Category: Week 4 – Anti-Teaching / Mindful Learning

Ellen Langer, in her book The Power of Mindful Learning (1997), talks about the importance of teaching conditionally (or mindfully) rather than in ways that encourage concrete thinking and rote memorization. She gives numerous fascinating examples of individuals being taught new information in either a conditional (mindful) manner or in mindless, memorization-focused way. These experiments indicate that, when taught mindfully, people are equally likely to recall the information given and are more likely to be able to apply the information in situations that require adaptation, flexibility, and creative thinking. Additionally, it was found that individuals taught using mindful techniques reported a greater level of enjoyment. Many of the studies involve telling the individuals that there are alternate ways of viewing the material or including wording changes such as adding “may” before stating a piece of information. I find it truly remarkable that simply telling individuals to be flexible in their thinking leads to them being flexible in their thinking.

That the students did similarly well (regardless of mindful or mindless teaching approaches) in the factual retention of information on the portion of the test aimed at assessing concrete, direct knowledge of the material offers an explanation of why we have for so long and continue to teach these ways. Also, at first glance I believe it also seems more logical to assume that when we teach students facts as though they are concrete and unchangeable it would lead to more clear and solid retention of those facts rather than wording the information in a way that makes it sound like it is only a possibility or only occasionally true. Langer’s (1997) research indicates that this not seem to be the case. Further, this should bring us to take a closer look at how often any particular fact actually is true in all situations.

As I continue to form and reform my own views on pedagogy, I am reassured by the acknowledgment that traditional (or “mindless”) ways of teaching seem to remain at least moderately effective for retention of concrete facts. This makes it easier for me to accept that there may certainly be more effective ways of teaching that encourage adaption and application of these same facts.

Reference

Langer, E. J. (1997). The power of mindful learning. Hachette UK.

Photo:  Taken from http://www.mtpr.com.   Butte, Montana in Summer  (This picture probably was taken in the winter but it could have been taken in July.)

While I was reading Nicholas Carr‘s article “Is Google making us stupid”  (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/) in Atlantic Magazine, I reckon back to my undergraduate days in the small university known as the Montana School of Mines.   As an 18 year old, I decided to go to Butte, Montana for school.  For those who don’t know, Butte is a former town that had a million people that mined out a mountain for its cooper and zinc.  Now, the city has only 36,000 people and the skeletons of its mining heritage.   The city is also a mile high in elevation and the winters were brutal even in Montana standards.   Then, the Montana School of Mines was male-dominated engineering school of 3,000 hearty souls that did not have much of a “nightlife.”  It was said that you had the choice between studying, drinking (Butte does not have an open container law), or sleeping.  Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful education to get me set on my career and plenty of cheap Rainer/Olympia beer.

As a freshman, I was bored.  You can only rearrange your dorm room so many times (15 times the first semester) or play cribbage or hearts.  I had homework but I was diligent about it so there was a lot of extra time.  So, I went to the library.   As a young and budding geologist, I would sit through the journals in the large dusty books.  It wasn’t until Christmas break that an article from the Geological Society of America that had a hypothesis of the makeup of Rodina.   Rodina was a supercontinent that formed before its more famous cousin Pangaea.   As shown below, western North America (Laurentia) was connected to southeast Australia and the center of Antarctica.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEAT_(hypothesis)

So, I started with the one article and grabbed the articles that it cited.   I would run with a little cart and go down and photocopy the article.   I would then take it up to my little dorm room and read those articles.   Those articles would cite other articles that would start the cycle again.  During the process of slipping down on a Friday night to grab more articles around the library or enter data into a new fangled database program called Microsoft Access, I was learning a new subject that I wasn’t going to learn in school.    During my sophomore year, the library got an electronic database program that you can look for either authors or the articles it cited.   I still had to get up and chase down the journal on the shelf but now I can speed up the search process and find the newer articles.  It was a dream come true.

During my junior year, I presented a variation to the model above as an undergrad at the Geological Society of America Annual Conference and my little abstract was selected for their media guide.  All the hours in the library with the dusty journals and the bill for $250 that my advisor got when he got the bill for photocopying charges when he gave me his “code” was worth it.  I learned to read journal articles and absorb the content very quickly.   It got me my ticket for my graduate education at Syracuse University when I met a professor at the conference that became my advisor.

