Teaching: Understanding Level

Introduction

One of the primary goals of all classrooms teaching and learning is the transferability of the behavior learned. Transferability refers to the establishment of relation between the new knowledge and skill with several other knowledge and skills and the extrapolation of the new knowledge and skills to different contexts. However, such transferability is possible if the learned behavior is comprehended or understood. This provides a genuine cause for the case of teaching for understanding. Classrooms which nurture students’ understanding do possess qualities quite distinct from those at the memory level. 

Understanding

Understanding is different from "knowing" When a student knows something, the student can bring it forth upon demand- tell us the knowledge or demonstrate the skill. however when the student understands something he is able to perform such mental activities with the topic as explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalizing, applying, analogizing, and representing a topic in a new way. The students are able to perform all such mental performances when they are able o identify the different elements within a given body of knowledge and the interrelationship between those elements.

Understanding is viewed as having a ‘relational’ meaning by M.L.Bigge. He holds the belief that a topic is said to be understood when one is able to look into the links between the incoming knowledge and the store of experiences one already has . Understanding in this sense is then the ability to recognize the pattern.

According to Howard Gardner, understanding is the capacity to take knowledge, concepts, skills and facts and apply them in new situations where they are appropriate. The student is able to identify the elements of the learned material and their interrelationship in some new situation and thus is able to provide a link between the situation in which he has learned and the new situation that he faces. This second perspective defines understanding as the ability to use and apply the knowledge and this definition is termed as the tool use of the term understanding. 

Assumptions:

          Teaching at Understanding Level assumes that the students are able to understand the new knowledge when it is seen in relation to the previous knowledge held by them. The store of previous knowledge is termed as the apperception mass. The assimilation of the new knowledge with the apperceptive mass provides the base to recognize the pattern, similarity of attributes and generalizations and application of the knowledge in new contexts. In other words understanding develops through a conceptual change in the learner. Students have their own conceptions regarding various content (Y), that need to be improved upon.

Teachers Role 

            Understanding means developing associations and linking the incoming knowledge or information with preexisting knowledge and beliefs anchored in concrete experience. However, the purpose of linking is quite distinct from that during memory level teaching. While at memeory level teaching the new knowledge is linked to past experiences to help the learners retain the material by anchoring the new material to the past knowledge. At understanding level the purpose is to aid the learners to observe the relationship between the new knowledge and the previous knowledge and to recognize the similarity or distinctiveness of attributes between the two cases. Accordingly, the teacher designs the interactive stage of teaching. 

               Teaching at Understanding level has the following characteristic features: 

• The content (Y) of teaching is organized around a limited set of powerful ideas.

• The relational aspect of understanding implies that the teacher should effectively tap on the  students’ prior knowledge.

• Thus the mapping of the previous knowledge is the initial strategy for teaching at understanding level. The teacher initially tries to assess the existing conceptual framework among the learner.The teacher then thinks about strategies that produce change and growth.

• The teaching points are identified and the learning experiences are retrieved in the light of their previous knowledge assessed. They should identify and use them as hook for linking the new knowledge. In absence of any such past experiences in the students conceptual system the teacher may create artificial ones. The created experience will be used by the students as the starting point to develop the conceptual system. 

• The variegated teaching activities includes 

                   a. Demonstrations of the knowledge, 

                   B. Explanations through proper reasons, comparison and contrast with other similar concepts so that explanatory understanding may develop among the students. 

                   C. Using analogies and different contexts to show the application of same concept or knowledge.

                    D. Providing the students with opportunities to relate what they are learning (subject matter) to their lives outside of school.

                   E. The teacher creates a social environment in the classroom that provides opportunity for dialogue and thus promotes understanding. 

 Role of Students 

 Teaching for understanding is the creating of teaching learning experiences in a way that the students are actively engaged in the construction of knowledge or meaning making. The students should therefore be considered not as a passive recipient of knowledge, rather he is to be seen as a human agency who is actively involved in drawing from the encounters with his environment. Thus, the students’ role in teaching for understanding is not just to absorb or copy but to actively make sense and construct meaning. Students are involved in reasoned discourse over the topic enabling them to link the new knowledge with their past knowledge and applying the knowledge to different context. The students are further demanded to unpack or demonstrate their understanding through the different mental processes characteristic of understanding such as explanations, evidences, comparisons and application. 

 Environment 

 The classroom environment in Teachiung for Understanding is quite different from that of teaching at the memeory level. Teachiung for Understanding then is developing the capacity of the students to compare and contrast the learned concept with several other concepts as well as to apply the learned concept in new contexts. The teacher then has to provide the ideal encouraging environment. The students are as active as the teachers since they are involved in the construction of meaning. Consequently, there is a democratic environment with the teacher as a group leader leading the students in the right direction towards meaning construction. the teacher provides a creative and encouraging environment wherein the students feel free and motivated to engage themselves in logical and reasoned discourse with the teachers.

Reflective Level Teaching

Introduction 

Reflective thinking is a cognitive act of analysing some event or phenomenon that has already occurred. The event or phenomenon may also be some item of learning. As per Dewey, the learned material is cognitively revisited for a careful analysis of the belief involved, it’s supporting grounds, it’s consequences. Through such revisit and analysis, the individual reinterprets and judges the learned material with additional perspective and may arrive at new conclusions. Reflective thinking is the basic cognitive process that helps the learner to think over what they have learned, what are the shortcomings that they need to address and in the process they are able to find new conclusions.

