2009willingham

Questions for Dan Willingham
Let's generate some questions for Dr. Dan Willingham, author of **//Why Don't Students Like School?//**
 * //Why did you write this book? What contributions do you think it makes to the educational literature?//
 * //So, why don't students like school?//
 * A lot of educators say that they'd like to have more of their instruction in the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy but can't because of NCLB and other accountability demands. What do you think of that?
 * //Page 58 - info that has no meaning - versus page 37 - "a limited number of ideas should be taught in great depth?"//
 * Have you been following the conversations in our discussion groups? If so, what do you think?
 * //Can you talk a bit about your criticisms of the 21st century skills movement?//
 * //You're a constructivist, no (Chapter 4)? Many more-conservative individuals jumped on your espousal of facts. Thoughts?//
 * Spacing practice out rather than bunching it up. Spiral curricula?
 * I am trying to recall Michael Wesch's informal polling - roughly 25% of college students like school, but 98% like learning. I am also recalling the claim that "natural learning is effortless" and "formal/artificial learning is boring". As I recall the author says learning is hard work. Can learning be fun and "effortless" for more kids more frequently?
 * Discovery learning - computer games - immediate feedback - future of learning (e.g., military / corporate simulations)?
 * //What would Howard Gardner say about your comments re: multiple intelligences and/or learning styles?//
 * //I assume you have gotten feedback re your statements regarding learning styles since your book was published. Have your statements been misconstrued? What might you add to this discussion at this point?//
 * A number of times in reading this book, I thought of the old saying "It's not what you don't know, it is what you know that ain't so that will get you in trouble". At one point you say a little knowledge is better than none. Is no knowledge better than "mis-knowledge" - things you know that are not so? What role does the teacher need to play helping kids identify "mis-information"? (see below)
 * I've enjoyed the word/concept of "[|truthiness]". ([|Colbert's 3 minute video]introducing the word is certainly worth the time and a good laugh!). In part it is about opinion vs. fact. It seemed to me that Willingham did a good job on opinions re "implications for.....". At times, I wondered if the author had represented the cognitive pyschology facts accurately and completely. Have his peers in the displine "vetted" his representation of the facts?
 * I would like a more specific definition of what Willingham considers “thinking”. I can infer what he means, but I think there would be less possibility of misinterpretation if he were to be more specific on this in his writing.
 * //Why did he title the book Why Don’t Students Like School? The extended small print title “A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What it Means for Your Classroom” seems to me to be a title that is more reflective of the content in this book. Not as catchy I suppose and too long I know. Why Don’t Students Like School is not very reflective of the content in my opinion.//
 * In the book Willingham writes, “A good deal of time–often ten or fifteen minutes of a seventy-five-minute class–is spent setting up the goal, or to put it another way, persuading students that it’s important to know how to determine the probability of a chance event. The material covered during this setup is only peripherally related to the lesson. Talking about coin flips and advertising campaigns doesn’t have much to do with Z-scores. It’s all about elucidating the central conflict of the story. p.57?. Isn’t spending 20% of your class time on something that is “only peripherally related” to persuade students that it is important “making it relevant”?
 * [|//http://sabier.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/40///] //- What about the classroom of today and tomorrow? How does thinking change in disruptive classroom of tomorrow?//
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 * I’d like to invite some conversation on lecture in the classroom. lecture vs play. i just watched you and dean shareski. in the classroom – we show such cool things – have such cool ideas – then we lecture about it. kids learn a ton without us teaching (lecturing). but i’m hard pressed to see this in the practical realm. the tinkering school is the closest i see. i see the culprit – standardized tests. they make me think i need to make sure kids get stuff. and kids will only get stuff by me talking. if we could quit lecturing, let kids play, … how come teachers get meaning out of teaching kids yet the kids don’t?