{"id":7162,"date":"2023-07-01T14:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-07-01T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7162"},"modified":"2023-07-30T18:17:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T23:17:55","slug":"should-students-teach-other-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/should-students-teach-other-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Should students “teach” other students?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You will often hear\u00a0about an exciting strategy to help students learn: they should\u00a0teach one another<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Imagine a unit on\u00a0— say — “siege warfare.” And, imagine that my student (let’s call him Lancelot) learns enough about siege warfare to teach his classmates about …<\/p>\n

…\u00a0its\u00a0strategic and tactical requirements,<\/p>\n

… the benefits and detriments of siege warfare,<\/p>\n

… the changes in siege warfare over time,<\/p>\n

Well, Lancelot has LEARNED A LOT about the topic.<\/p>\n

Even better, if Lance learns enough to teach\u00a0this material effectively,<\/i> that extra level of\u00a0mental lift will no doubt benefit his understanding.<\/p>\n

It seems that “students teaching students” could result in deeper learning. What’s not to love?<\/p>\n

What’s Not To Love<\/h2>\n

Long-time readers know that I struggle to accept uplifting advice. If a teaching suggestion sounds really heartwarming\u00a0<\/strong>and feels really good<\/strong>, I worry that all that feel-good warmth has distracted me from the skepticism that is my job.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/a><\/p>\n

In this case, “students teaching students” SOUNDS so wonderful. For that reason, I\u00a0feel compelled to ask some tough questions and offer some downbeat assertions.<\/p>\n

First Concern<\/strong><\/p>\n

We know that humans have limited cognitive resources. For instance, adults have alarmingly small working memory capacities — and most of our students have less than we do.<\/p>\n

How should Lancelot use those limited resources of his?<\/p>\n

I\u00a0— as the teacher Merlin — could ask him to focus on learning the topic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Or, I could ask him to\u00a0divide<\/em> those resources: use\u00a0some<\/em> working memory to understand the core ideas, and some<\/em> working memory to think about effective explanations and exercises that will help his classmates learn.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the more WM that goes to teaching others, the less that Lance has to understand the topic.<\/p>\n

Or,\u00a0 if Lance uses all his WM for understanding sieges and none for teaching, then\u00a0his teaching will be really ineffective<\/em>.<\/p>\n

After all: who knows better than teachers that\u00a0good teaching requires LOTS of cognitive resources.<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words: I worry that asking Lance to teach his peers will have several bad outcomes:<\/p>\n

Either: Lance won’t understand the topic well;<\/p>\n

Or: his classmates won’t learn very much;<\/p>\n

Or: both.<\/p>\n

I might not like that conclusion; it certainly isn’t heartwarming.\u00a0But a basic understanding of working memory’s limitations makes it hard for me to reject this perspective.<\/p>\n

Second Concern<\/h2>\n

When I ask Lance to teach the other knights at the round table, I’m asking him to do two distinct mental tasks:<\/p>\n

First: he has to understand<\/strong> siege warfare (or covalent bonds, or exponent rules, or…)<\/p>\n

Second: he has to repackage that understanding into specific explanations and tasks that help others understand<\/em>. (After all, that’s what teaching is.)<\/p>\n

Note, however, that if Lance doesn’t understand covalent bonds, he can’t possibly teach that concept to others effectively.<\/p>\n

For that reason, I (teacher Merlin) need at least one additional step:<\/p>\n

I need to ensure that Lance understands the chemistry\u00a0REALLY WELL before I set him off on his teaching question.<\/p>\n

Here’s the kicker: our students typically are novices in the topics we want them to learn. Because Lance is a novice on the topic of covalent bonds, he simply CAN’T KNOW whether or not he understands them well.<\/p>\n

As a beginner, he doesn’t understand enough to know if he understands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unless I structure my unit plan with great foresight and lots of double-checking, it’s likely that I’ll ask someone who\u00a0simply cannot know if he knows<\/em> to teach his classmates.<\/p>\n

Whether or not I have helped Lance learn, I almost certainly have fallen short on my responsibility to ensure that Lance’s classmates learn.<\/p>\n

Thoughtful Pushback<\/h2>\n

Because I’m the luckiest guy on the MBE planet, I spent this last week working with 50 teachers in an online workshop. We discussed working memory<\/strong> and long-term memory<\/strong> and attention<\/strong> and schema theory<\/strong> — and all their myriad classroom applications.<\/p>\n

