Living-Learning and Teaching

This is a deeper dig into the list that I had created for my article titled: Do Something Every Day. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2020/11/living-do-something-everyday.html

Ever since I was young, my parents and my culture had instilled a sense of respect for learning. Even though the dominant pedagogical philosophy in Taiwan was of the cram and memorize in school, I learned more by asking Why? What if? And How? questions. In fact, when my family moved to Honduras, one of the new family friends there would shake his head at how often Why? came out of my mouth.

It was a natural habit that follows me today, although the persistent question asking has been tempered by circumspection and patience.

The joy of learning and the pride in knowing is a part of my genetics, it is my raison d’etre. I realized this fact about myself late in life, much after I had set my life on a path which was expected of me: to chase after the brass ring.  Our society does not hold the idea of knowledge for the sake of knowledge in high regard. My pursuit of broad knowledge is considered by society as living as a jack of all trades but master of none, which is considered a pejorative in our society because  of society’s need for its workers to specialize and concentrate on narrow bailiwicks and serve as replaceable cogs in the production machine supersedes society’s desire to have people who knew knowledge for the sake of knowledge.   

I have instead started telling people that I am a polymath in training because I felt I needed to disguise my joy in pursuing my catholic span of interests. Saying that you are training to become a polymath is slightly more respectable than being a jack of all trades; at the least the term polymath will send people off to Google before they can denigrate the idea. As I became fascinated with the idea of the polymath, I have come to appreciate the implications of being a polymath. There is even a book espousing the many merits of a polymath (Ahmed 2019), or in David Epstein’s book on generalist.  (Epstein 2019)

It may have started out as a snarky retort, but this has become my purpose in life and my destiny: to know something about everything and everything about something.

In the ever-pragmatic reality in which we exist, the societal norm is to treat knowledge as salable commodities. This attitude narrowly define knowledge as either being  immediately applicable or as the basis for creating new knowledge from the foundation of the old knowledge. All to advance human progress. This was especially true in my chosen profession of engineering. We were judged as either as applied, real-world engineers; or as theoretical and impractical researchers.

Teaching is an obvious third option, but it is held as a very non-glamourous, non-celebrated third option. Society views teaching as necessary but non-value-added proposition for passing on the knowledge to the future workforce. Even though many researchers inhabit the hallowed hall of academia, their worth is determined narrowly by their originality and ability to break new grounds in their niche subjects.  The teaching part of their profession has rarely been celebrated as a standalone achievement, only as a companion, a complementary function that is secondary to the innovation and creative endeavors of the researcher. There have been good, if not great teachers amongst the great innovators, but the brilliance of their pedagogical prowess are seen merely as a bonus rather than as a primary endeavor.

As I worked my way through the usual career of an engineer with a doctorate, I found myself drawn to the teaching function as I got older. My gift, I realized, was not in applying the knowledge, or creating new knowledge; instead, my gift was in my ability to communicate knowledge to others. As I look back at my career as an engineer, I was never happier than when I was doing research, to learn, and then to teach.  I did get a thrill while applying my knowledge, at witnessing a design evolve into a product, or investigating the unexplored territories of engineering, creating something new and heretofore unknown; it is just that the thrill of connecting with another human while sparking their minds gave me bigger and more thrilling thrills.

I decided to make the learning something new every day and teaching someone something every day the central tenets in my daily list of habits. Habits that I hope to internalize. Habits that will  be my wu-wei behavior: doing without knowing, action without thought, impulse rather than intent. Make learning and teaching a deeply integrated part of my being. So it is that I train myself to do it everyday.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Waqas. The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility. New York City: John Wiley, 2019.

Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.

 

 

Book Review: A mind for numbers , how to excel at math and science (even if you flunked algebra) By Barbara Oakley

I purchased this book quite a while ago because I read an article by Barbara Oakley in the Nautilus magazine and it intrigued me. The story of her career path was highly unusual and quite inspiring. She was a math phobic in her formative years, failing her algebra class in school. She naturally opted out of the STEM related  path and became a translator in the military, shying away from math and the technology path.  As she worked in the military, she realized that it is impossible to get ahead without some inkling of the math and sciences, so she decided that she needed to overcome her fear of math. Indeed, she got so good at the math and sciences that  she eventually received a bachelors, a masters, and then a PhD in electrical engineering. She is now a professor  in systems engineering.

