Tech thoughts on “Teaching to what students have in common”
Teaching to what students have in common is an article by Daniel Willingham and David Daniel from the February 2012 Issue of Educational Leadership. The article highlights the application of research from cognitive sciences in the classroom. It suggests that teaching to student commonalities is more effective than teaching to individual differences. The authors first point out that educators often view the similarities and differences of students on a spectrum and that there is a tendency to pick some middle ground to teach from. Instead, the authors suggest that when thinking of a student, three classes can be applied:
● Class 1: Characteristics all students share
● Class 2: Characteristics that group some students together
● Class 3: Characteristics that are unique to an individual student
The authors then go on to define common cognitive characteristics that all student share, dividing them into two groups:
Must haves:
○ Factual knowledge - research has shown that to think critically about a subject, students need a wealth of domain-specific knowledge to draw from
○ Practice - some knowledge should be immediately available instead of requiring a student’s attention
○ Feedback from a knowledgeable source - students need feedback in order to improve their skills
Could haves:
○ Distributed study time - research has shown that fact learning is more effective if it is spread out over time
○ Practice recalling facts - research has shown that recalling facts from memory is more effective that studying the facts again
○ Cycling between concrete and abstract - research has shown that cycling between concrete and abstract with a wide variety of examples helps students better understand difficult concepts
The field of technology brings up new ways to think about what the “must haves” of factual knowledge, practice and feedback mean in the context of teaching digital literacy. As technology devices become an extension of ourselves, our knowledge domain is increased as long as we have the skills necessary to search, validate and synthesize new information stored outside our brains. Technology tools like Khan Academy are also well-suited to providing feedback and practice. Other technology tools like video games provide mechanisms for cycling between abstract and concrete concepts.