Saturday morning reflection - encouraging risk taking by students
I am offering this reflection at the strong suggestion of my beloved spouse, Leaves on the Current, who says it is one of the most important principles underlying my own teaching.
To me the greatest failure of our current approach to educational reform is by and large we discourage students from taking intellectual risks. We condition them to fear being wrong. In one sense this is not surprising - look at the price we make politicians pay if they ever admit they were wrong. Yet unless all of us are willing to be wrong, to think beyond what is "conventional wisdom" how does knowledge advance? Where is the advancements of science and technology? How do we address inequities in society.
While there is no doubt that those of us who are educators have some responsibility to ensure that our students know what we think we have already learned, we should not be restricting their learning to acquiring previously ascertained knowledge and understanding.
When we rely upon multiple choice questions where the student is required to select one out of a preselected
To me the greatest failure of our current approach to educational reform is by and large we discourage students from taking intellectual risks. We condition them to fear being wrong. In one sense this is not surprising - look at the price we make politicians pay if they ever admit they were wrong. Yet unless all of us are willing to be wrong, to think beyond what is "conventional wisdom" how does knowledge advance? Where is the advancements of science and technology? How do we address inequities in society.
While there is no doubt that those of us who are educators have some responsibility to ensure that our students know what we think we have already learned, we should not be restricting their learning to acquiring previously ascertained knowledge and understanding.
When we rely upon multiple choice questions where the student is required to select one out of a preselected
