Jason’s Reading Log for 4/6/10

Posted by on April 5, 2010 
Filed under Reading logs

This weeks chapter in the cross reading was very interesting to me.  Besides the fact that I just really enjoy this book (especially when compared to some of the stuff I have to read for my Soc classes!), this chapter’s case study followed by literature review format was great!

We are supposed to be teaching ideas and ways of thinking (for numerous reasons) but have we taken the time to considered student stages of development in our planning?  A course structured to teach skills will inevitably lead to student’s asking “is this on the quiz” and attempting to memorize the examples.  I (and every other teacher that I have ever spoken too) have had this issue emerge in the classroom.  But it never dawned on any of us that we should be actively trying to understand why?

When the student in the first case study said “I thought this class was going to be BOOK history not Analysis of historical methods”  it sums up this issue.  We are in the classroom to facilitate student development and many students are accustomed to looking to authority figures to “give” them the answers or truth so that they can memorize it.  Many teacher’s (partially I belief due to elitism and arrogance) have been all to willing to give out the truth to students.  However in doing this we are robbing them of the abilities that we hold up as so valuable.  Humans do not naturally develop to their preset intellectual capability, we know that intellectual development is a process, or as cross states it “learning is a process not a product”.

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