I think your distinction between public and private knowledge is excellent, thank you for shedding some light on this topic. Sadly, this was not an idea that was explored in my own teacher training at university. I'd be interested to hear if you think part of the confusion stems from using the word knowledge to describe both objective, public knowledge and a learner's subjective understanding? It seems to me that many disagreements about constructivism dissolve once those two senses are carefully separated. Many thanks again for your work on this topic
Love this piece. It echoes my anecdotal evidence. Of course students are the agents in constructing knowledge. But, in the context of teaching: teachers in schools do not teach individual students, but groups of students. That's why teachers do not need ideological zeal and dogma, but pragmatism and a balanced diet of methods to engage as many students as possible.
I’m sure you skipped over to the conclusion. The premise of this post is: for any biologically secondary knowledge/skill, in a school setting, students (especially beginners) need teachers to teach them. I’m talking about “students”, you are talking about “people” - which is not my claim.
The 'counter' argument--I hesitate because what I am about to say doesn't have to conflict with any of your excellent points-- is not that teachers shouldn't teach but that their instruction, being indirect, and conveyed through various symbolic means, requires an engagement with and experience of what the models actually refer to, not other models, 'mental' or otherwise, unless you want to invite some endless regress of representation. This argument, of course, goes back to St Augustine. So then the effectiveness of teaching lies not in pre-organizing input so much as orienting to some object, generally speaking, concrete social practice, the use of the models in expanding students' purchase on the world they will live in. And if that is discovery, so be it.
Thanks David. I had to look up St. Augustine for this.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing. I completely agree that symbols ultimately need to be connected to the reality and practices they represent.
My argument is quite narrower. I'm questioning the conclusion from "learning is constructive" to "therefore teachers should minimize explicit instruction."
My concern is with treating a theory of learning as though it automatically prescribes a particular method of teaching.
That was the source of my 'hesitation'. There are too many people who may think their jobs as teachers involves merely getting out the way. A lot of these appear to think putting a student in front of an LLM and letting rip is a good idea. On the other hand, there are those that will seize upon the obvious and well-documented strengths (shown by Hattie, etc) of direct instruction in many school circumstances, to advance an ideological back-to-basics agenda. Teaching then becomes a science of (social) reproduction, not ultimately of emancipation through knowledge, which I like to think I am about. In my own area of HE, in the very popular Constructive Alignment approach to curriculum outlined by Biggs, the 'alignment' part should be thought of as mainly the alignment between teacher and student motivations (the different objects of teaching and learning). Learning activity, meant to suture these two, provides the needed mediation. Your narrower point, however, is well-taken. I agree without reservation.
The allusion is from De Magistro, where St Augustine basically invents edusemiotics, BTW. I could have been clearer.
Thanks for the clarification, and I think we're much closer than I initially realized. I share your concern about both extremes: reducing teachers to passive facilitators on one hand, or reducing education to mere transmission on the other.
Where I'd add another distinction is between "instructional effectiveness" and "educational purpose". The evidence for explicit instruction primarily addresses the first one (how novices acquire knowledge and schemas most effectively). It doesn't however settle the second issue of whether education aims at social reproduction, emancipation, citizenship, or something else. I think those are philosophical questions we can discuss over coffee (or beer).
Excellent points, thank you. If only educational leadership could pivot towards more effective methods, but there's so much "sunk cost" in professional development courses, teacher preparation programs and state dept of education guidance which have all been touting the same constructivist dogma for decades. It's a big ship to turn but badly needs course correction. Which of the books referenced would be the best primer?
Great read! Medical education is informative here. Leans constructivist in teaching praxis because of context hyper-specificity. Canon is rare. Some rules should never be broken, others are broken daily. A bit wicked because Learners often experience the exception before they experience the rule.
Because of the variability in experiential learning (learner schemata built on a diversity of past experiences), orienting to any new situation is 90% of the teaching task. Hard to advance a learner’s schema if current understanding of the situation is not shared. ‘Remember the last patient we took care of who went straight to liver transplant, well here are 3 reasons this patient’s situation is different.’ Highlighting context is less about cognitive load and more about ecological awareness. Situational cues.