Today, I have the library in my pajama pants.  The days of going out into the cold or blowing off the dust off a journal is over.   I go on to google on the computer and pick a subject.   Boom, there are 10,000 articles.   With a little sorting and some more keywords, I go to the journal and hit the libx button.  The webpage form the publisher thinks that I am accessing it from a Virginia Tech library computer.  I press another button and there is a pdf sitting on my screen.   I can then take the title and put it through Google Scholar.  I can see the articles that have cited it.   I can get a pdf of those articles with a couple of mouse clicks.  The hours that I spent looking through the dust of the library and carrying them off to a photocopy machine are over.  I have now time to drink a good bourbon, read a good book, and enjoy much better weather in southwestern Virginia.

With all due respect Mr. Carr, you can take your Atlantic article and the belief that the old days were better and go to hell.

 

 

 

To start with, let us define the meaning of these two keywords: mindfulness and mindlessness. According to “Mindful Learning” by Ellen Langer, “mindfulness is a flexible state of mind in which we are actively engages in the present, noticing new things and sensitive to context”. On the other hand,  when we are mindless we rely on decisions made in the past. As the result, “we are stuck in a single, rigid perspective and oblivious to alternative ways of knowing”.

When it comes to learning, mindful learning is interpreted as an interactive communication between the students and teachers, which engages the students actively thinking about the topic, answering questions, and most importantly asking questions. In contrast, mindless learning pictures teaching as a way to delivering information; therefore, the emphasis is more on what is taught rather than how it is taught. In other words, “mindful learning=active learning”, whereas “mindless learning=passive learning”.

Honestly, I have been a fan of mindless learning for a long while! In particular, when I volunteered to teach an undergraduate course to the computer science major students in summer 2017, I scheduled the semester very heavily to make sure that all the topics are covered and nothing is missed. Although there is nothing wrong with this approach at the first glance, you can imagine how my priorities were geared towards the delivery of information rather than teaching less but more effectively. Interestingly, students did not reflect any issues regarding this approach in their SPOT surveys! This perhaps  implies that this attitude has become a common teaching philosophy, so that students did not recognize it as a drawback.

This semester, I am privileged to develop a graduate course in math/computer science with my advisor. As opposed to me, he put his emphasis on the engagement of students through several lab sessions, projects and presentations. In the beginning, I frowned upon his proposed syllabus, which was very different than the standard ones– those basically cover the major sections of a textbook. Instead, he selected fewer topics but added more hands-on projects and Q&A sessions. Furthermore, his presentations are often made of a few slides containing methodologies and formulas followed by several slides on the real-world examples. Expectedly, students are more involved during the class and follow the topics enthusiastically.

One may argue that an undergraduate course is significantly different than a graduate course in terms of the of the opportunities that the instructor have to customize the syllabus. This is a vey legitimate argument. But, what I am willing to accentuate is the paradigm shift from the conventional easy way of passive teaching to the new and challenging way of active teaching. In my opinion, once this philosophy is set, the courseware to make it happen will flourish accordingly.

 

The short answer is no. The long answer is also no, but accompanied by some actual reasons.

I used to think that it was possible to multitask. That may not have been the case for everyone, but, sure, some people can multitask. They have the ability to listen to music or watch TV while working on homework or surfing the web. I never thought I had that skill myself, but I had been told by so many of my friends and family that they COULD DEFINITELY multitask. And who am I to tell them they’re wrong? Well, in 2012 I decided they were and I haven’t believed a single multitasker since.

Like many former believers in multitasking, I had the impossibility of multitasking demonstrated to me in class. In a room full of people who were convinced they could multitask, a professor of mine had us complete 2 tasks at the same time and show us that we either could not complete both tasks at the same time, that we were significantly less efficient at both tasks, or that we thought we were doing both tasks at the same time, when really we were just switching back and forth in rapid succession between the two.

I don’t doubt that there are people who can read a book while playing music with lyrics. What I do doubt, is that they are listening to the words of those lyrics while they read the words of the book they are reading. I don’t doubt that people can put a TV show on while they do homework, but what I do doubt is that they are actually watching and absorbing what they have have on while they work on that homework.

