Understanding human’s learning key to teaching
Understanding human learning and challenging students to break down their misconceptions is what makes a good teacher, said Ken Bain in a lecture on Friday in the Eccles Science Learning Center.
Bain, author of the book “What the Best College Teachers Do,” spoke to a crowd of about 150 people as part of a series of lectures that will be given throughout the year, hosted by the Provost’s Office at USU.
Bain, who is a history professor as well as a vice provost for instruction at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J., said many factors influence what makes teachers great and that there is no set formula for teaching effectively.
“If you came expecting a few simple dos and don’ts, you will be disappointed,” Bain said. “It’s not that simple.”
In order to understand what makes a great teacher, Bain said he conducted a study in which he handpicked 63 teachers who he thought met the qualifications of a good teacher and studied them intensely.
“We wanted to identify people who fostered deep learning in their students,” he said.
Bain said he interviewed the teachers, sat in on their classes and videotaped them in order to observe common variables that made them superior teachers. The central quality, Bain said, was their ability to understand human learning. This was a new concept to Bain, who said he had never thought to study the way humans learn in order to teach them better.
“It took 20 years of teaching before it occurred to me to look at literature on human learning,” Bain said.
He also said he began looking at literature on human learning while he was doing the study, and he noticed the books and the teachers he was studying talked about many of the same ideas.
However, Bain said good teaching does not just come from literature. Students are each individual cases and often already have a conception of what they think is right in their heads. Good teachers must break through that paradigm, Bain said.
“Often (teachers) want students to build new models, rather than realizing and working with what (the students) know,” he said.
Bain used the story of two physics teachers as an example of this phenomenon. Bain said the teachers gave a Force Content Inventory to 600 students at the start of class on how they perceived motion. After students went through the course, the professors brought them back and gave them the same test. Bain said the results were shocking because the teachers found virtually no change in the students’ ideas about motion. It was not based on grades. A students were just as likely to retain the same ideas as C students, Bain said.
“In every subject, students are reluctant to give up prior knowledge,” he said. “Before teachers even begin to address this issue of deep conceptual learning, you must create a complex learning environment.”
Bain gave some key ingredients in creating this environment, including putting students in a situation where their existing paradigm did not work and making them interested in learning why it did not work.
“The best teachers ask interesting questions and intrigue students with them,” Bain said.
One problem advanced educators face is being able to ask advanced questions, he said. In order to do this, teachers must dig deep and find questions that students will find important.
“Each student has curiosity,” Bain said. “You just have to spark it.”
-amanda.m@aggiemail.usu.edu