Theory of Mind

On the first day of Professional Development at the school I currently work in, our Academic Directer instructed all of the faculty members to break into small groups, and work together to analyze a current issue in education, find a solution and present our solution using all of the multiple intelligences. The requirement of having to determine how we could present information in so many different ways drilled the information into our minds; we thought about it repeatedly and we essentially lived it as we analyzed how to teach it to others.
Why would did she approach the subject this way, instead of just lecturing about the issues and telling us what the "researches" have to say?
Because she did not want these subjects to fall on deaf ears. She wanted us to take these issues to heart and use our own knowledge about teaching to find constructive solutions that could be utilized in our classrooms.
She said, "We remember 90% of what we do, and about 5% of what we are told."
The reason I am telling this story is because I believe it exemplifies my own theories of how our minds learn.
I believe that people can only acquire new information if they are able to make the information personal to them in some way. Information becomes personal if we experience it, or in other words actively make meaning of it by engaging in thoughtful group work or some other hands on task. Learning may also occur when we reflect on new information and connect it to what we already know, or think about how this new information can be utilized in the future.
Optimal learning will take many forms, and vary from person to person. But it will never be passive. I do not believe that anyone will truly learn something just by hearing it. If someone does claim that they learned a fact, or string of facts, by lecture alone, then I believe this is because the person connected themselves to the facts, analyzed them and made them applicable to his/her life. The information was not just heard then stored forever.
My ideas about how learning takes place, mirror the theory in educational psychology called constructivism. According to constructivist theories of learning, "...Learners must individually discover and transform information..."(Slavin) In my personal experience, to learn a subject is to own the subject, and be capable of explaining in a multitude of ways, which can only be done once we have applied our own selves to the information.

1. Slavin, Robert E. Educational Psychology. 2009. Person Education Inc. New York.

So we know how we don't want to teach, now lets move on... (Blog Assign 1)

The most unfortunate part of many courses on education is that they focus too much on blaming "old" teachers and traditional teaching practices. With all due respect to the instructor, I am so sick of hearing people bitch about the teachers who used lecture as their primary method of instruction. Yes it is true that lecturing and memorization are probably (or most definitely) not the most ideal or effective means of teaching, but I honestly believe that if a cure all for education really exists then it would have been discovered a long time ago. But until then, we will have to just continue to learn from past mistakes and work harder to become the most effective teachers possible. And doing this does not mean we point the finger at the past; it means we take a close look at our students and reflect upon was teaching methods proved to be the most effective.
I think the real reason that this issue irks me so much is that although I have met teachers who probably should have retired long ago, I have never met a cruel intentioned teacher. One can safely assume that most teachers were not drawn to the field for monetary reasons, but instead because they valued knowledge and wanted to spread their passion onto young minds. Perhaps the teacher never really knew the best way to do this, and was taught that lecturing and memorization were the traditional methods and should be upheld. But does anyone know how to teach every student?
What I would have liked is an expanded explanation of what is meant the by, "... Many instructional materials and much teacher behavior..." that suggest teachers believed information could just be dumped into the minds of children and then recalled for life. Surely these teachers know from their own experiences that everything learned in school cannot be reiterated for life.
But enough of my venting, and back to the question at hand: "Is teaching the transfer of information?" Well, that depends of if we mean transferring the information from the teachers mind to the student, or transferring the information into something that the student can make meaning of and enough connections to so that the information does not stand in isolation; irrelevant to the learner and therefor unnecessary to learn. Many of the ideas we had regarding "How We Learn" centered around the student thinking about the information: connecting new knowledge to old, problem solving, exploration, reflecting...
In all of the circumstances the student does not receive the information passively, which would be the case if we expected information just automatically be transferred from the teacher's mouth to the student's brain.
I have worked in 5 different schools over the past 6 years, and at each school I found a wide variety of teachers who wanted only the best for their students, and were devoted so much to their students that they continued to revise their curriculum as new research emerged. And of course I found those teachers who refused to budge from their traditional teaching methods. It's unfortunate, but it seems to be a dying breed.
I think that we could go on forever complaining about what is wrong with education, but was interests me more is what I learn when I close the education text books and allow the students to be my teachers. Because, to me, real education is experience and nothing gives me better experience than just working with the students and analyzing what works and doesn't work.