Strategies

RT occurs in unstructured situations. The unstructured situations are problematic situations that initiate students inquiry.The students inquiry can be made supportive of reflective thinking when followed by the teachers supporting questions of the why and how type. In brief, the Problem Based Learning is the teaching strategy for RLT. 

Problem based Learning centers around some problem posed in the classroom (a problematic situation). It involves

• Posing a problem situation for the students and asked to find a solution for the problem.

• The students are guided to explore the problem and identify the data needed.

• Guide the students to locate, collect and analyse data. 

• Prompt them to look into the evidence, to think back on what they have collected data, how they collected the data and how they analysed the same to seel alternative solutions.

• Guide them in their evaluation of alternatives and taking decisions.

• Motivate them to think back on the entire process, share with others, observe others' solutions and highlight the new insight that they develop in the process.

 

Instructional Environment

• A free classroom environment that are close to an unstructured classroom situation.

• Free atmosphere to explore, share and discuss.

• Teacher as a support as well as a guide and motivator. Facilitate location of data, its collection and analysis. 

• Students are the active participants - defining problems, collecting data, performing analysis and so on. They are the self monitoring agent in the learning process.

 Ideas

Teaching: Memory Level

What are the Levels of Teaching?

Teaching is an interactive process. It is an organic synthesis of various teacher and student interactions related to the content knowledge. However, an analysis of the characteristics of these interactions reveal that the interactions takes place at different levels. The different levels are Memory, Understanding and Reflective Levels.

What is the Memory Level of Teaching?

 mental function by which we are able to retain and retrieve information about events that have happened in the past. When we organise something so that we can remember it or recall it later on, we are said to be using memory ( https://www.learncbse.in/human-memory-cbse-notes-class-11-psychology/ ). Memory level mental processes involves the retaining and recalling of past experiences, facts or information stored in the long term memory (LTM). 

What is the goal of MLT?

The teaching activities are carried out to enable the students to commit the new material to their LTM. This enabling students to remember and reproduced the information, or the procedure is the primary goal of this level of teaching propounded by Herbart.

What are the Teaching Strategies for MLT?

. The different strategies that can be used for teaching at memory level may include:

a. Anchoring

 Apperception theorists (Herbart) believe that the new information can be stored and readily retrieved from the LTM when they are linked to some element already existing in the a perceptive mass. Some idea, topic or fact in the a perceptive mass can be identified as an anchor element and the new learning material must be presented linked to that anchor element. 

When the new material is linked with some anchor element, it is easier for the students to store them in an organized way and retrieval of information from an organized storehouse is easier. Further, such linking structures the a perceptive mass. 

This assessing students previous knowledge prior to presentation of new material in order to identify the anchor element is an essential teaching activity. 

Example: Suppose one has to teach about the term velocity. Students are familiar with the word speed used by them in their everyday language. One can start teaching velocity linking it with speed.

b. .Mnemonics

The Oxford Languages define mnemonics as a system such as a pattern, of letters, ideas, or associations which assists in remembering something”. The use of this system helps in efficiently storing the information over a long period. There are various types of mnemonics that one can use such as the Acronyms, Key-words, Lyrical mnemonics and many more.

Example

* SWAYAM is an acronym for Study Webs of Active- learning for Young Aaspiring Minds. 

* Kids prefer cheese over fried green spinach is  an example of the expression mnemonic to remember the hierarchy of classification system of species. The first letter of each word represent one level of the classification system. Thus one gets 

K-ingdom

P-hylum

C-lass

F-amily

G-enus

* Key-word mnemonics are often used in language classes to remember the meaning of typical words. Fillibuster means a bus with speech written all over it. The two key words derived from the word filibuster are used to create a sentence like The senators speech filled the bus with speech. In this sentence the words fill and bus and speech are connected together. Additionally a picture can also be shown to enhance the memory.

Source: Zimmerman, L. & Reed, D.K.

* Peg-mnemonics: 

Peg mnemonics is used to remember words by linking a word with some another word, number, letter or even an image. For example to learn the alphabets in kindergarten one follows

A...for apple’s image.

B...for Boy’ image and so on.  

This the word apple and boy is used as a peg to remember the letters A and B 

C. Drill/ Practice

Drill and practice is defined as “a disciplined and repetitious exercise, used as a mean of teaching and perfecting a skill or procedure.”(1). The strategy is rooted in the behaviorist perspective on learning and particularly in the Thorndike’s Law of Use and Disuse and Law of exercise. The repetitive stimulus- response bond is said to be proportional to the frequent use of the bond. Similarly the law of exercise allows to repeat the response in association with a particular stimuli and increases it's bonding.

Instructional Environment

The teacher is the focus of teaching at this level who plans, implements and assess the instructional activities. The teacher presents well organized learning material ( information or skill) and directs the students. Presenting the learning material in manageable chunks in simple and lucid form is the responsibility of the teacher. All initiatives are taken by the teacher. 

The students follows mechanisticaly in a structured and disciplined environment. They are largely directed by the teacher and have to react as desired by the teacher depending on the strategy being used by the teacher. 

Since the goal of instruction is to help student memorize the material in different ways as selected by the teacher, there is lesser demand for more complex interactions involving higher mental processes. The lowest level of Blooms taxonomy viz. The knowledge level is invoked.  

References

1. Lim, C.S., Tang, K. N., & Kor, L. K. (  ). Drill and Practice in Learning (and Beyond), @ https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_706

  Zimmerman, L. & Reed, D. K. (2019). Keyword Mnemonics: A Strategy to Build Content-Specific Vocabulary and Unlock Informational Texts. Retrieved at https://iowareadingresearch.org/blog/keyword-mnemonics