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What is Teaching for Understanding? A Deeper Look |
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When we think about teaching for understanding from the perspective of cognitive science researchers, it is tempting to talk about mental models or schemata or some other technical theory of understanding. But that can be a little dry. Instead, consider what a poet has to say. Richard Wilbur, a well-known American poet, has a version of mind that could also be his vision of understanding (which has a lot to do with mind!). Take a moment to read twice the poem "Mind" by Wilbur. The first time, pay close attention to the words and what they mean. Read it the second time so you can feel its flow. Wilbur presents us with a vision of what it's like to know and understand something. The bat knows his way around the cave. He knows where the walls are with his sonar and with his experience. He knows where tunnels occur. He navigates and copes and deals and survives. But, Wilbur says, the bat doesn't know the whole cave. There are walls in some places that the bat doesn't know about or even sense with his sonar. There are tunnels in unexpected places. Wilbur suggests that in the very happiest intellection, graceful errors occur. Here is the bat, perhaps nudging a wall or heading in one direction and dodging. But then his wing tips don't touch the wall; there's an opening there, previously unseen. So graceful errors occur that correct what he knows of the cave. Of course, all this is an ellipsis-it's not the cave that's corrected, but rather the bat's conception of the cave that is corrected. If we take this as a kind of image or vision of a performance perspective on understanding, it says that knowing is one thing and finding out is something else. Finding out is a matter of groping about and flitting here and there. Every now and then, if you flit actively, you make one of those graceful errors that corrects the cave and reveals unsuspected avenues, or, indeed, unsuspected barriers. If we turn this story of the bat into an educational theory, it would say that we need to create those caves for learners where they can flit around. In such caves they can engage themselves actively in exploring further the spaces that they already know and make those graceful errors that enlarge the cave for them. Or they may find unsuspected barriers, because that's part of the cave as well. |
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