Author Ken Bain Visits Title III
Participants at St. John's
Ken Bain, author of "What the Best College Teachers Do," shared his
pedagogical insights and expertise with Title III participants, ICS
faculty and students from the School of Education.
Like many a good speaker, Bain caught the audience's attention by
employing the element of surprise. Despite the title of his book,
Bain's talk would not be a listing of "dos and don'ts" -- rather
the first thing he did was ask participants to recall any episodes
and conditions from their own life when they experienced "deep
learning" or to recall a person (whether professor, coach, friend,
parent, or co-worker) who inspired "deep learning" in his or her
approach to texts, problems, disciplines and life. Bain outlined
what "deep learning" meant by distinguishing it from “surface
learning” – the rote memorization and replication of texts and
ideas – or "strategic learning" – where the learner understands
"procedures" but not the concepts and context behind new
information. Surface and strategic approaches to learning are often
driven by fear or by a desire for high grades and are the
approaches taken by people who are looking for the "easiest" way to
get through a class. While such an approach to learning may enable
us to pass a test, deeper connections between the
materials/procedures we have learned and their implications or
applications for other areas of life and learning remain
unexplored.
"Deep learning" makes room for looking at the meaning behind the
text; it allows for grappling with ideas and making errors and
ultimately deep learning may challenge and/or change the way an
individual thinks, acts and feels. When asked about the conditions
that were present where "deep learning" took place, respondents'
common answers included "time, support, room to fail, autonomy,
choosing the topics/directions of learning, promoting curiosity."
Recognizing that deep learning is the most preferable approach to
learning, Bain then challenged participants to think about what
conditions curb deep learning, or, more likely, encourage only
surface learning. Again respondents offered some common answers:
testing/assessment, grading, large class sizes, perceptions of that
amount of time required to learn, lack of interest.
Bain mapped some of these conditions of surface learning back to
those conditions required for deep learning; for example, the need
to "test and assign a grade" can be in conflict with the "room to
make errors and learn from them;" "lack of interest" may be related
to the fact that some compulsory materials need to be mastered
before a learner can be in "control of the questions to be asked."
It may also be that some habits regarding testing and learning from
K-12 become so deeply ingrained in early learning that “bridging
the interest gap" means that an educator is in the difficult
position of breaking bad mental habits.
Breaking these habits in students is undoubtedly very difficult for
a teacher to do, yet some manage to do it very well and with some
remarkable consistency; Bain wanted to know how. He spent several
years interviewing teachers whom students and alumni had repeatedly
reported as being teachers who inspired "deep learning" over the
course of their lives. While limiting his examples to a sampling of
anecdotes from a history professor, a math professor and a law
professor, Bain outlined the approach that each of the "best
teachers" took: each was able to (1) create "expectation failure" –
that is, to put the students in a situation in which their current
model of thinking would not work; and (2) garner sufficient
interest so that students will care enough to explore new models of
thinking, not just for the class, but over the course of their
lives.
As a final challenge, Bain proposed that participants start each
new course, and even each class, by considering the paradigms that
students are likely to bring to their class which the professor
would want them to question. And to raise questions which will help
pique student interest enough to explore new avenues of study and
learning, even if doing so means taking a life-changing
risk.
For more information on Ken Bain, please visit:
www.montclair.edu/center/Bain.html
And for more information on the Title III program please visit: www.t3portal.org