How People Learn

Although this paper isn't directly related to technology, understanding how people learn things could help us use technology to create better learning environments.

This paper asks how the research reviewed in the National Research Council's "How People Learn" (1999) can be incorporated into classroom practice. The paper suggests a plan for research and development that would create the change in education necessary to reach a level of learning in the classroom that is suggested in “How People Learn”. After an introduction, the paper summarizes the key findings from “How People Learn” and puts the findings into a plan for teaching and for setting up classrooms. Chapter 3 shares responses from other educators and policymakers that discussed the book. There are also overarching themes outlined in each of the chapters.
One of the interesting things I found in this paper was the idea that students walk into a classroom with misconceptions, they learn something new, but then revert back to the original misconception after high school unless they were taught how to dispute the misconception. I don’t think that teachers are effectively taught how to give formative assessments and moreover how to use them to improve student learning. It would be nice to be able to assess our students and know how to use those assessments effectively. Most assessments are focused on giving the student a grade, not focused on how to improve the knowledge of the student. It seems that when we give a test of some sort and a student does well, we feel like we’ve accomplished our job, only to find out that the research shows that the students are really only retaining the information for a short time. The difficulty with a good formative assessment is being able to differentiate instruction once the results are back. With class sizes of 30 or more students, it doesn’t seem feasible to readily alter instruction for those that are way behind or for students that are way ahead.
Another thing that seems to keep coming up in our readings and discussions lately, is the mile wide and inch deep concept. Once again, it is suggested here that we teacher fewer topics more in-depth. Which goes back to the standards and the high stakes tests. All of these things need to be aligned so that teachers can teach their subject well instead of teaching to pass the exam or meet the standards. If it is better to teach fewer topics, however, who chooses which topics are most important? The new version of the science standards seems to be more specific in certain topics perhaps they would be a good starting point to incorporate this kind of teaching that "How People Learn” recommends. The problem then arises with how to incorporate professional development into teachers’ jobs. The paper says that it will take quite a bit of adult learning in order to incorporate the principles presented in "How People Learn”. I agree that most of the professional development that is offered to us is not learner centered. I always find it to be a little hypocritical when a speaker comes in and says, normally I wouldn’t teach this way in my class, but here’s a PowerPoint on what not to do in your class. It is an easy way to pass on information, but if we as teachers aren’t absorbing the information about these teaching strategies, then we can’t expect our students to learn by using those teaching strategies.
The changes that need to be made in education require research and developing a good way to educate teachers how to make those changes. It seems that many changes are proposed, but the problem is they aren’t being implemented in an effective manner. After reading this, I am encouraged that this change could happen, it has been recognized as a problem and a solution has been proposed. Now the struggle is to put it into action and get everyone else to buy into it and make it work. Teachers need to be equipped in a manner that they can teach children based on how they learn not on how they’ve always been taught.