Their confidence is not boosted and, most detrimental of all, their creativity is never nurtured. Students are given information and, therefore, will never truly own it for themselves, no matter how many board exams they pass. The worst thing about lecture-style education, however, is that, by lecturing students, we are robbing them of experiencing their own aha moments. This is due to the fact that providing information via lecturing is not memorable in itself. It is also time-consuming and involves extensive studying of the material outside of the classroom, as students rely on repetition and memorization to make the material memorable. The students respond, in turn, by gathering around the feed like fat, passive pigeons, instead of taking wing and living the genuine, natural experience of finding food for themselves.Īs a lifelong student I can attest to the fact that the traditional lecture method is tedious, boring and passive. The lecturer stands in front of the classroom and showers the students with information, like a bag lady scattering birdseed. In this kind of “Discovery Learning” model of education, teachers act as support structures or guides, and lurk behind the scenes, rather than acting as figures of authority and expertise.īecause of the difficulty and creativity involved in creating lessons like these, we find that most education is modeled as the traditional lecture method. Lessons must be cleverly planned, with a great deal of creative input on the part of the educator, and attention must be closely paid to setting proper context and creating a genuine learning experience for the students.
As teachers, we have to tailor a lesson to the students’ individual learning styles, predicting the path it will take them to reach the answer, and then laying prepared crumbs of information along that path. It needs to be said, however, that modelling education in this way is difficult. Aaaaaahhhh!” As educators, we are able to witness the students’ faces literally light up as smiles stretch widely across their faces and experience the creative buzz of life and energy that fills the classroom. In literature, we say that the answer “dawns on them” and, in cartoons, an aha moment is depicted by a light bulb blinking on above a character’s head as he or she exclaims, “Eureka!” In real life, aha moments are just as exciting – although, in my class, “Aha!” sounds more like, “uuhhh? huh.
This “Aha!” Moment occurs when a student finally comes across the answer to a problem on their own and where things suddenly begin to make sense.
Structuring education in this way, instead of simply lecturing from the front of the room – using the infamous P owerpoint slide presentation – and having the students memorize the information later on, sets the stage for learners to experience the all-important “Aha!” Moment. In a recent training session I attended, a grammar workshop, it was impressed upon us the importance of creating a learning environment in which we allow students to experience the language rule for themselves, rather than simply standing at the blackboard, teaching it to them. As a summer English as a Second Langauge (ESL) teacher I often attend teacher training workshops.
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