Stacking the Deck in Favor of How My Students Learn
Stacking the Deck in Favor of How My Students Learn
Five Pedagogies for Learning
Every once in a while, you read a book that is so affirming, you get whiplash from nodding your head so much. You use an entire highlighter, pen, and pack of sticky notes, annotating and marking numerous passages. When I finished reading Dr. Joshua R. Eyler’s book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I am not a college professor. My 20+ years of experience are in K-5 elementary education. This year, I’ve spent quite a bit of time questioning my own pedagogical practices in order to help my students be more authentic learners. My research has pushed me to question many policies and practices that I’ve always wanted to change, but lacked guidance.
’s book is a wonderful reminiscence of the educational theories I learned during my undergraduate years: Dewey, bell hooks, Vygotsky, Bandura, Montessori. What I remember most about those psychologists and theorists, was the sheer volume of reading I had to complete in order to be prepared to discuss in class. Most teacher preparation programs aim to familiarize teacher candidates with numerous educational theorists and pedagogies. I don’t remember feeling overly-prepared to teach real, human students as I walked into my first year of teaching. I quickly realized that everything I had studied didn’t have the context of real classroom teaching experience. Yes, I remember the Zone of Proximal Development. When you see that space where your student can almost understand something and then it clicks with just a little support; that’s when theory meets practice.I don’t remember studying anything specific to curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure in college. I didn’t learn about Nel Noddings’ Caring in Education until earning my doctoral degree. At that point, I had stopped relying on my school district to help me grow as an educator. I was actively seeking pedagogic research to help me challenge status quo policies and practices in my school building. So, when I picked up How Humans Learn, I was grateful for the refresher in theory, as well as other research that affirms the choices I have made these past two decades in service to my students.
I’ve written about creativity in my classroom, encouraging failure as part of designing learning experiences for my students, and how to learn from failure. I realize now, that I’ve considered concepts like creativity and authenticity like isolated tools that I use because they align with my belief system. The best part of reading How Humans Learn is how Eyler defines curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure not just as ideas, but as pedagogies of learning, supported by established psychology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience research.
The word pedagogy comes from the Greek word ‘paidagogos,’ a combination of ‘paidos’ (child) and ‘agogos’ (leader). Use of the word has declined in the last 20 years, mainly because of the inundation of educational jargon like methodologies, outcomes, data-driven instruction, rigor, learning loss, benchmarks, and best practices.
I’m not a fan of the term, best practices. Dr. Jesse Stommel, educational researcher and professor, discusses how best practices “presumes there is one universal set of practices that will work for every teacher, at every school, with every student.” Instead, he prefers “good-for-some-people-in-some-contexts-practices.” I agree.
Whereas some methods may work better with some students in some contexts, luckily,
reminds us that the building blocks of human learning are set in children and continue to develop throughout our lives. These fundamental learning processes influence how we make sense of each other and our world.As Eyler states, “Effective teaching has been around for millennia.” When we reduce effective teaching to a handful of strategies or learning activities, I believe it dilutes the art and science of teaching. While Eyler references many teaching practices and techniques that he uses in his college classroom, he challenges me to stop thinking of “pedagogy” as series of strategies for passing knowledge, but instead see curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure as fundamental ways both children and adults learn.
People learn and have learned in widely similar ways across the lifespan, we mature obviously and you know our brains mature. But the actual mechanisms curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, failure. Those don't necessarily change that much. We just need to utilize them and kind of different ways as teachers in college than we might in kindergarten.
— Joshua R. Eyler
I teach fifth-graders. Eyler teaches college students. Since these mechanisms underlie all human learning, since reading How Humans Learn, I have begun viewing my own pedagogical practice as the sum total of these five learning pedagogies.
Pedagogy of Curiosity
Curiosity is one of my strongest immutable characteristics as a teacher. I’m curious about everything. Why do we do things this way? How does that work? Where does that word come from? I love modeling that curiosity with my students, pushing them to be curious and critical of information. How do you know that is true? I believe that innovation takes curiosity, but students won’t be curious if they are never taught to question things. Kids are naturally curious. The best way to foster that curiosity is through asking questions instead of providing answers.
