{"id":80,"date":"2011-03-14T16:52:17","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/?p=80"},"modified":"2011-03-15T07:10:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T12:10:05","slug":"teaching-how-to-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/2011\/03\/teaching-how-to-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching how to learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last month I had the\u00c2\u00a0opportunity to spend\u00c2\u00a0a couple of days with senior educators from Interlochen Center for the Arts<\/a>, where I am a board member.\u00c2\u00a0 We were doing a deep dive into the ways teaching and learning are changing, given the immediate availability of information and ideas via digital devices in the classroom.<\/p>\n

I am not an expert in educational theory, having never taken a class or read very\u00c2\u00a0much about how teachers learn to teach.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But I have<\/strong> been fortunate to have been on the receiving end of memorable teaching from a handful of great teachers who made their classes pure joy and who made a lifelong imprint on me.\u00c2\u00a0 After the Interlochen meeting I got to thinking about\u00c2\u00a0this because personally\u00c2\u00a0I associate great teaching with\u00c2\u00a0great presenting, with \u00c2\u00a0teachers who used a lecture-based format to bring their subject matter to life with\u00c2\u00a0intensity, clarity,\u00c2\u00a0and passion.<\/p>\n

Now it looks like my ideas about\u00c2\u00a0great teaching are outdated.\u00c2\u00a0 And it isn’t just me who needs to make the adjustment.\u00c2\u00a0 Educational institutions are training new teachers, or re-training teachers “of a certain age,” to take advantage of digital tools and to evolve their teaching styles based on the idea that the best teachers are not “the sage on the stage” but rather act as “the guide at the side.”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In fact if you put that phrase into Google, you’ll get a few million hits, explaining that the “transmittal” method of teaching is increasingly unhelpful (the teacher knows something that the student does not, and his\/her job is to transmit it to the class) because it won’t prepare people for the lives they will need to lead in the future (particularly since we expect the rate of change\u00c2\u00a0to\u00c2\u00a0increase).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Instead, we need to help students learn to\u00c2\u00a0teach themselves throughout their lifetimes.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The underlying\u00c2\u00a0premise is that information <\/em>is readily available, but knowledge <\/em>must be constructed by the individual.\u00c2\u00a0 And this is best nurtured through inquiry-based <\/a>teaching methods.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The teacher’s job\u00c2\u00a0 is not to impart information but\u00c2\u00a0to create the context within which students discover what is important to be known.\u00c2\u00a0 Questions, games, or “challenges” are designed to facilitate discovery, and the teacher is\u00c2\u00a0the resource for problem-solving, not the one with the Answer Key.<\/p>\n

Debates about the best teaching methods have been going on for\u00c2\u00a0a long time (centuries) and would not be particularly noteworthy, except that with the advent of portable computing devices, the ability to discover information has never been easier.\u00c2\u00a0 As classrooms move to “one\u00c2\u00a0to one” computing (each student has her own untethered device), teaching methods can be device-powered in new ways.\u00c2\u00a0 Apps that support inquiry-based classroom education are proliferating, making education more\u00c2\u00a0easily self-directed\u00c2\u00a0and rendering printed\u00c2\u00a0textbooks obsolete. (Check out, for example, the beautiful educational apps from Touch Press<\/a>, including the Solar System app pictured above.) \u00c2\u00a0Teachers can use these tools to power student learning, but their styles and methods need to evolve.<\/p>\n

Assuming these trends in education are pervasive and increasing,\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0the next generation of\u00c2\u00a0 graduates\u00c2\u00a0will expect to interact in new ways not only in their workplaces, but also\u00c2\u00a0in\u00c2\u00a0our theaters, museums, and concert halls.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In the workplace, people will have greater expectations for independent and team-based problem-solving,\u00c2\u00a0 and will be comfortable working with minimal hierarchical supervisory structures. \u00c2\u00a0 In other words, bosses who are bossy will need to adjust their styles.\u00c2\u00a0 This trend is already underway, and seems favorable for employee engagement and for making work interesting and fun.<\/p>\n

In terms of audience and community engagement,\u00c2\u00a0audiences will expect us to offer them a meaningful role within more open systems of curation\u00c2\u00a0and presentation (asking our organizations to behave more like the guide and less like the sage).\u00c2\u00a0 Cultural groups that today are experimenting with ways of giving the audience a\u00c2\u00a0voice in their artistic projects\u00c2\u00a0are on the right track.\u00c2\u00a0 Projects like the Walker Art Center’s Open Field<\/a> project,\u00c2\u00a0 Spring for Music’s Fantasy Program Contest<\/a>, or philanthropic sites that let the public help decide which works to commission through online donations (check out the London Sinfonietta’s Sinfonietta Shorts <\/a>program, one of many such examples)\u00c2\u00a0— all these are inspired by digital\u00c2\u00a0tools and the engagement possibilities\u00c2\u00a0that they enable.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Organizations that\u00c2\u00a0continue to practice rigid or cloistered decision-making will lose out on the benefits that audience engagement\u00c2\u00a0will bring to the mix.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next decade or so, and to see how the nonprofit cultural sector learns to take advantage of changed expectations.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Do you have any examples to share?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I had the\u00c2\u00a0opportunity to spend\u00c2\u00a0a couple of days with senior educators from Interlochen Center for the Arts, where I am a board member.\u00c2\u00a0 We were doing a deep dive into the ways teaching and learning are changing, given the immediate availability of information and ideas via digital devices in the classroom. I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-80","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/speaker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}