Authentic education is always experimental

Miguel Guhlin and I have joked in the past if some people (naming no names) don’t intentionally “set themselves on fire” in the blogosphere in order to challenge people’s way of thinking, generate responses, get commments, etc. I do respect Doug Johnson and his ideas, so I am not levying an accusation here, but the thought did cross my mind if Doug isn’t (at least partly) metaphorically setting himself on fire with his post from yesterday, “Is experimentation ethical?” in the context of school classrooms.

In the educational, classroom environment, authentic education is always experimental. This is because teaching is an art, not a science. Many, many people sadly mistake the purpose of the educational enterprise as mere content transmission. Much of the curriculum standards which dominate the educational landscape today in 2006 are based on this faulty assumption. Like E.D. Hirsh, I agree there are some common things with which people should be acquainted in order to be “culturally literate.” I do not agree, however, that schools should take those “laundry lists” of names and events and seek to make kids memorize and regurgitate those facts on multiple choice examinations. I do not think an understanding of the need for “cultural literacy” should lead to a shallowing of the curriculum, which remains a mile wide and an inch deep. To the contrary, authentic teaching and learning should be ALL ABOUT learning in depth through engaging conversations and activities. To create this type of teaching and learning environment, it is implicit that teachers must experiment.

Authentic teaching and learning are experimental activities because the environment of the classroom is inherently dynamical and chaotic, like global weather patterns. Complex feedback loops between real people (who are inherently unpredictable) define the classroom environment. Despite or in spite of a teacher’s best intentions and plans, lessons rarely go exactly as planned. That is because in classrooms, the raw material we are fundamentally working with is the human mind. Human cognition is an incredibly complex affair, which neuroscientists are only beginning to better understand.

These acknowledged limitations of our own scientific understandings do not correspond to the challenge of effectively teaching and helping students learn being an impossible one, however. Generally, most people can describe for you their own, personal experiences with teachers who understood these ideas. I call these “teacher impact stories.” Good teachers are always actively experimenting in the classroom to see what will engage each student and “reach them,” because good teaching is all about differentiating the curriculum for each child. I heard Barbara Brown of Lewisville ISD talk about this last week as, “teaching as if every student had an IEP” (individual education plan – required for all students qualifying for “special education” status.)

If you want to hear a master educator talk about her understanding of these dynamics and realities, listen to Barbara Dorff talk in the short podcast, “Engaging the Heart and Singing the Song of the Student.” Authentic education is always based on experimentation. That does not mean we give up studies of classroom learning, or that we abandon the drive to pursue academic research about teaching, learning and student achievement. But it does mean we acknowledge, at a very basic level, the fundamental need for experimentation in a classroom led by a teacher interested in authentic teaching and learning experiences.

Oh, how the superintendents of large school districts across the United States probably wish the above observations were not true! Then they could validly, and with good conscience, take basically anyone off the street without a criminal record including a felony, shove a curriculum guide and a textbook into their hands, and believe that good teaching and learning will happen automatically when that person is placed into a classroom with 20 to 30 young minds. I am shocked by how many people buy into the mindset of this educational paradigm. Intelligent people (with college degrees, no less) think that if a school district has a curriculum pacing guide that is vigorously pushed and policed by campus administrators– where every teacher and every child is on the same page, doing the same thing in the same grades each day– that educational quality will result.

That worldview is based on false assumptions and beliefs. To put it more bluntly, it is a lie.

Of course it is ethical for teachers to experiment on their children with different instructional strategies, when they are doing so using their professional judgment grounded in both experience and yes– research. John Dewey said it much better than I can:

What they [inventive educational pioneers] need above all else is the creatively courageous disposition. Fear, routine, sloth, identification of success with ease, and approbation of others are the enemies that now stand in the way of educational advance. Too much of what is called educational science and art can only perpetuate a regime of wont and use by pretending to give scientific guidance and guarantees in advance. There is in existence knowledge which gives a compass to those who enter on the uncharted seas, but only a stupid insincerity will claim that a compass is a chart. The call is to the creative adventurous mind. Religious faith in education working through this medium of individual courage with the aid of non-educational science will end in achieving education as science and art. But as usual we confuse faith with worship, and term science what is only justification of habit.

Quoted from “John Dewey and the Art of Teaching: Toward Reflective and Imaginative Practice” by Douglas J. Simpson, Michael J. B. Jackson, Judy C. Aycock, page 87.

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• What Support for Interactive Writing (Blogging) at High School Should Look Like – 2013
• Recommended Reading for Oklahoma Digital Learning Summit: 19-20 April 2012 – 2012
• Spoken Word Poetry, Project V.O.I.C.E. and Sarah Kay at #tedxokc – 2011
• Create a web feed for school sites which don’t provide/support RSS – 2010
• Transitioning to 1:1 Netbooks via BYOL – 2009
• 10,000 miles apart and learning – 2008
• links for 2008-04-08 – 2008
• NCCE 2008 workshop audio recordings – 2008
• Positive impressions of WordPress 2.5 – 2008
• MySpace defamation suit highlights important issues – 2007