One way I do this is in my mathematics classroom. Last year, I piloted Dr. Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classroom, using 14 practices he researched for promoting deep thinking. Every day, I probably answer 400 questions that fall into one of three categories:
Proximity questions: the questions students ask because I happen to be close by.
Stop-thinking questions: the questions students ask so they can reduce their effort; most common of which is, “Is this right?”
Keep-thinking questions: the questions students ask so they can keep working, keep trying, and keep thinking.
Liljedahl’s research shows that 90% of the questions that students ask are either proximity questions or stop-thinking questions and that answering these is antithetical to building a culture of thinking and a culture of learning. To build my mathematics thinking classroom, I have been working to answer only keep-thinking questions. I want them to persevere through cognitive dissonance until concepts click.
My favorite way to do this is stalling my answers and asking questions that redirect students to focus on their thinking. I try and turn their confusion into a productive discussion. Dr. Eyler agrees. “Questions are an essential driver for cognitive development in children and they remain an important tool for learning throughout our lives.” Curiosity is key in building lasting knowledge, both in children and adults.
Pedagogy of Sociality
At its best, learning is a social act. Student collaboration and discussion promote deep understanding and are essential elements of an engaging classroom experience. Having a structure for collaboration is the best way to ensure that my students are able to continually collaborate across a variety of topics/problems. Social pedagogies need social classrooms and social classrooms, according to Eyler, need three vital components: “a sense of belonging, a focus on community building, and a teacher who models effective intellectual engagement.”
Empathy and belonging are at the core of all of my learning experiences. I help my students see the different layers of community in their lives. Their family is one community; the classroom is another. These principles continue to apply as their community grows outward: family, classroom, grade-level, school building, neighborhood community, etc. One way I build community in my classroom is through storytelling. Telling great stories is what connects us as humans. Storytelling allows us to digest information more easily because it connects information to our emotions. Storytelling is important because it’s effective at teaching in a way that my students can remember, and at helping them relate to one another.
It’s no secret that humans are a social species, and according to Eyler, it’s “because of these deeply ingrained connections, the most effective teaching techniques will be those that maximize student interaction and collaboration.” My pedagogical practice has sociality at the center. I believe in building knowledge as a community and modeling intellectuality for my students during all of our learning experiences.
Pedagogy of Emotion
If we want our students to be vulnerable in their learning, then we need to be vulnerable in our teaching. Students come to us with all sorts of baggage, from racial prejudices to traumatic interactions with other teachers. We need to be prepared to get emotional with our students. Teachers are taught to leave emotion at home when they enter the classroom. I hate the axiom: Don’t smile until Christmas. That’s crap! You will not be able to teach a child until you can reach that child on an emotional level. If you don’t know your students, then it’s impossible to create a humane classroom environment that meets their academic, social, and emotional needs.
Eyler spends quite a bit of time discussing the power of emotions in the classroom. I never considered caring for my students as a pedagogy. I’ve always cared for my students and held them to high expectations. Since I tend to attract students who struggle to regulate their emotions, I spend a lot of time helping my students understand how cognition and emotion work together. As Eyler states, “unregulated negative emotions impede learning.” Although this is obvious, it was good to see it supported by research. I felt good knowing that research supports caring for my students as learners. I’m invested in my students being successful, even when they struggle. I have imperfect and incredible students who deserve to be cared for.
Pedagogy of Authenticity
Teaching in a classroom with 30 students is dynamic and alive. There is interpersonal give and take, almost like breathing. Masterful teachers make learning feel alive. Their classrooms are filled with love and authenticity. Eyler’s research confirms that “a learning environment with a high degree of cognitive authenticity adheres as closely as possible to the work performed by scholars in a particular discipline. I’m not a fan of calling my students “scholars”, but I do strive to design authentic and dynamic learning experiences for my students. For example, this year, I changed the way I teach writing, from assignment completion to more authentic writing experiences. Thanks to
, I have been able to teach my students to be aware of their audience as a writer, practice the writing process, think and act like a writer, reflect on each writing experience, and then apply those reflections to their next writing experience. I have already seen benefits in focusing on the experience of writing as an actual writer, instead of completing assignments. My students’ writing confidence and quality have dramatically increased this year. They have written more words than any group of fifth-graders I have ever taught and have improved the clarity of their communication. Every piece of writing has an authentic audience.Pedagogy of Failure
In my classroom, I have been known to use the acronym F.A.I.L. (First Attempt in Learning) with students as a way for them to understand the importance of failing forward. Astro Teller believes that failing, when seen properly, is just a recognition of accelerated learning. Kobe Bryant doesn’t believe failure even exists because he is always striving to get better. Tim Brown from IDEO redefines the word altogether: “Don’t think of it as failure, think of it as designing experiments through which you’re going to learn.” At IDEO they often say, “Fail early to succeed sooner.”
