Should learning strategies be taught in school?

[sprinkles]

I was just thinking. Shouldn't it be taught how to form learning strategies yourself, not have them crammed down your throat in prefabricated form?

For example, at first I was having trouble learning the mahjong tiles without English notation. But I discovered a way to remember the chinese characters for 1-9 wan (also called craks, or characters in English speak) and the winds.

Normally Mahjong tiles look like this:

You can see that some of them are not obvious and are certainly not English related. I got tired of trying to memorize them by charts. So what did I do?

I did this:

I made it so that I could SEE what the tile is within the character. Now I never forget them, I don't have to think of what the tile is, I know what it is. I'm no longer trying to translate the tiles, I'm actually reading the tiles with complete fluency now.

Why do we not teach people to have this skill instead of trying to figure it out for them, and having it not work?

 

[invisible]

i agree with you, sometimes the teaching strategy seems to be to just force masses of information upon students in the expectation that their minds will be wrenched open. it has worked for me i think, at least to an extent... but most of the time i feel like my general approach to learning is to just flounder around haphazardly until i get it.

 

[say what]

I'm a firm believer of teaching students how to learn, not just teaching them what they know. If students learn how to make their own strategies and come up with their own ways to understand knowledge - that best suits them - it enables them to carry this onto a life of learning new topics, without having to be taught the content directly.

This is becoming a huge issue, because students leave the k-12 system, and they just don't know how to learn - they don't know how to seek information out, how to study, or how to apply their knowledge from one course to another. They are so siloed into their learning and understanding of concepts, that they are limited.

I think students should be shown that there are many ways to learn and many different strategies that one can use to learn - this caters to a variety of learning styles and also allows children to grow at different rates (this is important, because if there are children ahead or behind, they are not either stifled or lost).

Btw - [MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION] I love your way of learning those tiles!!

This is an interesting test that we give teaching assistance to do, to show them that people learn in a variety of ways. It's kind of interesting!

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

 

[Tin Man]

I completely agree. I read a study in Science that analysed numerous popular learning strategy and it's results suggested each were impractical. I believe that this is because a one for all approach to learning is short-sighted The fact is that the current education system in most countries is broken. If it were up to me I would reduce the system to it's foundations and rebuild it.

That said, it would require huge changes to be made in the current structure of the education system and making even the smallest change is an uphill battle.

 

[bionic]

I agree, they definitely should. I always struggled with studying because I'm a visual learner. So I've spent years trying to find study/learning strategies that work for me. If I was taught different strategies and how to utilize them, I feel like I would be better prepared for school. Instead, I find myself learning these things on my own. I don't understand why they aren't taught. So many kids would benefit from this and they would not only learn more about themselves, they would learn better strategies to succeed in school in a manner that suits themselves instead of being pigeonholed.

 

[sprinkles]

Yes.

I'm an abstract learner and I started very early and quickly outstripped the system, because I taught myself to learn before they got to me.

I don't know how that worked out. I started learning before I was even old enough to remember how I did it. School didn't teach me very much at all. Sure I got plenty of praise as a gifted student, but I was bored and felt stifled so I didn't do the work. They didn't like that, they had no idea how to handle me. I got bumped up by two years once and was still blowing it off. I had a lot of eccentricities, ticks, behavioral and social problems. These days I'd have surely been labeled as autistic.

I don't feel I was being autistic though. I just really needed to be left to my own way - I couldn't cope back then. After I escaped from school I became a lot more comfortable with being myself, became more social, and actually started to understand my peers and how to act around people. This is why I believe I'm not actually autistic or have some kind of problem. I was just different from their system and was like a fish out of water flopping around. It traumatized me.

 

[Gaze]

I am an abstract learner and never needed specifics to learn a concept or theory. This has been an issue in teaching because I have to work hard to find examples to explain something to others that comes easier to me conceptually. I've had to teach myself to break things down in smaller parts, step by step, to explain concepts which I learned by simply reading pages of text after text. It's tough reconciling how you learn with what others need when they need to learn. I agree with @say what that students don't often know how to transfer their learning skills or strategies from one class to another. Silos is a good word to describe it. They are not able to make connections between things because they often learn information in a vacuum. There needs to be more connecting the dots. Just recently, we had textbook review and yet again, instructors chose the book we have been using when a new one was a better resource for students. The new book layout would better fit student's visual learning and had more interesting content that would add variety to how we teach. It bothers me that we are still using the default.

Edit: Learning strategies wasn't something I was taught in school apart from learning about learning styles which isn't really the same as learning how to learn. Learning was something you figured out as you went along. As an educator, it's important to not just understand various learning strategies but how to adapt to different learning strengths.

 

[La Sagna]

I'm a firm believer of teaching students how to learn, not just teaching them what they know. If students learn how to make their own strategies and come up with their own ways to understand knowledge - that best suits them - it enables them to carry this onto a life of learning new topics, without having to be taught the content directly.

This is becoming a huge issue, because students leave the k-12 system, and they just don't know how to learn - they don't know how to seek information out, how to study, or how to apply their knowledge from one course to another. They are so siloed into their learning and understanding of concepts, that they are limited.

I think students should be shown that there are many ways to learn and many different strategies that one can use to learn - this caters to a variety of learning styles and also allows children to grow at different rates (this is important, because if there are children ahead or behind, they are not either stifled or lost).

Btw - [MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION] I love your way of learning those tiles!!

This is an interesting test that we give teaching assistance to do, to show them that people learn in a variety of ways. It's kind of interesting!

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

That test is good. I know that I learn in different ways (multimodal according to the test) depending on the subject matter.

The problem is that we are all unique individuals and learn in different ways and not the little robots that some people would like students to be, "learn this stuff so you can be a productive member of society by fulfilling your role of increasing our economic output, and do it at the lowest development cost possible".

