This page has not been revised since January 2001
— so what you see below in this page is outdated —
but a new version (updated many times since 2001) is
much better, so I strongly recommend that you read
THE
NEW REVISED VERSION.
Here is THE OLD UN-REVISED VERSION:
Let's begin with an important question: Why should students want to learn?
Personal
Motivation
In an ideal educational setting,
students will be excited about learning. Instead of doing only what
is required to fulfill schoolwork tasks, they will invest extra mental effort
with the intention of pursuing their own goals for learning. Why?
Because they are motivated by a forward-looking expectation that what they
are learning will be personally useful in the future, that it will improve
their lives. They will wisely ask, "What can I learn now that
will help me in the future?"
An essential function of education, and
a satisfying aspect of teaching, is to motivate students so they want to
learn. Motivation can be intrinsic (to enjoy an interesting activity),
extrinsic (to perform well on an exam), and personal (to improve the long-term
quality of life). Hopefully, students will discover that thinking
is fun, and they will want to do it more often and more skillfully!
If you want to learn more about personally motivated learning (why it is a problem-solving approach, and what is required for effective self-education) and forward-looking motivation (building mental bridges from the present to the future, for the purpose of increasing what you know and what you can do), check the "bonus ideas" in the Appendix.
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A Plan for Goal-Directed
Action
An Aesop's Approach to instructional design involves
a goal-directed coordination of activities and methods, with three modes
of action: 1) define goals for education in terms of the
knowledge (the ideas and skills) to be learned by students, 2) design
activities that provide experience with this knowledge, 3) develop
methods of teaching that help students learn more by directing attention
to "what can be learned" from their experience.
These interrelated aspects of instructional design are explored in the next three sections. Then their interactions are examined in the context of a radical yet practical strategy for building on what already exists.
1. Define Goals so we're aiming for
Education that is Valuable.
2. Design Activities that promote Opportunities
for Experience.
3. Develop Methods that promote Learning
from Experience.
Discussion-Based Labs
and discussed in an optional Appendix:
Forward-Looking Motivation: A Closer Look
The Benefits of Eclectic Variety
The Logic of Science and Design
(hypothetico-deduction and retroduction)
sources: How an Aesop's Approach is related to Ideas
of Other Educators
1. Define
Goals, so we're aiming for Education that is
Valuable
What ideas and skills should students
learn? Thinking about this question carefully, with wisdom, is an
important step in the design of instruction, because our decisions about
activities and methods should be guided by goals that are worthy of the
time invested by students and teachers.
Of course, goal-directed
teaching is easier if students are motivated by their own desires
for goal-directed learning, and if there is
agreement about goals. When teachers and students share the same goals,
education becomes a teamwork effort with an "us" feeling, and
students are internally motivated to learn. When worthy goals are
highly valued by students, the school experience can be transformed from
a shallow game (of doing what the teacher wants, with the short-term goal
of avoiding trouble) into an exciting quest for knowledge in which the ultimate
goal is a better life.
2. Design
Activities that promote Opportunities for Experience
Activities and Experience
How can we design classroom activities
that are enjoyable and educationally productive? For a creative teacher
the possibilities are numerous, and the range is wide. Activities
can include: lively group discussions or debates, mentally active
listening or reading; an experimental project in the lab, outside
the lab, or using computer simulation; problems with students playing
the role of detectives; questions about concepts, problem-solving
methods, or "science, technology, and society" issues; case
studies drawn from history or current events; and reflection
activities that direct a student's attention to opportunities for learning.
During an activity, students can think and do, listen and talk, read and
write. Activities will vary in length: a mini-activity may be over
in a few seconds, while a coherent mega-activity (composed of related mini-activities)
can last several hours.
When students do activities
(as described above) they gain experience (as
in the list below).
During their activities, students (working
individually or in groups) can experience a wide range of ideas and skills.
They can observe and collect data (with only the senses or using measuring
instruments), analyze data by searching for patterns (visually or mathematically)
or working with statistics, make a graph (by hand or using a computer) to
use for data analysis, formulate a problem, analyze an existing experiment
or design a new experiment, use scientific logic (retroduction to invent theories, or hypothetico-deduction
to evaluate theories), search the library or internet to discover what others
have learned about a topic, examine the content and style of writing in
a journal paper, solve problems (varying in difficulty from simple to complex,
from algorithmic to improvisational), analyze a complex situation that involves
conflicting goal-criteria, apply familiar concepts or construct new concepts,
convert instructions (written or verbal) into action, or...
