarly, when we hear “progressive teaching”, this is a more desirable or even ideal for of teaching. And, progressive educators are good.

This binary label has stopped us from thinking deeper and further.

Here’s my question to you:
Do you want teaching and learning to look “good” or to be “effective and meaningful"?

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For further reading:

Constructivism is not Pedagogy

Constructivism, or, Constructivism Part 1

Constructivism, or, Constructivism Part 2

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