Now, I’ll say it probably doesn’t ultimately matter whether people think they’re getting away with multitasking or not. But, my two cents on this are that one or both tasks are being done poorly. Why is it so essential that you listen to music with lyrics or watch that 30 minute TV show or catch the most recent football game while you’re working on something that your brain actually needs to focus on? Is it enriching your life that much? Does it give you a ton of added benefit that you otherwise wouldn’t be getting? I think too many people kid themselves into thinking they’re getting two birds with one stone instead of just prioritizing one activity at a time and completing it well.

“The challenge is to find a way to marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new” – Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown.

I wanted to start with a quote from our reading in A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change that stuck with me and, in my opinion, is fundamental to a lot of the discussions we have had about education and pedagogy. It begs the question where is the ideal line between structure and freedom? For the student? For the teacher? For the administrator?

I agree with a lot of what this article discusses, and it brings up a lot of interesting takes. However, I feel that the emphasis on ‘new’ is a misnomer, at least in a sense. Throughout the history of teaching there has always been a tug and war between freedom and structure so marrying the two isn’t a new concept. In my opinion, the emphasis should be more on finding a balance that ‘works’, especially with the added challenges that educating in modern times bring.

I guess even defining what ‘works’ is a challenge in itself and can mean completely different things depending on what lens you view the question. Does what ‘works’ look the same for a student, administrator, and teacher? I can’t say for sure that it does and maybe that explains why finding that balance is so difficult.

I think for many of us the most ‘obvious’ solution to the systemic issues in education is to place more agency with the teachers – the ones in the classroom on a day to day basis. Allow them to better control their classrooms, lesson plans, and approach to education and give them the latitude to tailor their teaching to their student’s needs. I think there is exceptional merit in this idea, but only when the teacher is a good one. What does a bad teacher do with all of that latitude?

I guess the retort would be to get better teachers, increase their pay, and incentivize more ‘brilliant’ minds to go into teaching in the first place. I doubt many of us would be opposed to this idea, I know I wouldn’t, but sadly there are plenty of people outside of our circles that are.

I guess in the current system you have to ask yourself, what does more damage – creating an environment that prevents the great teachers from reaching their potential or one that gives full reign to a bad teacher? I honestly don’t know the answer, and maybe the best solution is somewhere in between, or maybe that somewhere in between is where we are now and it makes few people happy.

Outside of the above, I think one of the other huge problems with education is how we seem to find ourselves in Death Valley to begin with. Yes, Sir Ken Robinson brilliantly points out that with the correct changes even Death Valley can spring to life, invigorated with wonder, and I do not doubt him that the same can be experienced with young minds. My big question is why does our education system or society, more generally, turn young minds dormant?

When I graduated high school I remember meeting with my old high school math teachers and they convinced me to get my substitute teaching certification to teach while I was home on breaks (apparently finding math/science competent subs is extremely difficult). From my personal experience there were plenty of students who just didn’t care, and had no interest in learning. I remember feeling that somewhere, somehow the system failed and I won’t argue that it hadn’t.

However, the more I think about it, I can’t say it is just the education system that is failing – obviously there is plenty of room for improvement – but I don’t think the social and cultural pressures that students face day to day should be ignored either. I can’t say I was ever bullied for doing well in school, but I do still remember that there were plenty of pressures that didn’t always emphasis the importance of learning. Being passionate about learning didn’t pull the same social clout as being a star athlete did, or being extremely good looking, or being ‘fun’. From where we are now these things may seem small, as we are surrounded by people that very much revere the purists of education, but during grade school they may cause just as much damage as the systemic issues we commonly focus on. A lot of students took some of the same classes I did, with excellent teachers that cared about their pupils and their minds and curiosity were still dormant. Why? Doesn’t this go against the very premise that great teachers will find a way?

Maybe they fell into the immovable camp, or maybe by the time they got to high school they had already given up and that lack of motivation drowned out the attempts of a few good teachers. It’s possible. Or maybe the societal pressures that ‘math isn’t for girls’, or ‘being a nerd isn’t cool’, or failing support structures at home cause just as many problems for cultivating a passion for learning as does standardized testing.