Examples / Non examples only make sense after constructing a schema as a team. Is it efficient? Far from it. It’s hard to build on a learners problem representation without them saying it (openly & honestly) out loud. Situativity takes time.
This is why dialogic teaching strategies are privileged over explicit instruction in clinical education (actual patient care). microskills like pre-brief (to orient) and debrief (to build) are paramount. ‘tell me your last experience admitting a patient with decompensated liver disease’ may be the single most important Q in the clinical teacher’s repertoire. Co-construction of robust schemas is not possible imo without this cognitive apprenticeship.
The implications on the experiential curriculum are therefore profound. The adaptive teacher who recognizes patterns in clinical situations is more likely to have an impact than someone trying to teach to the median or overrepresent the importance of one rule over another. The worst teacher misses the teachable moment, usually because the curriculum in their head didn’t map to the situation in front of them.
But to your point, canon must come first. All of this relies on learners who have learned *most* of the rules. My own privilege / bias rooted from teaching graduate medical trainees.
Thanks Cory for sharing this. What you shared is how teaching is done in medical education and that does make sense. This line of yours "The adaptive teacher who recognizes patterns in clinical situations is more likely to have an impact than someone trying to teach to the median or overrepresent the importance of one rule over another. The worst teacher misses the teachable moment, usually because the curriculum in their head didn’t map to the situation in front of them." perfectly makes sense too.
In this post however, I was pointing out to the confusion and a dogma around Constructivism.
“This is why I reject the common conclusion that because learning is constructive, teaching must therefore be “constructivist.” That is a false dichotomy.”
More like a false alarm, not a false dichotomy.
The one thing worth keeping from all of it is how people learn and what teachers should do are two separate questions
One depends on the other. If I have a vague idea of how people learn, then my teaching strategy is random. Master teachers know the student and how she learns intimately. Then the teacher can select the most effective strategy to advance the student's understanding of the world. Knowledge is useless if it is not understood, except for Jeopardy!
I think your distinction between public and private knowledge is excellent, thank you for shedding some light on this topic. Sadly, this was not an idea that was explored in my own teacher training at university. I'd be interested to hear if you think part of the confusion stems from using the word knowledge to describe both objective, public knowledge and a learner's subjective understanding? It seems to me that many disagreements about constructivism dissolve once those two senses are carefully separated. Many thanks again for your work on this topic
Love this piece. It echoes my anecdotal evidence. Of course students are the agents in constructing knowledge. But, in the context of teaching: teachers in schools do not teach individual students, but groups of students. That's why teachers do not need ideological zeal and dogma, but pragmatism and a balanced diet of methods to engage as many students as possible.
I disagree with the conclusion: for students to learn, teachers must teach. I people do not necessarily need a teacher to learn.
I’m sure you skipped over to the conclusion. The premise of this post is: for any biologically secondary knowledge/skill, in a school setting, students (especially beginners) need teachers to teach them. I’m talking about “students”, you are talking about “people” - which is not my claim.
Great post. I wish we could convince more people to drop constructivism.
The 'counter' argument--I hesitate because what I am about to say doesn't have to conflict with any of your excellent points-- is not that teachers shouldn't teach but that their instruction, being indirect, and conveyed through various symbolic means, requires an engagement with and experience of what the models actually refer to, not other models, 'mental' or otherwise, unless you want to invite some endless regress of representation. This argument, of course, goes back to St Augustine. So then the effectiveness of teaching lies not in pre-organizing input so much as orienting to some object, generally speaking, concrete social practice, the use of the models in expanding students' purchase on the world they will live in. And if that is discovery, so be it.
Thanks David. I had to look up St. Augustine for this.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing. I completely agree that symbols ultimately need to be connected to the reality and practices they represent.
My argument is quite narrower. I'm questioning the conclusion from "learning is constructive" to "therefore teachers should minimize explicit instruction."
My concern is with treating a theory of learning as though it automatically prescribes a particular method of teaching.
