Knowledge or Understanding?
I think that we as teachers of English are always exposed to deal with these concepts of “knowing” and “understanding” in our classrooms, since it’s very common to find students who although might know the meanings of the words that appear in a sentence or in a short paragraph, they are unable to create or give a whole meaning to the text they read. They tend to translate, word by word, but then they realize it is not enough. Therefore, the same students come to the conclusion that knowing words doesn’t really imply understanding, they need to make meaning of the facts. It’s more than words and it is in this process that teachers play an essential role, because we must give them tools to help and guide them in this process of understanding.
Transfer as a key to a good education
According to Bransford, Brown and Cocking, developing the ability to transfer one’s learning is key to a good education, and I think they are absolutely right in their comment, because students tend to think that what is learned in the English lesson has nothing to do with History or Language, or any other subject; and when they realize that there is a slight connection between subjects they feel quite puzzled, since it is not a common practice. We as teachers must recognize that the lack of transferability in our students is not only their fault, but ours too. Because this important process should be guided by teachers, through cross-curricular work for example, which implies permanent communication among teachers, so that what is studied in the English lesson today, might be seen in the History lesson next week, from another point of view probably, but students will notice the correlation and it is going to make sense to them.
Misunderstanding
According to Wiggins and Mc Tighe misunderstanding is not ignorance but the mapping of a working idea in a plausible but incorrect way in a new situation. It’s not that students don’t get the point of the things we are dealing with in the lesson; it’s not that they don’t understand a thing. In fact, students must have some kind of knowledge in order to fail or misunderstand things during the transfer process.
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Lack of transferability, as you suggest here, is one key issue in our reality, for it is a main drawback when reffering to learning. In order that students really learn, transferability of learning has to take place
ReplyDeleteAs you say, it is not only the students' fault, but ours, for it is 'us' who are engaged in this hard venture of teaching, and teaching how to learn of course.'
'Teaching for life', as one of my teachers at ULS usually used to say to us when talking about learning issues.
thx
ReplyDeletesp
Sorry it is ' in order that students can really learn'...
ReplyDeleteTalking about your first comment on knowledge or understanding, students must be challenged to use information in a constructive way where the difficulty of this information has to be adjusted to the appropriate developmental level of students. They can not comprehend ideas alone, but with the appropriate assistance of teachers, the idea might be understood. Vygotsky called this concept the zone of proximal development.
ReplyDeleteCross-curricular objectives is another important topic. The importance of contextualizing English as part of our every day life is crucial. English is connected with everything rather than being just a subject in isolation.
As you pointed out “transfer is key to a good education”, I completely agree with you on this. I think it is crucial to make our students be able to transfer what they have learnt and put it into practice. In this sense, our students will show real and concrete evidence of the effective learning they have gotten through. However it is a huge task to be developed, because to get that, we teacher have to perform our job properly, we have to think, plan and finally perform our classes.
ReplyDeleteAngelina
Dear Scarlette:
ReplyDeleteYou mention two important aspects in your reflection. An aspect that probably might be a boost for the process of understanding. You said that one of the goals is transferability, “so that what is studied in the English lesson today, might be seen in the History lesson next week” and “students tend to think that what is learned in the English lesson has nothing to do with History or Language, or any other subject”. If we talk about transferability we certainly should work as a big tight team. Now, in order to get this objective, you need to be in the perfect school with committed teachers willing to do team work with one purpose. The ‘American dream’. I believe that intertwining subjects, concepts, knowledge we can make all this theory a bit more concrete, meaningful, and ready to be applicable in any other context.
Best!
xx
Claudio
Hi Scarlette,
ReplyDeleteYou have pointed out two relevant aspects of our every day teaching, which is basically transferability and the missing skills which allow the latter to occur.
It is quite frustrating to see that students translate word by word, not capable to follow words that convey meaning, i.e. adjectives, nouns and verbs. Moreover, if they know their meaning, they cannot put the ideas together and give that a sense. Contextualising and putting several examples, and let learners build theirs, can help to change that.
On the other hand, when teachers do not take advantage of other areas of learning - considering that the ministry books have been designed connecting the topics, i.e. when in science they are seeing the greenhouse effect, English has 'the environment' - we waste a precious opportunity to work with the same contents. Also, cooperative work with the other teachers can help also to improve this aspect.
Hi Scarlett!
ReplyDelete"More than words" is what unfortunately some teachers and students don't understand. Learning a foreign language shouldn't be about memorising endless lists of words, it should be much more. Uncovering messages, having access to information, different ideas, authors, points of view and to be able to comment and to critizise is something we should encourage in our students. Now, how can we make them realise that that is the final goal and not only memorizing contents? Another challenge to be sorted out.
“transfer is key to a good education” is a great concept, but it is not only our mission as English teacher to make students tranfer knowledge, we can do something to fix this problem, but we need the help of the rest of the school community, as somebody else mention, it is necesary to have commited teacher to fullfil this concept of "knowledge" and "transfer"
ReplyDeleteHi Scarlette
ReplyDeleteAccording to your comments I think our role as teachers is to foster diversity in order to make use of misunderstanding as a tool in our lessons. The same concept makes sense in different ways to different people, therefore how can we possible expect a standard answer? Are we prepared to understand different perspectives for a single issue?
As you said teachers play a fundamental role in the ‘understanding’ process, because they are the only ones who are responsible of facilitating the students ‘learning, connecting their own experiences with the contents taught in class. Therefore before of complaining about the lack of transferability that our students might have, first we must reflect about our own teaching practices and see whether they are right or wrong, according to the way in which students demonstrate understanding.
ReplyDeleteMy dearest friend:
ReplyDeleteI think we teachers are a model to follow (obvioulsy, when you are a good teacher). If your students see that you can transfer knowledge to real contexts, they will belive they can also do it. Then, that is why it is so important to me to have two minutes of the class to talk about trivial topics since you are implicitly teaching them strategies to transferability. If you use your previous knowledge, students will do so, as well. In addition, if you find the key to link contents to real context, the students won't only know, but also they will understand. In other words, we do not even need to teach the students the contents when we have managed to give them strategies and tools to achieve self-learning/monitoring/metacognition. This is the key; so, if we teachers know how to trnasfer, if we are a good model, everything will be easier inside our classrooms.
See you my dear!
Transfer as a key element for a good education summarizes remarkably well the notions discussed in the article. It is unquestionable the fact that if we do not move to teaching based on understanding we jeopardize a whole system of education. Many teachers criticize that young people have not developed critical thinking; instead, they should ask themselves why they did not teach or facilitate transferability. Education is time-consuming project and mistakes we make can be long-lasting as well.
ReplyDelete