What does “understand” something really mean?
I want to examine the issue of understanding as complex phenomena and as a different matter of knowing any particular subject.
Reading about how to play an instrument doesn’t mean you then know how to play the instrument. So what does it mean to understand something? This is a difficult question, and I am not particularly confident of my answer to it. But I can give my view on it according to the reading “Understanding understanding”. It seems to me that understanding something means "seeing" or having insight into how it "works", and that what one knows describes part of that insight, but more importantly, it derives from that insight. This means when teachers are trying to teach a topic for understanding, they need to do more than to try to get students to learn particular propositions. They need to try to get students to have the insights and perspectives those propositions try to convey and from which they derive. That is a more difficult task in many cases than is simply getting students to memorize or know a set of particular statements. I dare to say that it is an art, and it takes methods for discovering what students are both "seeing" and not "seeing" about the subject. To achieve this goal, teachers must try to unleash the student's powers of insight or to focus it on some aspect of the phenomena that is causing the stumbling block. Strategies to teach understanding to individuals work when the teacher says or does enough different things in teaching so that each student's power of understanding will be fostered. For instance, a good lesson can stimulate thinking and focus it in particular ways. Therefore, teaching for understanding, it is the focused stimulation of thinking that is important. According to this, my feeling is that understanding some subject means you know and apply some information becoming meaningful, i.e people have to learn in order to understand.
In summary, to get the understanding as we teachers want, we need to put understanding up front our lessons. And that means putting thoughtful engagement in performances of understanding up front!.
I agree with you , Maca. To SEE what our students are internalizing and what is just going through their ears is an art.And since art is something difficult to acquire, only few teachers will achieve the goal.the secret I guess is to open our minds and leave duty aside for a while to really care about those souls sitting in front of us and SEE what they are seeing.
ReplyDeleteDifficult task, specially if you work 100 hours a week and have no other support than your own concience.I wonder if Mozart could have written such beautiful pieces of music under such circumstances....
Thanks, Maky
See you
Vicky
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethx
ReplyDeleteplease set your blog in English
sp
Understanding not only implies knowledge. it also implies being able to discuss and comment about topics, everything that is teachable must have an impact on our students so they can internalize and be able to UNDERSTAND and not only know (memorize)
ReplyDeleteIt is true that with the amount of work that we all have is a bit difficult to star thinking on the idea if our students really get the the topic, whether they understood or not, but,someday we will have to look backwards and think about the job we have done.
It is certainly true and out of any debate, or not much arguable, that understanding is not mere knowledge. From a psycholingustical stance, understanding is building abstract mental constructs, not at random , but orderly enough so as to organize the set of skills Dewey proposes in the chapter through any of the cognitive domains Bloom and others have proposed decades ago and which have set the basis for current educational debates. As a matter of fact, in order that a student really learn, it is a must to generate certain degree of impact. Thus, we can clearly see that it is not only cognitive factors we must adhere to, but affective aspects that do have a bearing on this so- called 'learning to learn' challenge.
ReplyDeleteUnquestionably, regardless the pro's and con's each and every profession may have, it is real commitment one of the overarching beliefs we must develop and internalize so as to produce and foster sheer learning.
As I have already said in one of my posts, we have a 'long avenue to walk through, and many accidents might occur in this long and winding road, the dangerous venture of teaching to develop autonomous and critical learning'.
I completely agree with you with the idea of making the learning “meaningful” for our students. Actually if we do not do so, we are just providing mere knowledge which does not make our students real learners. I mean, probably the memory is a crucial element to consider when someone is learning and it shows evidence of some sort of learning, but if that person does not transfer that knowledge in order to put it into practice, that person has not really learnt. Therefore, our task is to teach in context in order to make that knowledge meaningful so it will become real understanding.
ReplyDeleteAngelina
Macarena
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly, understanding is the essential goal which teachers have to follow in order to obtain effective learning. However, as you mentioned in your comment, it is a very difficult task to accomplish. The most harmful cause, regarding this topic, is that some teachers insist on encouraging students to memorize facts which are not going to be fruitful in any aspect of their development. The only way to obtain understanding is using the ability of transferability which conveys what learners have learned to new situations.