To me the number one key to making sure you have students that learn and remember what they learn and keep learning is to foster the love of learning. If you make school a torture then it doesn't matter what you are teaching because many students will 'tune-out'.

My youngest son has a language based learning disability as well as attention issues and he is a kinesthetic learner. He is also quite good at math but has a difficult time explaining how he gets the right answer. When he was taking math at school he could take a math problem and quickly figure out the right answer in his head. He would get a zero for getting the right answer but not showing his work. The kids who wrote out the 'proper procedure' and got the wrong answer would get a good mark. This was incredibly frustrating for my son and so they took his gift for math and turned it into a distaste for math. They really squandered an opportunity to help him develop his strengths. I believe that the reason he had a difficult time with the procedures was because of his language based learning disability. He did the procedures in his head in whichever way he does them but he could not follow the procedures to write them all out.

My son did not learn to read at school but at home. It was very difficult for him to learn but he still loved books and stories and being read books. His room had a whole wall of books. I gradually got him to read by at first getting him to read a paragraph here and there and then one whole page for every few pages that I read. Eventually I just let him read by himself and he could stay with his light on his room as late as he wanted as long as he was reading books. He now still loves reading books and does so more than your average twenty year old male, even though reading was his biggest challenge.

Many times over the years I did not force my son to complete his homework because he would end up in tears terribly upset and I knew that this was more detrimental to his learning in the future than whether that homework was done or not. I had some understanding teachers and some who really didn't like me and accused me of all sorts of things. When he had a difficult time learning to read they said it was because we didn't show an example and didn't have books at home. That totally pissed me off because he pretty had a library in his bedroom and I have more books than almost anybody I know and reading has always been my #1 passion. That goes to show how even educated and experienced people can make judgement calls that are completely off the mark and totally unhelpful.

Anyways, just saying, kids are individuals and they will not fit into a one size fits all box no matter what we do.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=9809]La Sagna[/MENTION]

Yes. Also with math, one thing that people forget is that the symbols for math is not the math itself.

Like in the other thread with giving change. "Counting up until you reach the right amount" would not count as mathematically showing your work. Yet people still do it. However there actually is a way to show work for that, but most people don't seem to know it! It is called the Greedy algorithm, in which you go through step by step and choose the most optimal coin for that step.

For example, 45 cents
In American currency the first largest coin you can get out of that is 25, so you tally off a 25 coin and 45-25=20
The largest coin you can get out of 20 is 10 so you tally off a 10 coin and 20-10=10
The largest coin for 10 is 10 so you tally off a second 10 coin and 10-10=0

And you are done. A quarter and two dimes. But nobody worries about showing work for this, do they? They just do it.

 

[say what]

I was thinking about this on the way to school this morning, and I thought I would add a point to this.

The teachers who teach the children, also learned in a system that there was one right way to learn. Therefore, it's difficult to ask someone to cater to a variety of learning styles and methods, when they haven't experienced it themselves. It's a vicious circle! As [MENTION=1669]Framed[/MENTION] said, it can be extremely difficult to teach students complex processes when you've only learned through your style. I think we need to encourage teachers to reevaluate the way they learn, and develop the same skills that we want in our own children.

How can we expect our children to learn life long learning skills, if teachers don't have those skills themselves? I'm not trying to come down on teachers at all- I feel bad that they are stuck in a system like this- it must be extremely difficult to teach against the common grain! I imagine it's also a lot of work too- I know how much time I spend learning about my own teaching and how to better convey what I want students to learn...it takes a lot of time to continually assess your own teaching, and try and adapt it to the class - a class that changes each term!

 

[rawr]

yes - and many schools already emphasize this, to some extent. Maybe it's that I went to a private school for a large portion of my primary school career, or maybe it's that i've been blessed enough to be surrounded by wise & sensible people, but I feel that "learn what works for you" has not been underemphasized.

 

[sprinkles]

yes - and many schools already emphasize this, to some extent. Maybe it's that I went to a private school for a large portion of my primary school career, or maybe it's that i've been blessed enough to be surrounded by wise & sensible people, but I feel that "learn what works for you" has not been underemphasized.

It's been 20 years since I touched a school so maybe that is a little better.

 

[sprinkles]

I was thinking about this on the way to school this morning, and I thought I would add a point to this.

The teachers who teach the children, also learned in a system that there was one right way to learn. Therefore, it's difficult to ask someone to cater to a variety of learning styles and methods, when they haven't experienced it themselves. It's a vicious circle! As [MENTION=1669]Framed[/MENTION] said, it can be extremely difficult to teach students complex processes when you've only learned through your style. I think we need to encourage teachers to reevaluate the way they learn, and develop the same skills that we want in our own children.

How can we expect our children to learn life long learning skills, if teachers don't have those skills themselves? I'm not trying to come down on teachers at all- I feel bad that they are stuck in a system like this- it must be extremely difficult to teach against the common grain! I imagine it's also a lot of work too- I know how much time I spend learning about my own teaching and how to better convey what I want students to learn...it takes a lot of time to continually assess your own teaching, and try and adapt it to the class - a class that changes each term!

Teachers should also be students.

 

[say what]

Teachers should also be students.

100000% agree!

It's sad, but so many teachers don't realize that the classroom is also a place for their learning as well. They also never assess their own teaching and if their students are actually learning what they want them too.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=10252]say what[/MENTION] [MENTION=1669]Framed[/MENTION] [MENTION=5667]Jacobi[/MENTION] [MENTION=2240]rawr[/MENTION] [MENTION=1814]invisible[/MENTION] [MENTION=9809]La Sagna[/MENTION] [MENTION=3799]bionic[/MENTION]

[video=youtube;EoGGexQjDfA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoGGexQjDfA[/video]