I have been in the early childhood education field for over 50 years. I have seen the use of terms that direct the way teaching takes place that <g class="gr_ gr_4441 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar multiReplace" id="4441" data-gr-id="4441">have</g> limited how we teach children. There has always been a struggle between direct and child initiated learning. There is a tendency to put them at opposite ends of a continuum where you need to choose between them, not combine them. I lived through the incredible misunderstanding of the term "open classroom" in the United States, known as "integrated day" in England. In England (back in the 1970s), when <g class="gr_ gr_5047 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Grammar only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="5047" data-gr-id="5047">research</g> was done on the integrated day method in comparison to direct teaching, it turned out that the classrooms that combined these methods were the most effective - a classroom that used both direct teaching and child initiated learning.
So, I am scared about what you are bringing up here in your post, John. There is no rigid way to teach. Yes, no-teach teaching has its place - a big place. You see an emphasis on no-teach teaching in some philosophies of teaching that I truly believe are the best environments for children to develop and learn. And, yes, neuroscientists are writing more and more about how learning actually takes place, which includes and a better understanding of how children make sense of the world and what interferes with their learning.
No-teach teaching, to me, is a terrible term that is pejorative and does not really explain what neurobiologists mean about child-initiated learning and the role of the teacher in designing the environment as the third teacher to "provoke" learning, which might include some "direct" instruction depending on the age of the child.
A constructivist philosophy of teaching and learning and some other approaches that to me fall under that umbrella - Reggio inspired classrooms and emergent curriculum as well as others - include a lot of what you call no-teaching teaching but they also include some direct presentation of information. To say that teachers should no longer do any direct instruction is to misunderstand the term, no-teach teaching, and the teacher's role in the classroom.
Yes, we would not sit down with an infant and try to use direct methods of teaching. The learning that occurs would result from the social interactions with the infant or the toddler. It would be developmentally inappropriate to do otherwise<g class="gr_ gr_6181 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="6181" data-gr-id="6181">.</g>
A teacher should be guided by her knowledge of child development at different ages. She needs to be a keen observer of children - noticing what they are interested in and how they are trying to make sense of the world. And, yes, she should design the environment to build on the children's interests and also provoke them to engage in learning based on those interests that builds their knowledge of the world. Sometimes, the child will need information from the teacher - direct instruction<g class="gr_ gr_6202 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="6202" data-gr-id="6202">.</g>
I fear that if we say that there should be no direct teaching, we will become dogmatic and miss important opportunities to provide information to a child in a timely manner based on what we have observed they want to understand or are struggling to understand.
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Nora Krieger
Associate Professor Emerita/ Chair NJEEPRE
Bloomfield College/ New Jersey Educators Exploring the Practices of Reggio Emilia
Highland Park NJ
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-12-2019 02:01 PM
From: Jack Wright
Subject: NO-TEACH TEACHING
NO-TEACH TEACHING
If I understand information from neurobiology correctly, early childhood education, and adult education for that matter, should no longer directly teach information to young children. We won't be giving up being educators, but we will pay attention to research that suggests that direct teaching is not effective. Teaching now needs to focus on developing attention to things we want children to learn. Then we can reinforce their curiosity and progress they make with the information we believe important. This issue is about the attention, attunement, and synchronicity that we've discussed before on Hello.
The research that has affected my thinking the most was observation of mothers teaching their four-month-old infants to pay attention to a colorful object. Some mothers tried to make their infant look at the object, and some just waited for the child to see it and then reinforced that attention. The exciting part was that the children were tested when they were three-years-old and the mothers who had waiting for the interest of their child had developed regulation of emotion and impulsivity and the other mother's children had not made this important progress.
I hope we can discuss this information as I think that it profoundly affects early childhood education.
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Jack Wright
Child Development Consultant
Success With Children
St Ignatius MT
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