6 Responses to Students' Questions About IBL

Teaching is a cultural activity. Whenever students enter a classroom, they have expectations about their roles, and about what the teacher will do. If a teacher decides to do something outside of the norm, students are often confused and anxious about what will happen. Students often express these feelings with statements such as, 

"Why do we have to teach ourselves?" "I don't learn this way," or, "Why not just show me what to do?"

Over time, I have accumulated some ways to respond to these statements. I did not develop all of these myself; many of them have come from other instructors I have met at conferences and workshops. I should also say that these are things that I say to college students. If I had an audience of high school students, for instance, I would probably make these same points, but not necessarily in the same way.

1. Think of me as a coach. When you think of things you learned outside the classroom, things like playing a musical instrument, learning to swim, or playing a video game, you probably learned a lot of it by trying things yourself. That is what we are doing here. By letting you show me what you tried, I can coach you, and help you figure out anything you are missing. To quote a student of Dana Ernst’s, “Try. Fail. Learn. Win.” In other words, people learn from their own efforts. And, like a swim coach, while I will expect you to try to swim on your own, I will also step in to keep you from drowning.
2. Learning happens when we are actively involved. A lot of research has accumulated that suggests that classrooms in which students are actively participating and collaborating are better at promoting learning than classes in which students are passive. (Research on cooperative learning for K-12 is summarized in Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock, 2001, for example. The recent article by Freeman and colleagues reviews research on active learning at the college level.)
3. Do not mistake struggle for “not learning.” We are often not very good at judging how well we are learning. When people watch a well-organized lecture, they rate their learning higher than when watching a poorly organized lecture. But tests suggest that the audience in each case learns about the same amount. In contrast to a lecture, when we participate actively, it can feel uncomfortable to struggle to come up with answers. But that struggle is part of learning. Consequently, students sometimes rate their learning in lecture courses as higher than in active learning courses, even when the data suggest otherwise. More than one study has pointed to this, but this is apparent in a study by Lake, 2001 (http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/81/3/896.full).
4. This course will help you develop the skills that employers want, such as independence, creativity, the ability to work in teams, the ability to learn new ideas, and skill in solving problems for which the solution is not immediately apparent. My goals for you in this class are not just to pass exams; I want you to learn skills that will be valuable to your long-term success in your chosen career. But developing these skills requires doing something different than watching the instructor and practicing similar work on your own time. It will require struggle, as you are learning to use a different set of skills than you may be used to using in math class.
5. A lot of people tell me they hate math, or, “I’m just not a math person.” The kinds of experiences that lead people to make these statements have a lot to do with the way math has been taught for a long time. A lot of classes emphasize following the teacher’s steps, practicing specific procedures, memorizing mathematical facts, and developing speed at execution. While there is a role for these things, mathematics is about a lot of other things, and for the most part, it is these other aspects that interest mathematicians in doing mathematics. The other side of mathematics is about solving problems, finding new ways to understand mathematical ideas, and proving that the solutions we find work, or figuring out the cases where they don’t work. This kind of work does not proceed linearly, from problem directly to solution. Instead, we often take a winding road, hit dead ends, and have to re-evaluate what we are doing. This kind of mathematics is not straightforward, but it is exhilarating when we succeed, and even when we don’t, we often learn a lot.
6. A good teacher is not defined by what he or she knows, but what he or she can get students to learn. It is what the students can do that matters. I can explain a lot of sophisticated mathematics, but that is no guarantee that you will learn it. Instead, I carefully prepare problems that will help you draw out your own ideas, and that are most likely to put you into a situation where you will learn the important ideas of the class. Then, as a class, we will struggle, but you will learn more than you would if this class was organized around me, as the instructor, explaining solutions to problems you have not yet thought about.

I’m sure other instructors have other ideas, and I’d be happy to hear them in the comments. Meanwhile, I hope these examples serve to illustrate the kinds of answers that an instructor can use. I find that both the use of analogies (as in #1) and the appeal to research (as in #2 and #3) tend to be my favorite. I probably lean on #1 the most, but I also mention the others regularly. In classes where the students are not STEM majors, #5 often resonates with the personal experience of many students, and can help open the door to having them consider other ways of organizing the classroom that can still be called teaching, or, better still, to think of the classroom as being about what the students learn, rather than what the teacher explains.  

What is acceptable evidence?

I often try to keep the goals of my course in mind when designing a course, and when making decisions day-to-day in a course. But I have a harder time thinking about evidence of student learning. As it turns out, verbs are helpful.

Through my work with teachers, and in partnering with teacher educators, I came into contact with the book Understanding by Design, by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. In their model for developing curriculum and lessons, there are three stages, embodied in the three questions: What are the learning goals? What is acceptable evidence? What activities, experiences, and lessons will lead to the desired results as evidenced by the assessments? 

I teach a range of courses, some for aspiring elementary teachers, some for math majors, and some for practicing secondary teachers. In planning any of these courses, I generally begin with my learning goals for the course. While the official course syllabus sets a direction for the course, I sometimes find it helpful to rephrase the goals, and to prioritize them. For purposes of illustration, one phrasing of a course goal from the course for future elementary teachers is: Students will understand fractions and their representations, and be able to solve problems involving fractions. My rephrasing of that goal is: Students will be able to explain operations on fractions using models such as the area model and the number line, apply the models in realistic contexts, solve problems involving fractions, and interpret their answers.

Pivoting from goals to assessment, I am now faced with the question, What am I looking for during and after the unit on fractions that will let me know if students have reached the goals for the unit? Whereas the initial phrasing of “understand fractions” does not translate easily to something that can be assessed, the use of the verbs explain, apply, solve, and interpret give more direction to how to assess student learning. It lets me know that I am going to assess the students via problems in context that include a requirement to interpret their answers, as well as problems that require explanation of diagrams or models. I will know students have succeeded if their explanations are coherent, their diagrams illustrate mathematical reasoning, and students are purposeful in interpreting their answers in context, for instance by using appropriate units, or rounding up or down as appropriate to the problem. Although I am sure it is possible to have shallow goals using the same verbs, I find that using words such as explain, apply, solve, and interpret translates an abstract concept like understanding into a measurable quantity. 

Rethinking my goals with assessment in mind has helped me keep a focus on what is important in my classes. Having clear goals phrased with verbs that make them measurable makes it easier to write exams. But more importantly, because I am interacting with students at every class meeting, if I feel students are not reaching the goals, I know what is important to emphasize, or what is important enough that we need to slow down, since it is embedded in the goal statements.

Have you worked with your goal statements? Do you find that you assess progress toward your goals regularly?