An interesting way of reframing this ongoing debate, thank you for your thoughts on this topic. I have been very interested in this tension between explicit instruction and self directed discovery learning lately, which I have recently touched on in a recent article of mine. Would be very curious to hear your take on it. Hope you don't mind me attacking a link here: https://samuelkammin.substack.com/p/the-upper-limit-hypothesis-and-the. My intention with this article was to focus more on the self directed education approach within the context of the microschool movement. Thank you again
Thanks, I read your article. It made me think about the difference between self-directed and unguided. At the Free Spirits school you described it seems that guidance was still available to the students if they chose to study a particular topic. I have a friend who sent his kids to an alternative school where students were free to choose what to study, and I think it worked out well for them. That said, I don't think conventional schools are unnatural. Like other human institutions they are the results of thousands of years of cultural evolution. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change them, but it does mean they are hard to change!
Thank you very much for getting back and for your useful feedback. These are all completely valid objections, particularly on the criticism that mainstream education is unnatural. This is where I was keen to present some of these counter points at the end of the article, but I hope to continue exploring these criticisms moving forward, perhaps in a future discussion.
Despite this, it’s worth noting that Free Spirits does offer more structured 1-1 support in areas like maths and English, which can provide those more traditional, scaffolded experiences of progress when needed. So you are absolutely correct with assuming that Free spirits does offer more guided support at times. However, these tuition sessions are more of an optional extra and not offered to all the children.
Thank you again for your feedback, and I look forward to exploring the topic more in the future.
I appreciate the distinction between teachers telling students explanations versus guiding students to explain concepts or solution paths themselves. It’s not surprising to me that teachers just telling explanations doesn’t perform well in the research because students are passive listeners. I think the interesting follow up, though, is how teachers maximize the student discussion. I have tried to explore this in my book in terms of the types of questions teachers ask when debriefing a task, but as a coach I’ve always found this to be the piece teachers struggle with most and I would imagine that how we engage students in these types of discussions matters for learning outcomes.
Worked examples rating highly is unsurprising too! But I’m shocked at how infrequently I see this instructional move among primarily direct instruction math teachers. I love working examples with students (either after they have grappled with a concept, or just for procedures that are unintuitive). They get to hear my thought process, and I try to show several methods on the same problem.
“Rather, the quality of instruction is a function of teachers’ knowledge and use of mathematical content, teachers’ attention to and handling of students, and students’ engagement in and use of mathematical tasks.” Good teaching is a social skill. When teachers know their students, teachers accurately evaluate when to guide, which hints to give to which students, or how much time to let a student struggle before assisting. I am wondering how much guided discovery works because the student and teacher are directly engaged with each other? How much does the student-teacher ratio affect this?
An interesting way of reframing this ongoing debate, thank you for your thoughts on this topic. I have been very interested in this tension between explicit instruction and self directed discovery learning lately, which I have recently touched on in a recent article of mine. Would be very curious to hear your take on it. Hope you don't mind me attacking a link here: https://samuelkammin.substack.com/p/the-upper-limit-hypothesis-and-the. My intention with this article was to focus more on the self directed education approach within the context of the microschool movement. Thank you again
Thanks, I read your article. It made me think about the difference between self-directed and unguided. At the Free Spirits school you described it seems that guidance was still available to the students if they chose to study a particular topic. I have a friend who sent his kids to an alternative school where students were free to choose what to study, and I think it worked out well for them. That said, I don't think conventional schools are unnatural. Like other human institutions they are the results of thousands of years of cultural evolution. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change them, but it does mean they are hard to change!
Thank you very much for getting back and for your useful feedback. These are all completely valid objections, particularly on the criticism that mainstream education is unnatural. This is where I was keen to present some of these counter points at the end of the article, but I hope to continue exploring these criticisms moving forward, perhaps in a future discussion.
Despite this, it’s worth noting that Free Spirits does offer more structured 1-1 support in areas like maths and English, which can provide those more traditional, scaffolded experiences of progress when needed. So you are absolutely correct with assuming that Free spirits does offer more guided support at times. However, these tuition sessions are more of an optional extra and not offered to all the children.
Thank you again for your feedback, and I look forward to exploring the topic more in the future.
I appreciate the distinction between teachers telling students explanations versus guiding students to explain concepts or solution paths themselves. It’s not surprising to me that teachers just telling explanations doesn’t perform well in the research because students are passive listeners. I think the interesting follow up, though, is how teachers maximize the student discussion. I have tried to explore this in my book in terms of the types of questions teachers ask when debriefing a task, but as a coach I’ve always found this to be the piece teachers struggle with most and I would imagine that how we engage students in these types of discussions matters for learning outcomes.
Worked examples rating highly is unsurprising too! But I’m shocked at how infrequently I see this instructional move among primarily direct instruction math teachers. I love working examples with students (either after they have grappled with a concept, or just for procedures that are unintuitive). They get to hear my thought process, and I try to show several methods on the same problem.
“Rather, the quality of instruction is a function of teachers’ knowledge and use of mathematical content, teachers’ attention to and handling of students, and students’ engagement in and use of mathematical tasks.” Good teaching is a social skill. When teachers know their students, teachers accurately evaluate when to guide, which hints to give to which students, or how much time to let a student struggle before assisting. I am wondering how much guided discovery works because the student and teacher are directly engaged with each other? How much does the student-teacher ratio affect this?
I would bet that engagement and student-teacher ratio are important variables here!