Master Versus Student

This week, I read How People Learn by John D. Bransford, Ann L.Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking. After reading this article, it got me thinking about why it is so crucial that everyone goes through the “novice” stage in life. Novices are students who have yet to acquire the knowledge that a master has. Masters, on the other hand, are people who have "acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems" (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 31). While there are many perks to being referred to as a "master" or "expert", I believe that being a novice is crucial to the learning process.

This is what it felt like to plan an "amazing" lesson and have it fail miserably.

When I think back on my freshman year at Purdue University in the College of Education, I can’t help but think about how much of a newbie I was. In one of my first practicum courses, one of the requirements was to plan and implement only one lesson just to get your toes wet in the teaching world. However, this lesson only proved how much of a novice I was. I was placed in a second-grade, inclusion classroom and had a group of 25 students with diverse needs and a range of abilities that I needed to address in my lesson. When preparing to teach this group of students, I believed I planned a beautiful lesson that was engaging and differentiated based on parts of speech. When the time came to teach this lesson, everything that could go wrong did. Since I was new to teaching, I didn’t know that children could get overwhelmed easily. The lesson that I planned covered the continent knowledge, but I had incorrectly assumed the students had learned all of the parts of speech previously. Boy, was I wrong. 

I had planned a lecture slideshow, an interactive read-aloud, a game, and a worksheet to be delivered all within 30 minutes. The students were confused and overwhelmed, and the vast majority of the students had checked out early on in the lesson from not being able to comprehend what was happening in the lesson. Even though the lesson plan contained elements that my textbook told me were great to put into lessons, it was a flop. As the lesson came to a close, I had time to debrief with my cooperating teacher. She asked me how I thought the lesson went. I responded "horribly!", and all she could do is shake her head and smile. What I didn’t know was that my cooperating teacher had seen this mistake many times before me, and her goal was to help me learn from my mistakes. Just like teaching her second-grade students, my cooperating teacher was bringing me through the productive failure exercise (Kapur, 2008). She then told me a phrase that I never forgot, “When planning for lessons, less is more.” I wish I would have known that industry tip before teaching that lesson.

What it felt like when my cooperating teacher imparted on me her precious wisdom.

Bransford et al. (2000) say, “People who have developed expertise in particular areas are, by definition, able to think effectively about problems in those areas” (p.31). When thinking back on my "learning experience" of a pre-service lesson, I can see the difference between the expert (my cooperating teacher) and the novice (myself). The expert in this situation was able to think about what the students were able to handle in their working memory and what was venturing into cognitive overload territory (Malamed, n.d). The expert was also able to see the pattern of planning too many activities leading up to cognitive overload, which me being a novice educator, would not have been able to pick up (Bransford et al., 2000). 

After seeing that I was missing this information about classroom management and planning strategies, my cooperating teacher led me through a metacognitive process to think about how to improve for the next lesson I taught. Bransdord et al. (2000) comment on this by saying, “Experts step back from their first, oversimplistic interpretation of a problem or situation and question their own knowledge that is relevant” (p.50). After reflecting on my inexperienced lesson planning experience, I was able to reflect on the planning progress and take the next step toward becoming an expert from this experience. Without failing and being mentored by an expert, I would still be in the beginning, inexperienced stage of teaching.

In the long run, I am thankful for being a novice. Without my pre-service time of growth, I wouldn’t have become the educator that I am today. It is important to embrace the novice experience in any field to grow to become a better version of yourself. Just like in my educator pre-service experience, being a novice in educational technology can allow me to take feedback from the experts in the field and become a better educator. With consistent mentorship by experts, feedback, and metacognitive reflection, imperative growth can make me into a better teacher that uses technology to enhance the lives of my students.

References:

Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. 

Kapur, M. (2008). Productive Failure. Cognition and Instruction. 26(3), 379-424. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370000802212669

Malamed, C. (n.d.) What is cognitive load?. The Learning Coach. https://theelearningcoach.com/learning/what-is-cognitive-load/

Image Credits:

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2022). You Are Smart Good Advice GIF. Giphy. https://media.giphy.com/media/5KZXpkFFrHGGn0tJf7/giphy-downsized-large.gif

College Envy. (2016). Dunk Fail GIF. Giphy. https://media.giphy.com/media/EXHHMS9caoxAA/giphy.gif