"Knowledge begets comprehension begets knowledge"
Hey everyone! This week's reading on knowledge was a nice continuation of what we read last week on comprehension: Buehl went into great detail about the various types of knowledge and how underrated prior knowledge is for a student's ability to understand the material that's being presented to them. "Knowledge begets comprehension begets knowledge." It's apparent that our role as educators is to build bridges between our students' prior knowledge and the knowledge we seek to impart to them in order for our students to truly achieve comprehension. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my own experiences with science courses from high school and college, and one experience that stood out to me was the time I burned M&Ms using potassium chlorate in high school.
(In this video, they used skittles instead, but the reaction looks the exact same - https://youtube.com/shorts/NP7HYFXY2Uc?si=ex8u-0PpEIVLo6i9)
The main takeaways from this reaction are:
1) when potassium chlorate decomposes, it produces enough oxygen to initiate a combustion reaction with the sugar in the candy.
2) there is potential energy stored in all of our food, and this potential energy's unit of measurement is known as the Calorie (upper-case C used here because that's what is used on food labels. A Calorie is really 1000 calories. Don't ask me why...)
This experience stood out to me, not just because the reaction was really cool to witness in person, but also because the information was somewhat relevant to my day-to-day life: I was able to finally see the potential energy stored inside the food I eat as it burned to completion. If one were to ask me about the experiments I've done throughout my years as an undergrad student, however, I would not be able to give them a straight answer on what I remember, much less the main takeaways. I can't even remember a single experiment I did during my final year of undergrad right before I walked out of UIUC with a degree in chemistry not too long ago in 2022... I attribute this failure to the way science was taught at UIUC. During last week's reading, Buehl said, "Science teachers usually end up doing something really harmful: they give up the text and instead explain the science with notes to accompany the lecture. The students end up copying the notes which breeds student dependence on the teacher for science knowledge and places the learner in a passive role." Based off my personal experiences, I would take it a step further and comment that none of the experiments were administered in a manner that was conducive to learning the material from lecture. The whole point of doing a science experiment is to apply what you've learned from either the textbook or the lecture; if the scientific knowledge is your theory, then the experiment is meant to be your praxis of said theory. Unfortunately, most students (myself included) did not approach experiments with the intention of drawing connections between what was taught to what we were doing. What I mean by that is that most of us entered the lab with a very strict procedure, we followed said procedure to a T, we recorded the data/results, and then we walked out of the lab feeling relieved over the fact that it was finally over (we would meet for lab once a week for 4-6 hrs...) I honestly felt like I was a mindless robot. It also didn't help that the TAs never asked me any questions about what I was doing or why I was doing it, but they have a hard enough job as it is making sure that none of us accidentally blew up the lab (fun story: I actually did blow up a beaker by accident once :)
This blog post is beginning to escape the point that I was trying to make which is that it's crucial for educators of all disciplines to acknowledge our students' prior knowledge and make the information we're attempting to teach as relevant and engaging as possible. A question that I've been asking myself is:
How are certain students able to bypass the failures of certain educators in order to achieve true comprehension of the knowledge that's presented to them?
I look back at my experiences as a pre-health chemistry major, and the only answer I can come up with is the fact that I was never really in the same headspace as the other students around me: I was always coming into every class with the experiences of someone whose father is a doctor and whose aunt has a PhD in Chemistry. Buehl says that there are 2 critical points of access to academic knowledge: people and experiences. With that in mind, I am not of the belief that every student who manages to make it into medical school, a PhD program, etc... was naturally more gifted at learning science but rather that they were given the tools to succeed whenever their teachers fell short. I don't know... I'm still trying to make sense of all of this, and I hope I reach a satisfying conclusion on how to go about addressing the issues I ran across in my high school and college science courses.
I'm curious to hear what you guys have to say on the matter, though! I invite you all to share your experiences with your science classes/teachers, and if you have a wildly different perspective on all of this than I do, please don't hesitate to share!!
My personal experience with History is similar... Growing up in Chicago and almost always near some sort of Historically place or event has allowed me to make connections throughout time and space and really dive into the subject (I'm sorry for the space/science pun) I'm currently taking Hist 420 which covers teaching of social sciences and we've talked extensively on engagement on making learning universal and accessible to all. I myself try to think about it daily on how I'm going to make my lectures more engaging to non historian fanatics but it's hard. I think that it's just one of the few works of being a teacher is going to come with, always standing on my heel ready to pivot if something isn't working. For science it may be easier as blowing up skittles is way more captivating that looking at old documents of talking about things that happened in the past!
