Essential Questions: Doorways to Understanding
Given particular subject matter or a particular concept, it is easy to ask trivial questions…. It is also easy to ask impossibly difficult questions. The trick is to find the medium questions that can be answered and that take you somewhere.
Balance is the condition which has to be present in a design of a course or a unit if the goal is to achieve understanding. Facts, skills and big ideas have to be connected in order to enable students to be engaged in and inquire about what they learn.
Talking about Chilean education, Is the curriculum on balance? Are teachers concerned about this problem? How does the sociopolitical pressure affect on the pursuit of balance?
Framing our work in Essential Questions will enable us to find the appropriate balance to succeed in the pursuit of understanding. These questions dig for the real riches of a topic which are beyond simple announcement of a text or teacher- talk. Their existences are long- lasting and they do not look for a “right” answer but they look for learning how to learn. They also look for hooking and hold the attention of the students.
The intention of essential questions plays a very important role. What is the result that we expect from students of the learning activities and assessment? All depends on how questions are posed and the nature of the follow- ups. Teachers do not realize that teaching skills is just an excuse to develop self- sufficiency. I have met many teachers who believe that their only task as teachers is to provide students with facts. They are concerned about teaching the structure of contents and cover all the units, avoiding transferability across disciplines, big ideas, core content and deep thoughts and as a result, the design becomes incoherent and without connection.
As a conclusion, framing a course or unit in only one kind of questions does not guarantee understanding. In fact, understanding encompasses a mixture of topical, overarching, guiding questions and open inquires which are interrelated making the design more effective.
Given particular subject matter or a particular concept, it is easy to ask trivial questions…. It is also easy to ask impossibly difficult questions. The trick is to find the medium questions that can be answered and that take you somewhere.
Balance is the condition which has to be present in a design of a course or a unit if the goal is to achieve understanding. Facts, skills and big ideas have to be connected in order to enable students to be engaged in and inquire about what they learn.
Talking about Chilean education, Is the curriculum on balance? Are teachers concerned about this problem? How does the sociopolitical pressure affect on the pursuit of balance?
Framing our work in Essential Questions will enable us to find the appropriate balance to succeed in the pursuit of understanding. These questions dig for the real riches of a topic which are beyond simple announcement of a text or teacher- talk. Their existences are long- lasting and they do not look for a “right” answer but they look for learning how to learn. They also look for hooking and hold the attention of the students.
The intention of essential questions plays a very important role. What is the result that we expect from students of the learning activities and assessment? All depends on how questions are posed and the nature of the follow- ups. Teachers do not realize that teaching skills is just an excuse to develop self- sufficiency. I have met many teachers who believe that their only task as teachers is to provide students with facts. They are concerned about teaching the structure of contents and cover all the units, avoiding transferability across disciplines, big ideas, core content and deep thoughts and as a result, the design becomes incoherent and without connection.
As a conclusion, framing a course or unit in only one kind of questions does not guarantee understanding. In fact, understanding encompasses a mixture of topical, overarching, guiding questions and open inquires which are interrelated making the design more effective.
It is true what you mention about essential questions as a balance, now we can do it, we can have a balanced class, but the only problem here is that we are just one single teacher that can start making a difference,but the rest? As you mention, most of the teachers believe that their only task is to provide facts, so then, what can we do, we can start, but how long will it take to make the rest be consious on the essential qestions? Can just we make the difference?
ReplyDeleteDear Paloma,
ReplyDeleteI think it's very true your comment about teachers who only provide facts and contents. But have we asked ourselves what's going on with them? I think they just want to make things easier, because if they try to develop higher thinking skills and analysis inside the classroom it's going to take them time and a lot of previous preparation.
I think this a a key point here, teachers need to feel committed to their students and only then things will improve in the classroom. It's a matter of vocation and commitment as I already said.
Probably some teachers have not realized that the teacher’s main objective is not only to provide students with knowledge but also with understanding, which as we all know it is not the same. As you said, we are not dealing with facts, because these facts are the excuse for the students to develop real critical thinking abilities. And the thing here is the “balance”. Some classmates have pointed out in other words the same issue: how our students are going to answer essential questions if they do not have “that” good command of the language. Well, “medium questions that can be answered”. They must be planned and we have to provide our students with the corresponding tools to answer them properly.
ReplyDeletePaloma,
ReplyDeleteEssential questions are vital when it comes to teaching. I have also met many teachers who feel compelled to cover content, and in doing so, they fail to focus some attention to transferability and critical thinking.
Honestly speaking, we are not likely to base the curiculum of some schools on topical or overarching questions. Most probaly, many of the TEFL professionals are not necessarily decision-makers or curriculum designers. As a result, we have to concentrate on the coverage of content to the detriment of critical thinking. Nevertheless, there is always a space for TEFL freedom. We could spend a short time at the begining of our lessons posing these kind of questions to our students. Hence, school authorities will be satisfied about the content ooverage and, we, could grant the entrance to our students to doorways of understading little by little.
Hi Palomits,
ReplyDeleteWhat's the point of asking such easy questions that take more time in typing than in aswering them?. From my little experience with secondary students, their reaction to these questions is that "the teacher doesn't know what he/she is talking about". It is sad but true, since the kind of questions we use to realize whether our students learned or not represent us. They are like our voice when students face a test, so what else could they think when they are exposed to such a bunch of silly questions?
On the other hand, there is not other outcome but frustration when we ask such difficult and twisted questions that not even we are able to answer.
We teachers are such an extreme species. It either we got "excelencia academica" or we didn't even plan our lessons. Balance is not a word in our worbank. Therefore, the first major task to accomplish is to get to a middle point in which our students feel it is worth learning, and we realize it is worth giving them the chance.
Hi Paloma!
ReplyDeleteHow to find that balance that you spoke of? Everytime such questions arise, it adds more challenges to our work. It is not an easy task, especially if we consire the fact that none of us was taught how to,neither when we were school students, nor when we were at university. There is an urgency in preparing teachers with the necessary skills to carry out thses proposals which, no doubts, will eventually lead to a change in our society.
What you propose it is positively true, nowadays teachers are only worried about covering all the contents demanded without considering the fact of contributing to the development of critical thinking on the students, however its is not fair to blame only teachers for that, because they are just one link in the chain, so we have to look at the very beginning of the process, considering what the curriculum proposes and what are the ideals aims that Chilean education pursuits. Undoubtedly this is a flaw that the system shows which should be fixed as soon as possible in order to work for common national goals. Therefore teachers, who are aware of this, must start focusing their lessons in motivating the transfer and inquiry capacities to get ‘understanding’ from students.
ReplyDelete"Learning how to learn"
ReplyDeleteQuite interesting statement if we think that in most of the Chilean classrooms conductive teaching practices are still being applied. From my point of view, it all has to do with changes our beliefs and finally understand and take action in applying constructivists lessons, which is not and easy task. But I also think and agree with the key issue of effective planning for “guiding questions and open inquires” in order to engage our students and provoke in them the “click” to really understand the objective of learning something meaningfully.