That was the source of my 'hesitation'. There are too many people who may think their jobs as teachers involves merely getting out the way. A lot of these appear to think putting a student in front of an LLM and letting rip is a good idea. On the other hand, there are those that will seize upon the obvious and well-documented strengths (shown by Hattie, etc) of direct instruction in many school circumstances, to advance an ideological back-to-basics agenda. Teaching then becomes a science of (social) reproduction, not ultimately of emancipation through knowledge, which I like to think I am about. In my own area of HE, in the very popular Constructive Alignment approach to curriculum outlined by Biggs, the 'alignment' part should be thought of as mainly the alignment between teacher and student motivations (the different objects of teaching and learning). Learning activity, meant to suture these two, provides the needed mediation. Your narrower point, however, is well-taken. I agree without reservation.
The allusion is from De Magistro, where St Augustine basically invents edusemiotics, BTW. I could have been clearer.
Thanks for the clarification, and I think we're much closer than I initially realized. I share your concern about both extremes: reducing teachers to passive facilitators on one hand, or reducing education to mere transmission on the other.
Where I'd add another distinction is between "instructional effectiveness" and "educational purpose". The evidence for explicit instruction primarily addresses the first one (how novices acquire knowledge and schemas most effectively). It doesn't however settle the second issue of whether education aims at social reproduction, emancipation, citizenship, or something else. I think those are philosophical questions we can discuss over coffee (or beer).
Excellent points, thank you. If only educational leadership could pivot towards more effective methods, but there's so much "sunk cost" in professional development courses, teacher preparation programs and state dept of education guidance which have all been touting the same constructivist dogma for decades. It's a big ship to turn but badly needs course correction. Which of the books referenced would be the best primer?
Thanks Brigid for the comment. I would start with Kirschner and Hendrick's How Learning Happens. Such an accessible and enjoyable read.
Great read! Medical education is informative here. Leans constructivist in teaching praxis because of context hyper-specificity. Canon is rare. Some rules should never be broken, others are broken daily. A bit wicked because Learners often experience the exception before they experience the rule.
Because of the variability in experiential learning (learner schemata built on a diversity of past experiences), orienting to any new situation is 90% of the teaching task. Hard to advance a learner’s schema if current understanding of the situation is not shared. ‘Remember the last patient we took care of who went straight to liver transplant, well here are 3 reasons this patient’s situation is different.’ Highlighting context is less about cognitive load and more about ecological awareness. Situational cues.
Examples / Non examples only make sense after constructing a schema as a team. Is it efficient? Far from it. It’s hard to build on a learners problem representation without them saying it (openly & honestly) out loud. Situativity takes time.
This is why dialogic teaching strategies are privileged over explicit instruction in clinical education (actual patient care). microskills like pre-brief (to orient) and debrief (to build) are paramount. ‘tell me your last experience admitting a patient with decompensated liver disease’ may be the single most important Q in the clinical teacher’s repertoire. Co-construction of robust schemas is not possible imo without this cognitive apprenticeship.
The implications on the experiential curriculum are therefore profound. The adaptive teacher who recognizes patterns in clinical situations is more likely to have an impact than someone trying to teach to the median or overrepresent the importance of one rule over another. The worst teacher misses the teachable moment, usually because the curriculum in their head didn’t map to the situation in front of them.
But to your point, canon must come first. All of this relies on learners who have learned *most* of the rules. My own privilege / bias rooted from teaching graduate medical trainees.
Thanks Cory for sharing this. What you shared is how teaching is done in medical education and that does make sense. This line of yours "The adaptive teacher who recognizes patterns in clinical situations is more likely to have an impact than someone trying to teach to the median or overrepresent the importance of one rule over another. The worst teacher misses the teachable moment, usually because the curriculum in their head didn’t map to the situation in front of them." perfectly makes sense too.
In this post however, I was pointing out to the confusion and a dogma around Constructivism.
“This is why I reject the common conclusion that because learning is constructive, teaching must therefore be “constructivist.” That is a false dichotomy.”
More like a false alarm, not a false dichotomy.
The one thing worth keeping from all of it is how people learn and what teachers should do are two separate questions
One depends on the other. If I have a vague idea of how people learn, then my teaching strategy is random. Master teachers know the student and how she learns intimately. Then the teacher can select the most effective strategy to advance the student's understanding of the world. Knowledge is useless if it is not understood, except for Jeopardy!
I agree with you Daniel. Except for the Jeopardy part. Is that a puzzle?
Yes, these are two separate questions.