ReplyDeleteI think what you are describing is the idea of completing something for a grade vs trying to truly learn/understand something. Education in our country has become so focused on grading that students do not have the incentive to learn or engage in learning. They want to know what they need to do in order to get the A, and it is not their fault. It is our job as educators to get them passed that idea.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about all of our fields is that they do all have connection to the world around our students. Science, math, English, and history are ever present in the world. It is on us to show the kids how it is relevant. Great teachers make a habit of it.
That's capitalism and meritism for you... it's difficult that we're all stuck in a circle of endless suffering…. Even pursuing the education field is filled with comments from others regarding pay and the worthwhile of the job itself. I wanted to say that I do agree with you; students do want to learn, but also succeed; it’s hard to use a merit system of grades to encourage intellectual output while it also discourages students who learn different ways.
DeleteI have to say that I agree with what Wilson is saying, most of the time students are just trying to complete an assignment to pass a class rather than trying to learn, understand, and make connections on the material given. I say this from personal experience as there was one time that I had this mindset in my freshman year when I was taking geometry. Geometry usually involves calculations based on shapes and proofs, well I struggled a lot as we went over proofs. No one really ever taught me what it was and what it means, all we did in previous years were just applications of math so I found myself just trying to copy what my teacher would say so that I could pass the class and even now I barely remember anything from that class. Something that I take away from this is that I would have probably understood proofs in geometry better if we had taken the time to understand what they are stating and made connections to how they would be applied in the world.
ReplyDeleteTrying to find applications of our content areas to the world through different types of media/texts should make it relevant towards students. This is something as future or current teachers we should keep in mind.
I agree with what you talked about with making connections for learning. I think that often times the system teaches us to memorize the process of getting the answer instead of comprehending and knowing the process. Everyone is so focused and their grades and number that we often don’t make connections with what we’ve learned before. A lot of the math classes I’ve taken in high school and college have been super fast and so it’s hard for me to comprehend often times. So I tend to simply memorize the process of doing it so that I can pass the class. Which leads to me usually forgetting most of it after the term is over since I never comprehended the knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI found your perspective very interesting because you're coming at it from the angle of a science teacher which is a perspective I don't know a lot about. I think the disservice in a science teacher handing out articles, data and other materials without properly explaining or contextualizing is so damaging and discouraging that it really is the biggest killer of science interest in most students.
ReplyDeleteI remember having a science teacher who had a PhD in (wet) Chemical Engineering and had decades of experience working in labs, pharmaceutical companies, etc. While he was great in his field, his ability to translate very basic chem concepts to us was hardly present at all. His expectation that we would learn everything on our own and come to class (as highschoolers) with the knowledge needed to complete the assignments was nothing short of terrible. My class quickly became very focused on simply getting through it for the grade and that's all. Did we learn anything? sure, I guess, but it wasn't meaningful, and it wasn't a fun or good experience. Sci teachers, and most teachers in general, need to be aware and proficient at translation and surrendering their inherent ego in order to best teach students.
It was great reading about your high school experience that you shared! I agree with the importance of making connections rather than just getting the grade need to pass. My initial thought that occurred when reading about the importance of connections was math courses. Math starts from the very basics such as addition and subtraction, then moves onto a very similar operation, but slightly more advances, multiplication and division. The connections between courses are clear when it comes to taking the math course above and even a math course that isn't directly related. Being able to recognize similar themes from 2 different math courses helps the student learn better, well at least for me. This also plays into the importance of actually learning. Being able to apply what you learn to something in the real world or being able to take what you learned and it help you learn something related to it. I hope we get more educators that teach with passion rather then using a script like attitude when teaching, on the flip side I also hope that students prioritize learning rather than getting a passing grade.
ReplyDeleteHi Saif,
ReplyDeleteI liked that you brought in your experience with science and applied it to the readings. In my science classes in high school and college, I found the experiments memorable since they helped visualize what we were learning. I am a visual learner, so I loved when we had an experiment in the lecture or discussion sections. In my chemistry classes, I felt like the experiments were not as memorable because I was not the most interested in chemistry. Since my attention was not already there, I did not retain the information as well as the physics experiments.
To answer your question, "How are certain students able to bypass the failures of certain educators in order to achieve true comprehension of the knowledge that's presented to them?" I can say that the student's interest is very important. Students and people in general tend to zone out or not pay attention if it is about something that they do not have any interest in. If it is a problem with the educator, then maybe they could refer to the textbook for the class and learn the information there. I have had my fair share of not-so-great educators, so I learned that if I want to pass the class, I must find other ways to succeed. I would read through the textbook, talk to TAs in discussion sections, talk to my classmates, and work on the homework together. With all of these ways to learn, it was still important that I had some sort of interest in the material. Otherwise, the studying would not be fun, and I would not be as motivated to get everything done to the best of my ability.