Of course, there is some overlap between
these two lists because it is often convenient to define an activity by
describing what students will do, and will therefore experience. But
despite this overlap, it can still be useful to think in terms of activities
(what students do) and experiences (what students can learn during these
activities). More specifically, it is useful to search for educationally
functional experiences that are opportunities for students to learn
the ideas and skills you have selected as educational goals. In the
present context, for the goal-oriented analysis of instruction (described
below), an experience is an idea or skill that
we want students to learn.
Exploring and Improving the Structure
of Instruction
Opportunities for educationally functional
experience can be analyzed using an activity-and-experience grid (as shown
below), with student ACTIVITIES in the top row and thinking EXPERIENCES
in the left column.
student activities |
| science experiences | # 1 | # 2 | # 3 | # 4 | # 5 |
| A. generate experiments | yes | yes | |||
| B. do an experiment | yes | yes | yes | ||
| C. use scientific logic | yes | yes | yes | ||
| D. generate theories | yes | yes |
This grid clearly shows multi-function
activities (scanning vertically down the second column, we see that
Activity #2 provides Experiences B and C) and repeated
experiences (scanning the C-row horizontally, we see that experience
with C occurs in Activities 2, 3 and 5). A grid may reveal gaps that
will guide the designing of new activities. For example, an earlier
version of this grid might have motivated a teacher, who noticed that after
Activities 1-3 the students have no experience doing A, to add Activities
4 and 5.
Of course, a "yes" does not
tell the whole story. A grid with larger cells could show more details,
such as the differences between a student's experience with scientific logic
in Activities 2 and 3.
In a grid, the visual organization of
information can improve our understanding of the educationally functional
relationships between activities, between experiences, and between activities
and experiences. This knowledge about the structure of instruction
can help us creatively coordinate -- with respect to types of experience,
levels of sophistication, and contexts -- the activities that promote experiences.
The goal of a carefully planned selection and sequencing of activities is
to develop a mutually supportive synergism between the activities, to build
a coherent system for teaching each type of thinking skill, to produce a
more effective environment for learning.
3. Develop Methods that promote Learning from Experience
Using Reflection Activities to
Increase Awareness
A goal-directed approach to instruction
has two main components: activities
that promote educationally useful experience (as discussed in Sections 1
and 2), and (in this section) methods
that help students learn from their experience -- and remember what they
have learned, and transfer this knowledge to new situations -- by directing
their attention to "what can be learned" from each experience.
How? By using reflection activities that
encourage students to think about what they are doing and why, about the
possibilities for learning.
According to Webster's Dictionary, reflection is "a fixing of the mind on some
subject; serious thought; contemplation." A teacher can encourage
reflection with activities that are explicit or implicit. In an explicit reflection activity, a teacher directs
attention to what can be learned, and explains why a student should want
to take advantage of this valuable opportunity. In an implicit
reflection activity, a teacher directs attention to a learning opportunity
by a request for action, such as discussing a question, that shifts a student
from a minimally aware "going through the motions" mode to a more
aware "active thinking" mode.
Teamwork and Motivation
When teachers and students share
the same goals, there is an "us" feeling of educational
teamwork. When students are highly motivated to learn, simply
calling attention to a learning opportunity is sufficient. But in
many situations, persuasion is helpful, to show the learners why they should
want to learn what is being taught.
Or we can reverse our focus when setting
goals in Mode 1, by trying to teach what the learner wants to learn.
During activities designed to teach thinking skills, if students are studying
topics that connect with their personal interests, they will think more
willingly and participate more enthusiastically. They will have fun,
and they'll be preparing for the future. How?
If students are studying topics they
find interesting and relevant, and there is a forward-looking expectation
that what they are learning in school will be personally useful in the future,
they will want to learn so they can improve their own lives. A teacher
can promote this attitude of internally motivated learning before a reflection
activity (or during it) by explaining how students can use "school
knowledge" in their lives outside the classroom. For example,
students will be more motivated to improve their scientific thinking skills
when they realize -- because a teacher calls it to their attention -- that
similar problem-solving methods are used in science
and in other areas of life, in the design of
familiar products, theories, and strategies. { Because the methods
of thinking in science and design are similar, we can use a "design before science" teaching approach to
help students learn scientific methods, by letting them begin with familiar
skills so they can build on the foundation of what they already know. }
Ideally, a desire to learn should
be motivated by a felt need. For example, on my first skiing trip, my goals
were to ski well and have fun, but instead I was getting clobbered and only
the snickering onlookers were having fun. I viewed my failure to learn as
a top-priority problem to be solved, I was highly motivated to learn, and
this made my education more effective. { For the story of how my despair
became joy, read How I Didn't Learn to Ski. }
Using Discussions
to Stimulate Thinking
While serving as a Teaching Assistant
at the University of Wisconsin, I tried a teaching experiment in the second
semester of a physics course. Instead of the traditional method used
in the first semester, with students writing a lab report that isn't graded
until the lab is over, we converted the writing into talking.