Failure is an incredibly powerful learning tool for both teachers and students. I often use the words “learning experiment” with colleagues to describe my lesson-planning process. Designing learning experiments is at the heart of my student-centered classroom. Up front, I have an understanding that not all of my ideas are going to work. It’s important to discover the Achilles’ heel of any learning experience as quickly as possible so that I can pivot or move onto something else. I learn something from every failure.
Failure is part of any learning cycle and is a necessary part of all learning. Failing is scary because of how vulnerable we feel when we mess up. I never had an academic term to define what I was doing. Now, I do. Eyler details research by Gabriele Steuer and Markus Dresel, which defines a “favourable error climate” as “the perception, evaluation and utilization of errors as integral elements of the learning process within the social context of the classroom.” I now think about the “error climate” of my classroom and how I can create and amplify a more positive atmosphere.
Students arrive in our classrooms having experienced the stigma of failure throughout their time in school. We must work to change this by providing low-stakes failure so that students can take the risks necessary to enact deep learning.
Joshua R. Eyler
A lot of what I do as a teacher is to destigmatize failure and help my students cope with it psychologically. I admit, at times, this is quite a challenge. For example, we are about to enter “testing season” where my students will be required to take a number of standardized tests. Some are used for class placement in sixth grade. State test scores are sent of to anonymous bureaucratic entities. During these spring testing weeks, students’ anxiety about failure spikes. My job as their teacher is to provide them with the tools for learning that they need in order to develop better understanding. I do not teach to any test. Instead, I work to convince my students that standardized tests are part of a larger context and are not related to their self-worth.
I ask my students questions and engage them in conversations about their work. My intention is to help students focus on their learning process instead of the final product, project, test, etc. Eyler discusses the harm grades and grading have on students’ academic growth and personal identity. In fact, he is dedicating an entire upcoming book, Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do about It to grades. My biggest takeaway is that feedback is greater than grades; something I model in my classroom every single day.
After reading How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching, I realized that even though I may be struggling this year, I have spent two decades laying the groundwork for a classroom experience that I believe is best for my students. My students are humans and I’m invested in their learning as humans.
I teach my students that the value of 5th grade is in (1) the knowledge they build; (2) the understanding they achieve; and (3) the interactions between me and them that help. I’m grateful for
and his book. He has not only affirmed my pedagogical practice, but has helped me connect learning theories with classroom learning experiences. I’ve pre-ordered his newest book, Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It. I hope you all do, too.Have a great week!
—Adrian
Resources
There are too many resources mentioned in How Humans Learn to write about in this Substack. Here are a few of my favorites that I’ve used in my classroom with students.
Question Formulation Technique
I love using QFTs with my students. It has helped them develop better questions and think deeper about the content they are learning.
I read Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question in 2014. I love his notion of Questionolgy and Beautiful Questions.
Want to see what type of questioner you are? Find your Inquiry Quotient here.
If you want to see what a thinking classroom looks like, check out pictures of me and my students using Wipebook Easels to transform my mathematics classroom into a thinking classroom.
I discuss this Dr. Liljedahl’s work above, however, there are many more resources. This video is the quickest way to learn more about Building Thinking Classrooms without reading his book, which I highly recommend you do!
Or check out this Cult of Pedagogy podcast (another great website for teachers).
Lifelong Kindergarten by Mitch Resnick
Lifelong Kindergarten was one of the first educational books I read as a new teacher. It completely changed my view of what a classroom could be. I fell in love with the Lifelong Kindergarten Group and their vision to design creative learning experiences.
I still have a copy of Resnick’s Creative Learning Spiral taped above my desk.
Here’s Chapter 1: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play
Post saved. It will be referred to often. Thank you! I already know what I'll be bringing into my classroom tomorrow.