Honestly, they were one of the most thoughtful and engaging groups I’ve ever worked with.<\/p>\n

When I explained my skepticism about “students teaching students,” two participants pushed back with thoughtful rejoinders.<\/p>\n

One said (I’m summarizing, not quoting):<\/p>\n

When parents ask me how they can help their children study, I say:<\/p>\n

“have them teach you<\/strong> the topic we worked on in class. Even if you don’t know a lot about it, you’ll know enough to be able to spot the weaknesses in their explanations, and to ask follow up questions.<\/p>\n

And, you’ll get to know more about their school lives!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another said (more summarizing):<\/p>\n

I have my students teach each other<\/strong> as a kind of review.<\/p>\n

That is: each of them uses marker to draw a particular diagram (say: the digestive system) on their desks.<\/p>\n

Then, they rotate to the next desk, and annotate in a different color: they add, they ask questions, they suggest updates.<\/p>\n

Then, they rotate again, and add in yet a different color.<\/p>\n

So, when a student gets back to her original desk, she has learned SO MUCH from her peers. And, she has helped her peers by making her own annotations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words: we have LOTS of reasons to ask students to teach others.<\/p>\n

\u00a0“Teaching” vs. teaching<\/h2>\n

These comments helped my clarify my thinking, because they force me to define “teaching” more precisely.<\/p>\n

In the first place, I should say that I think both of these teachers’ strategies are EXCELLENT. In both cases, students are — basically — using retrieval practice<\/strong> to review material.<\/p>\n

That is: both teachers have already taught the concepts to their students. When students explain ideas to their parents, or recreate and annotate diagrams on desks, they must re-activate their prior knowledge.<\/p>\n

In this case, students don’t simply review\u00a0<\/em>concepts (“review” = less effective). They\u00a0retrieve<\/em> concepts (“retrieve” = more effective<\/a>).<\/p>\n

However, neither of these excellent strategies precisely fits my definition of teaching. When I think of teaching, I think of…<\/p>\n

… explaining a concept or procedure to someone who\u00a0doesn’t yet know or understand it,<\/em><\/p>\n

… with the result that this person\u00a0does know or understand it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, for instance, the strategy of “teaching parents”\u00a0succeeds whether or not the parents understand<\/em>. The goal isn’t to benefit the person being “taught” (the parent), but to benefit the person “teaching” (the student who’s doing the explaining).<\/p>\n

Or, the strategy of “teaching the digestive system” probably succeeds because the teacher ALREADY taught the material. The students aren’t providing original instruction; they’re reviewing (and perhaps adding to) knowledge they got from the teacher.<\/p>\n

In other words: I worry about “students teaching students” depending on the definition of “teach<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Having students explain ideas to someone else sounds like a great idea — as long as I don’t need “someone else” to understand.<\/p>\n

Having student review ideas with each other sounds like a great idea — especially if Merlin already explained those ideas in detail.<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/h2>\n

Teachers should certainly invite students to explain their thinking to other people.<\/p>\n

We should ask them to review with one another.<\/p>\n

But, except in unusual circumstances, Merlin should teach Lance — and all the other round-table knights — before asking him to explain or review.<\/p>\n

\n

A final note. I think graduate students<\/strong> should be able to learn concepts independently and explain them well enough for others to understand.\u00a0That’s their professional goal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps college students<\/strong> can do so…although (remembering my own overconfident college days) I worry that this strategy might not succeed.<\/p>\n

In my view, K-12 students<\/strong> almost certainly can’t meet the 2-part definition of “teach” above — certainly not without LOTS of careful training and review.<\/p>\n

\n

A final, final note.<\/p>\n

This blog post (atypically) cites no research. I’ll start looking at research on the topic of “students teaching students” and report back.<\/p>\n

If you have suggestions of studies you like, please let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You will often hear\u00a0about an exciting strategy to help students learn: they should\u00a0teach one another. Imagine a unit on\u00a0— say — “siege warfare.” And, imagine that my student (let’s call him Lancelot) learns enough about siege warfare to teach his classmates about … …\u00a0its\u00a0strategic and tactical requirements, … the benefits and detriments of siege warfare, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7162"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7205,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162\/revisions\/7205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}