Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Degrees of misunderstanding

By James Wilkinson - posted Thursday, 20 July 2006


One of the most significant extensions of our knowledge over the past 30 years is our understanding of how students learn. This has increased the power of the pedagogical tools at our disposal while simultaneously revealing a far greater challenge to be met with their help than we had previously acknowledged.

Creating knowledge is often cited as a key university priority. Where is this knowledge created? The standard answer is, in laboratories and research institutes: its success crowned with peer review publications and, for a fortunate few, the Nobel Prize. That is all true. Yet it is only half or even less than half the story.

Knowledge is also created every time a student grasps an existing idea or a concept, however many others may have already reached that same point of understanding. For such knowledge is created within that one particular student for the first time, since he or she has had to assemble understanding on his or her own out of the materials made available by teachers, fellow students, or personal experience.

Advertisement

When we think of learning, we may think of students’ heads as empty rooms, ready to be furnished by the faculty. But it would be far more accurate to say that it is the students who must build their own furniture, perhaps with ready-made parts, à la Ikea.

Moreover, to push this analogy a bit farther, the rooms to be furnished at university are not empty but are already full and overfull, often crammed with very shoddy furniture indeed, which has to be carted off to the tip before refurnishing can begin.

Let me illustrate what we might call the “problem of prior knowledge” with an example drawn from my own university.

In 1982, a film crew hired by the staff of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and funded by the American National Science Foundation, attended a graduation ceremony at Harvard.

At the ceremony’s conclusion they interviewed seniors, still in their academic robes, proudly holding diplomas that attested to their formal induction into the company of educated men and women, and asked them a deceptively simple question: “what causes the seasons?”

The answers are delivered with the sort of polish one would hope that a Harvard graduate could command. Yet 21 of 24, including a Harvard history professor who happened to be a parent of a graduating senior, failed to give the true reason for why it is warmer in Cambridge in July than in December.

Advertisement

Watching this film is an electrifying moment for anyone who believes in the importance of general education. It challenges our assumptions about how education works in a fundamental way. Viewers cannot help but be impressed with the presentation skills of these students, while lamenting how little effect their education has had on their beliefs.

Most students explain that the Earth’s orbit around the sun is an ellipse, and so in winter the Earth is farther away from the sun than in the summer. The farther away, the less heat reaches it, and hence winters in New England are colder than summers.

These Harvard students are obviously reasoning about the solar system by means of an analogy derived from their own repeated personal experience, namely that approaching a heat source makes you warmer. That is true of a stove, heat vent, or fireplace; and it would be true of the planet we live on if, indeed, the Earth’s orbit was elliptical. But it is not.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. All

Article edited by Allan Sharp.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.

This is an edited extract from the Menzies Oration given by Professor Wilkinson at the University of Melbourne on July 11, 2006. Read the full speech



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

9 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Professor James Wilkinson is the Director of the Derek Bok Centre for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of James Wilkinson
Article Tools
Comment 9 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy