I read an interesting article in The Globe and Mail this morning. It was about a Nobel Prize winning physicist, but it seemed very relevant to my ongoing struggle to find the best learning environment for my kids.
Prof. Carl Weiman is quoted as saying that universities are doing a terrible job of teaching science. So terrible that he’s on a mission to to change the way it’s done. This year he left his research lab at the University of Colorado to establish the Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative at UBC, where he plans to use scientific research methods to show how outdated and unsuitable current teaching methods are. Citing research studies that show students only retain about 30 percent of the concepts presented in lectures and that student’s interest in science actually decreases after taking a university course, he proposes that professors stop lecturing and begin to engage students through questions and group discussions, and teach them to think like scientists, rather than just recite facts. He pointed out that no professor of literature would teach by reading novels to students, and that science professors shouldn’t recite from textbooks.
I agree. I skipped all but a handful of the lectures in the first two years of medical school because most of the professors spent the bulk of their lecture time reading from printed handouts. I found it much more efficient to read that material myself. I did, however, attend the labs, the dissections, the microscope work, and the small group discussion sessions, because they were interesting, and I learned from them.
Dr. Weiman believes that his work “can transform not just science education, but society, as good science instruction trickles down from universities to primary and secondary schools through the education of future teachers.”
An instructor of earth and ocean sciences at UBC put it well. She said ” We have to change from information providers to experience providers.“
Exactly. Exactly what I have been realizing with young Tee, as I slowly and painfully make the change from me-directed learning to kid-directed learning. My intuitive sense has been telling me that he learns best when he’s excited, and he’s excited when he’s in charge, because that’s when he’s engaged. Otherwise I’m teaching a brick wall. My job is not to teach, but to be a sensitive observer who can provide materials and make suggestions. It is a paradigm shift.
I guess I’m just a slow learner.
Talk about brick walls.
I like what this guy has to say. It is what we are observing every day with our own children, right?
Yeah. I felt quite validated in my own observations when I read the article.