Although the specific technique described
below -- using a grid to provide structure for a lab -- was a new idea for
me, it is just a variation on an old theme. The general strategy of
using discussions to stimulate active thinking is common in education, so
you already have experience (as a student or teacher, or both) with this
approach to learning.
To prepare for a Discussion
Based Lab, I split a lab into parts and develop mini-activities (observations,
data analysis, calculations, questions about concepts,...) for each part.
During the lab, when students working in a group finish the activities for
Part 1 they call me over to discuss what they have done. When everyone
is satisfied that our discussion is over, I make an X in one cell of a discussion
grid (shown below for Group C) and they move on to Part 2. When a
group has X's for each part of the lab, they are free to leave.
Student Groups |
Lab |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
Part 1 |
X |
||||||
Part 2 |
|||||||
Part 3 |
|||||||
Part 4 |
Most students enjoy these labs because -- by contrast with traditional labs in which they write reports and get feedback that is minimal and delayed -- now they get thought-stimulating feedback that is detailed and immediate, while they're doing the lab and are actively thinking about it. Due to this constructive feedback and their increased interactions with the teacher and with each other, the students learn more and they have more fun. For similar reasons, these labs are also educational and enjoyable for the teacher. {details }
Some comments about the process of educational reform:
Radical and Practical
Educators should make decisions based
on merit, not tradition, by examining every activity (old or new) and asking
whether it performs a useful educational function. But this radical
attitude should be combined with a recognition that -- when our objective
is to achieve maximally beneficial results in a limited amount of time --
instead of aiming for a fresh beginning (with a new set of goals, activities,
and methods) it is often more practical and immediately productive to build
on what already exists, to use the past for improving the future.
The following paragraph describes a few of the many interactions (between
past, present, and future, and between goals, activities, and methods) that
stimulate and guide the process of design.
Modes and Interactions
Sections 1-3 describe modes of action,
not sequential steps. During the process of instructional design,
there is interaction between modes. Typically, design begins with
a careful examination of the activities now being used in a classroom: a
goal-oriented analysis of these activities (in Mode 2) stimulates thinking
about goals (Mode 1), which inspires a revising or supplementing of the
activities (Mode 2). Mode 3 is a logical extension
of this analysis: to help students learn more from their experience, to
help them convert potential learning into actual learning, we add reflection
activities -- both implicit and explicit -- that encourage students to think
about what they are doing (Mode 2) and what they can learn
(Mode 1) and why they may want to learn (motivation).
Appendix
This "bonus section"
briefly discusses:
personal motivation that produces intentional
learning and forward-looking expectations,
the educational benefits of variety (by
providing opportunities for some personal experiences and also some vicarious
experiences, and by using some direct instruction and also some inquiry
instruction),
the "reality checks" that are
the logical foundation of science, and
how the ideas in this page are related
to the ideas of other educators.
Forward-Looking
Motivation
An attitude of
intentional learning -- of investing extra mental effort with
the intention of pursuing personal goals for learning -- is a problem solving
approach to self-education because the goal is to transform a current state
of personal knowledge (including ideas and skills) into an improved future
state.
Effective intentional learning combines
an introspective access to the current state of one's own knowledge, the
foresight to envision a potentially useful state of improved knowledge that
does not exist now, a decision that this goal-state is desirable and is
worth pursuing, a plan for transforming the current state into the desired
goal-state, and a motivated willingness to invest the time and effort required
to reach this goal.
The use of knowledge can be viewed
from two perspectives: backward-reaching and forward-looking. Students
can reach backward in time, to use now what they have learned in the past.
Or they can try to learn from current experience, motivated by their forward-looking
expectations that this knowledge will be useful in the future.
In a forward-looking situation a learner
is anticipating the future use of an idea in a context that may be similar
(for basic application) or different (for application
involving transfer). When this occurs
an idea becomes linked, in the mind of a learner, to several contexts --
including situations imagined in the future -- thus producing a bridge between
now and the future. This mental bridge can lead to improved retention (so knowledge is preserved) and application
(so knowledge is more likely to be used).