I agree with you when you said that we, as teachers, need to put understanding up front our lesson through thoughtful engagement.
Teachers who are really aware of understanding are the ones who are going to improve education.
Dear Maca
ReplyDeleteyou mention the following:
To achieve this goal (understanding), teachers must try to unleash the student's powers of insight or to focus it on some aspect of the phenomena that is causing the stumbling block.
The problem is how we can convince students who do not care about anything. How shall we tear apart that stumbling block? What techniques shall we use? We can create the most amazing materials, but still we'll have to strugle with the context in which we are getting by. Authorities should first start providing back up and help to try to fix the huge gap left by some of our lecturers, and only that, lecturers, at university.
xxx
Claudio
Dear Maca,
ReplyDeleteCertainly, you have spotted a quite interesting topic in the discussion, referring to the teacher's perspective into achieving understanding in our students.
Again, the key issue is to plan classes whose goal is to have students performing higher thinking activities in the Bloom's taxonomy, and let them do the things. Learner centred education + performing activities which allow our students to reach the real understanding we look for - the know how - things would be better.
Teacher training is also the clue. At undergraduate level, universities should establish the model of classes we want our students to have.
It is a cojoint task, and little by little teachers can start making the difference.
L.
Hi Maca!
ReplyDeleteHow to unleash our students' power of insight? That's a difficult tast to deal with. It requires time for planning, for evaluating, for sharing, and considering the endless hours we work every week, the task becomes more and more difficult. I don't think it is enough to do what we can under given circumstances, more action has to be taken, starting from the authorities who don't seem to see our work as a profession of such relevance, a fact that is absolutely clear if we think that teachers who work in public schools are not given the necessary conditions nor time to carry out a well done job.
"people need to learn in order to understand" and this is something crucial when learning, because it is necessary to learn concepts, or specific theories in order to create or make further mental constructions which are going to lead students into effective understanding. We can't deny that sometimes it is necessary to recall specific information to support our conlusions, but it is only the basis, the first step; the rest is analysis and comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we, teachers, really teach them to memorize things or is that (students) decide to memorize things believing that is the best way to learn??? I'm convinced that no matter how many times we spoke to them about not to memorize things they will continue to do so.
ReplyDeleteI agree when you say that ‘understanding’ can be defined as how something works. It seems to me that it has to do with the idea of learning by doing, because it is proved that the more the students use the information given the more they will develop a higher thinking. If this notion was set up as ideal the students ‘results would improve definitely. Therefore we must renew our old perspective about education in order to make students discover how the information given can work in various settings
ReplyDeleteDear Macarena
ReplyDeleteSometimes we waste our time complaining about the resourses we don't have, therefore we feel released of any guilt if our students'results are not good. As you stated:
"strategies to teach understanding to individuals work when the teacher says or does enough different things in teaching so that each student's power of understanding will be fostered". So let's stop complaining and start thinking about new and encouraging things. Not only technological motivates, imagination is endless... and for free!!
Macarena focuses on meaningful learning which is the only way to achieve understanding. Therefore, students and teacher must be engaged in activities that lead to true understanding. Conversely, if students are not motivated taking into account their interests they are not likely to learn anything. This view is inserted in the student-centered approach, which today undoubtedly, is the most prestigious approach to learning. We might be careful though not to focus exclusively on students’ interests. From my point of view, there must a balance between a student-centered approach and curriculum-centered approach.
ReplyDeleteLoquilla:
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with you. It is more or less the same I tried to express im my own post, we have to consider a lot of factors before aiming to students' understanding: Our own beliefs, methodology, expectations, contents and context. we cannot expect our students to transfer if we are teaching something that is not bound to a real context. In addition, students won't understand the idea of understanding if we teachers do not know what it is. Another factor is the constant fight against what the curriculum/syllabus says; the curriculum-centred approach doesn't foster students' understanding. It just wants results and if to achieve "good results" teachers should use and abuse students' memory, it seems to be a perfectly valid method inside our classroom. Now, how can we change such a perspective? Sometimes, it requires more than a revolutionary teacher and good intentions.
Bye!