We've spent the past week in class exploring the nature of understanding (as opposed to knowing about something). That students understand the ideas we cover this year is an overarching understanding goal, or throughline, for the year. The intent here is review what we did last week, for the kids, their families, and anyone else with a similar interest. I offer up this line of inquiry for critique and comment.
What is understanding?
We began by viewing and discussing a series of video clips of former students playing musical instruments: Anna (cello), Gabe (piano), and Peter (violin). I asked: Do they understand their instruments? How do they demonstrate their understanding? How does the level of understanding vary between the three students?
We then viewed a clip from the PBS program From the Top at Carnegie Hall, featuring gifted young musicians from around the United States. In this particular segment, 12-year-old violinist Anna Lee performed, and we explored the same questions: Does she understand the violin? How does she demonstrate her understanding? How does her understanding compare to the other three children?
We moved to surfing, and I profiled 8th grade Caterina learning to surf in Monterey, California. Does she understand how to surf? Is she developing an understanding? What must she do to acquire an understanding of surfing? We then viewed a clip of professional big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton surfing at Teahupoo, Tahiti. Does Laird understand surfing? How does he demonstrate his understanding? How do you suppose he acquired that understanding?
We then turn to the students. What did they feel like they understood? Students responded to the following three questions, independently. Their responses were charted and are italics:
1. What is something that you understand, like riding a bike, tying your shoes, skateboarding, or snow skiing?
making pancakes, singing, riding a bicycle, cooking, reading, playing video games on Play Station 3, roller surfing, hiphop dancing, playing basketball, play baseball, horseback riding
2. How do you know you understand it?
I can do it with few errors, I love to do it/it's fun, I can show someone else how to do it, I learn from my mistakes, I've been doing it for a long time, I practice it a lot, I recognize a lucky accident, I can improve my own performance, I can do it in different ways, not just one way
3. How did you acquire that understanding?
lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of practice, I took a class, I had a coach who showed me how to do it and gave me lots of feedback, I tried hard and was serious about it, I really wanted to learn
This first lesson closed by referring back to our desire to teaching for understanding -- that we were after understanding this year, across the curriculum, and that teaching for an understanding of geology would require lots and lots of practice, and coaching with regular feedback.
The Battery & Bulb Problem
Students were introduced to the first of several tasks about which they would demonstrate their understanding (or lack their of). The first was the batteries & bulbs problem. Small groups were given three items -- a AA battery, a wire (stripped of insulation on both ends), and a flashlight-size bulb. Their task was simple (or so it seemed): using only these three things, they were to light the bulb. All students believed they could do it. After all, most had studied electricity in grade 4, some in grade 5, too.
The kids did what they could, some were unsuccessful, a few got mad and insisted that there must be a trick, or that the materials were flawed, a few lit the bulb, but none, upon probing, really knew what was going on. At best, they were trying replicate something they'd once seen in a picture or a demonstration. Note the following video clips from this activity:
The battery and bulbs activity comes from a remarkable video program entitled Minds of Our Own (see Minds). It's a must-see for all educators and parents. The program opens at Commencement at MIT. A sampling of graduates are asked to perform the same task as the kids, and almost none could do it. To paraphrase Harvard researcher Philip Sadler, everyone thinks they can do it, but very few can. The problem is this: If one cannot light a light bulb, then everything that follows from it has problems.
What do we really understand? How do we teach for understanding? How do we figure out if a student really understands something, anything, whether it's tying their shoes, riding a bicycle, or electricity. What is the consequence of not teaching for understanding?
The Hole in the Earth Problem
The hole in the Earth problem was drawn from Rosalind Driver's Children's Ideas in Science, a book that focuses on a wide variety of children's common misconceptions in science. Here's the problem: We bore a hole through the center of the Earth then drop a bowling ball in, or some very heavy ball. What happens to the ball?
We posed this question to ISD students in grades K, 3, 4, 6, 10 and 12. In the style of Minds of our Own and A Private Universe, students were encouraged to use markers and chart paper to explain and illustrate their ideas. We captured a few of the kids ideas on audiotape, available for your perusal through TeacherTube:
What we discovered was this: Not surprisingly, the Kinders lacked the vocabulary, the concepts, and the cognitive development to grasp the problem (as it was presented). The four 3rd graders we interviewed each believed that the ball would fall right through the planet and continue into space. The two grade 4 students had their own ideas. One of them, Gus, initially felt that the ball would incinerate (his term) due to the temperature of the Earth's interior. When I suggested that we ignore temperature, he went on to speculate that gravity would cause the ball to oscillate (my term) through the interior of the Earth until it stopped at the center -- a pretty sophisticated theory for one so young, not typical for his age.
My 6th graders had their own ideas, most taking into consideration some aspect/s of temperature, pressure and gravity, commensurate with their age, grade, and training/experience. They differed in their views of gravity, whether it pushed or pulled, and what was doing the pushing or pushing. They also differed in their views of whether the ball would accelerate toward the center of the Earth, or slow.
Our 10th grade victim was the first to consider more than one force acting upon the ball, and was the first to mention the concept of equilibrium. Still, it was a problem about which he was unfamiliar and uncertain.
Cloe, our senior, had taken physics in her junior year, and was quick to consider the problem in light of the forces acting on the ball -- gravity, inertia, acceleration.
The 6th graders sat-in on each interview, and we shared thoughts/observations after each, returning to the central questions: What do we really understand? How do we acquire that understanding? How do we check to see if someone really understands something? What are the obstacles to understanding?
What Causes Seasons on Earth?
The final thinking problem for students to gnaw over (in the context of this exploration of understanding) involved the seasons: What causes the changes of seasons on Earth? As with the battery and bulbs problem and electricity, most students have studied the seasons in their first five years of schooling, but would they be able to apply that knowledge to this question. Note the following video clip:
The misunderstanding of Earth's seasons is profiled nicely in A Private Universe, available for streaming at learner.org. It's a classic. It opens at Harvard University, where graduates at commencement are asked about to explain the cause of seasonal change. 21 of the 23 students interviewed wrongly believed that the change in the seasons is due to the proximity of the Earth to the Sun, with sumer corresponding to the months when we're closer, and winter when we're further away. Not so.
The video goes on to profile a student in a 9th grade science classroom. Her ideas about the seasons were captured in interviews before and after a science unit was presented. Surprisingly -- certainly to the teacher -- the student's initial beliefs about bouncing light and the curlicue orbit of the Earth around the Sun were resilient, despite the teacher's best efforts.
Students were asked, in small groups, to consider the question of Earth's seasons and report out their ideas, as a springboard to these recurring questions: What do we really understand? Why must we teach for understanding? What is the consequence of not doing it? How do we teach for understanding? How do we figure out if a student really understands something, anything, whether it's tying their shoes, riding a bicycle, or electricity?
As you might expect, homework for the weekend asks students to respond to four questions:
1. What is understanding? How do we know when we understand something?
(HINT: Think riding a bike, or tying your shoes)
2. Why should we teach for understanding? Why is it important?
3. How do we teach for understanding? What must it include?
(HINT: Think riding a bike, or tying your shoes)
4. How do we assess for understanding? How do we check to see what students really understand?
(HINT: Think riding a bike, or tying your shoes)
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