Intentional learning and forward-looking application are closely related, and both strategies are activated when a student wisely asks, "What can I learn now that will help me in the future?"
The Benefits
of Eclectic Variety
Here are some comments about two
pairs of possibilities:
Students can gain first-hand
experience by solving problems, and second-hand
experience through stories. A balanced combination that skillfully
blends problems and stories, to provide both types of experience, can be
more effective than either type of activity by itself.
Similarly, instruction can take advantage
of the distinctive benefits of two ways to learn: direct and inquiry.
Direct Learning (by reading or listening) is
especially effective when techniques of actively constructive "reception
learning" are explained and encouraged, but the most important factor
is whether students are motivated to learn when they read or listen.
Inquiry Learning can be very effective -- especially
for motivation and for promoting active thinking -- when it is done well,
when there is a good "mystery balance" so the level of difficulty
is just right, not too easy or too difficult. / Appreciating
the value of one approach does not require devaluing the other.
The pros and cons of various teaching
methods -- and the benefits of eclectic variety (in contrast with always
using the same method) and reasons to avoid attitudes of "either this
or that but not both" that restrict educational options -- are explored
more deeply in the Activity and Inquiry page.
The
Logic of Science
In science, a theory is evaluated
by comparing the results of two experiments: a mental
experiment (with predictions produced by selecting a theory and thinking
"if this theory is true, then ___ will happen") and the corresponding
physical experiment (with observations made
by human senses or machines). A scientist compares predictions with
observations to determine whether they agree (thereby supporting a theory
but not proving it) and whether we should say "so what" because
the experiment is not able to distinguish between competing theories.
This hypothetico-deductive
logic (which is basically a "reality check" for theories)
is closely related to retroductive logic in
which observations are known, and through selection (of an old theory) or
invention (of a new theory) a scientist attempts to find a theory whose
predictions will match the known observations. The role of observation-based
logic, in science and design, is discussed in An Introduction
to Problem Solving.
Sources of
Ideas
Many ideas in this page will seem
familiar, due to a general agreement among educators (and teachers, students,
parents,...) about many goals and strategies for instruction, and because
I have borrowed from and have been inspired by the work of others.
But you may also find some fresh perspectives that will contribute "added
value" to the educational community.
A few ideas are mainly my own.
For example, to focus attention on the principle that instruction should
be goal-directed, with instructional activities done for a purpose, I constructed
a metaphor (Rusbult, 1989) based on analogy to Aesop's Fables. Some
ideas -- including goal-directed analysis and emphasizing reflection activities
-- seemed to be mine, since they were not based consciously on the work
of others (although, like most people in our society, I've been influenced
by a wide range of "background" ideas), but I'm sure these techniques
are widely known and used. Some ideas are general common sense, although
(as in my "goals, activities, methods" formulation) I've provided
a structure for them. And some ideas have been borrowed from other
educators: Bereiter & Scardamalia (1988) described a principle
of intentional learning; Perkins & Salomon (1988) suggested that
the application and transfer of knowledge can be analyzed along two dimensions
(backward-reaching or forward-looking, and high road or low road);
and Perkins (1992) introduced a simple theory that "people learn much
of what they have a reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn"
and explained its implications for instruction.
REFERENCES:
Craig Rusbult, 1989. Physics: Tools
for Problem Solving. unpublished manuscript.
Carl Bereiter & Marlene Scardamalia,
1989. "Intentional Learning as a Goal of Instruction," in
Knowing, Learning, and Instruction, edited by L. Resnick. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, New Jersey.
David Perkins & Gavriel Salomon,
1988. "Teaching for Transfer," Educational Leadership
46, 22-32.
David Perkins, 1992. Smart Schools:
From Training Memories to Educating Minds. Free Press (Macmillan):
New York.
USING LABS TO TEACH THINKING SKILLS
(re: discussion-based labs and reflection activities that
help students learn more from their lab experiences)
SEARCHING FOR INSIGHT
Learning from Mistakes (How I Didn't Learn to Ski),
and why employers welcomed an unconventional worker.
INTRODUCTION TO PROBLEM SOLVING
(re: using "design methods" to introduce
"scientific methods")
(re: the role of observations in science
and design)
PROBLEM SOLVING IN EDUCATION:
using IDM and ISM to help students improve their thinking skills.
ACTIVITY AND INQUIRY
{there is no link, because this page isn't ready for viewing}
the URL of this page is
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~crusbult/methods/aesop.htm
copyright 2000 by Craig Rusbult
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