I must say that the analogy of collecting dots or connecting dots while learning is one that makes me stop and evaluate exactly what I've been asking of my students. I have found through this introspective evaluation that while I do have students connect dots, I've also had them collecting them as well. Take for example writing a literary analysis paragraph. I walk my students through as follows: your claim, intro to evidence, give the evidence, explain or justify how your evidence supports your claim. I give examples; I follow an "I do, we do, you do" method of gentle release. While it is true that students are using their own original thought and analysis, I'm asking them to follow formulaic writing. This smells and looks a lot like collecting dots. I think that if I helped students find different ways to write literary analysis paragraphs, and then allowed them to choose how they wanted to write their paragraphs, that would fall in line with connecting the dots.
I think that having an "expert" in the learning environment can be beneficial; however, it's equally important to emphasize that the "expert" is of one opinion. One of the things that I love most about my classroom is when students have conversations (either in pairs, small/large groups, Socratic seminars, philosophical chairs, whole class) and we all have the opportunity to learn from each other. Like Thomas and Brown point out in A New Culture of Learning, our students know that the expert is only one part of the context and not the whole.
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