Mindful learning, introduced and discussed by Ellen Langer, brings a new perspective on education, teaching, and learning. She suggested the seven myths that have shaped our educational practices and environments for a long time and dove deeper into how they have negative impacts on both teaching and learning. The 7 misleading but most popular myths of learning are 1) practice basics to they become second nature; 2) focus means paying attention at one thing at a time; 3) delay gratification; 4) rote memory is necessary; 5) forgetting is bad; 6) intelligence is knowing what is out there; and 7) answers are either right or wrong.

What really appealed to me was the idea that why remembering is not always the way to learn, and even decrease retention of information. Ellen Langer said that repetition and practice without reflection and doubt, which means mindlessly learning, does not work well. Also, mindless memorization might lead to being insensitive to contexts and situation. Rather, forgetting what you have learned and how you have learned will help you improve the performance and allows to have innovative thinking and new perspectives. Let me illustrate my experience of mindful learning when I was studying history in high school. I had only relied on simple memorization and repetitive learning techniques for tests, and it worked in the short term but after the exam, every knowledge and information was just gone. At that time, there were several historical dramas being on air, and I found it helpful to learn history, even though they were partly fictional. Watching TV and talking with friends and teachers helped me not only to understand the historical contexts and contents much better and much longer but also to get interested in them. My experience also corresponds to the third myth of delayed gratification. If my learning had been only with books and lectures, I wouldn’t have had an interest in learning history.

In order to provide our children, students, and ourselves with more positive possibilities, just let negative and unnecessary memories go, and let us see the world in new ways.

This TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson was entertaining whilst being informative (about another country/culture) — the best recipe for a great “talk”. However seemingly prudent the speaker might appear to be, I think the contents of the talk don’t reflect his perceived image. As every student necessitates unique learning tools and environment, every country warrants a novel approach to their problems (including education). Denigrating a country’s educational system on the premise of a different country’s educational system, without any regard for the differences, is facetious at best. There are sundry reasons why students drop out of high school, some of them personal and some of them institutional. Shifting the entire burden of drop out rate on institutional flaws doesn’t seem reasonable. Personalizing school for every individual will set expectations with these students that everything will be individualized for them in life and everything will always be “fun” and “interesting” — a pernicious and spurious expectation which in reality is only setting up these individuals for failure either in college or in their job. No ones job is “personalized” to their interests, it is personalized to the company’s interest. There are always going to be fun parts and boring parts to your job. I think students need to be taught how the real world works by an aptly early age, so they are ready for it when they get there. I would even argue that creating superficial environments antithetical to the real world will lead to a different sort of institutional failure down the road, which will have more critical repercussions.

Mindfulness is something that I strive for in my life, in my every day I try to be present in every moment, even in the painful ones. However, after this week’s readings/Tedtalk it suddenly dawned on me that I haven’t applied this effort to be mindful in the classroom. This is probably because teaching used to scare me, so I would lesson plan with as much detail as possible so I would have to do the least amount of thinking possible…haha. Fortunately, I am now much more confident in the classroom and have learned that teaching is more than simply accomplishing everything on my lesson plan. 

As an educator, at first, I just wanted to survive in the classroom, so I opted for mindlessness and just heavily relied on my lesson plan. Being mindless feels easier and more comfortable. It takes little to no effort to be mindless, perhaps this is why students who “just want to get by” have adopted this when it comes to learning. 

It all takes me back to baby George and that child-like way of learning. Curiosity and inquisition lead to a better grasp on what we learn, we know that now. But how can we ignite this curiosity and inquisition? How do we achieve this when the classroom is full of diverse learners, backgrounds, needs, ages etc.…

I’ve jotted down some idea on how we can encourage mindfulness and curiosity: 

• Use language that suggests variation in perspective because information looks different from different perspectives (Langer).
• Make material meaningful – make connections between the material and the student, basically make it relevant to their life. 
• Compare and contrast information in terms of perspective – get students talking to each other with class discussions
• Encourage students to let go of the need for certainty (Langer)
• Embrace diversity in the classroom (Robinson) – celebrate the various talents present – make it known to students that what they have to contribute is valued 
• Convey that their presence in the classroom is important – their contributions/perspective is important 

Now…how we can accomplish this in our classroom in accordance to our field will probably look very different. 

“Teaching is a creative profession” – Sir Ken Robinson