This book is her way of passing on the method of her madness, her way to  overcome her fears and retrained her mind to be accepting of the mathematical learning and thinking. The  critical point that she is making is that it is possible to change the way your mental processes deal with problems. It is possible because your brain is malleable, but you need to put in the work to overcome bad habits, mainly procrastination and avoidance. A perfect illustration of the growth mindset.

She directly addresses those students who are working in the math and science area,  as her purpose is to demonstrate to a very skeptical audience how to be better at doing math and science. The useful part of her pedagogy is that even though the book is focused on math and sciences, the lessons can be transferred to other things: sports, music, literature, etc. Even though Oakley lays it out in 18 simple-to-read chapters,  the lessons are not easy, if it was easy, she wouldn’t be writing the book. She has set herself up for an informative and enlightening argument with the traditional way of teaching math and science.

A keyword that comes up time and time again is einstellung, it is defined as the process where an idea that you already have in mind, or your simple initial thoughts, is preventing a better idea or solution from being found. This is what she identifies as the culprit for our habit of depending on rote thinking and for our penchant to convince ourselves that a problem is the same problem that we have seen before, even though it is not.  She identifies the necessary mindscape for solving problems, defining the oppositional modes of thinking that she  terms focused and diffused thinking. The two terms are like the System One versus System Two thinking that the Tversky and Kahneman made famous. It is also like the terms  procedural versus conceptual thinking. They are all similar but not the same, but similar enough so that one can draw analogies between them.

When thinking of those in the math and Sciences, the public often talk about the amount of focus and  concentration that is needed to solve those problems. This is the stereotypical way we think of our mathematicians and scientists: these wild haired geniuses, with furrowed brows, and unkempt lab coats covered with chalk dust, thinking with superhuman concentration, even though that is the worst way to be creative and innovative. What cause people to get locked and blocked in their thoughts is this excessive focus on focus, which brings our tendency for einstellung to the fore. The real breakthroughs in math and science often happens when the mathematician or scientists or engineer uses what Oakley terms diffused thinking; that is they don't hang on tightly to what they know already, they try to diffuse their focus so that the brain has freed up their active memory so that they could see other ,; open their minds up to different ways of approaching a problem; or even make giant leaps of faith which would help them solve the problem. It is not just a matter of serendipity; it is a matter of necessity that scientists’, mathematicians, and engineers are deliberately diffused when they do their best work.

Another thing that Oakley talks about is chunking,  this is a term that have become ubiquitous amongst the other cognitive scientific literature. Indeed, much of Oakley's book seem familiar because she has called upon much of the latest research on learning. Chunking is a way of combining steps in any progression that leads up to a unified piece of knowledge which allows the brain to unite the discrete steps of a progression so that the separate steps coalesce into a coherent chunk of knowledge. This condenses the knowledge and it allows  making connections between different ideas and understanding the underlying principles and fundamentals of many things easier.

Connection making is something that humans are exceptionally good at;  in fact, I believe this is what separates us from other animals, this ability be able to chunk knowledge together to create connections. Chunking also serves a great purpose in helping us manage the limited capacity of our active memory. If it is chunked, it is in our long-term memory; if it is in the long-term memory it is there for us to reference. We do not need to recall the fundamentals every time we are solving a problem because having the chunk in the long-term memory means that it is there being ready and  useful for us.

The idea is that the active memory can only hold a certain number of chunks of knowledge. If  your active memory is full, you are not able to absorb other new knowledge or new information. The book  spends many pages on how to chunk information and how to store that chunk into the long-term memory for safekeeping. Which frees up our active memory to help us make connections between different ideas.

Oakley also spends a lot time dealing with procrastination. Procrastination is what we do when we are scared or if we are intimidated by the task. She delves into different tips and strategies on how to deal with procrastination. One of the best things about this book is that she is able to create checklists for dealing with procrastination and she gives tips and hints on how to become better learners.

The reader gets the idea that this book goes beyond just being a favorite topic for the author, this is her passion: to share what she has learned from her own experience learning to be a converted math and science geek while practicing her profession as a teacher.

This is a very worthy  book to read. It is not a hard read, it is quite an easy read, some of that comes from the fact that much of the material seemed to be familiar to me so it was preaching to the choir. As I say that however, I would recommend this for any of my future STEM students. It is especially useful for anybody who is interested in learning or in the area of  cognitive sciences of learning because she integrates all the different concepts from different books and publications. The material is presented so easily and rationally so that it all makes sense.

Many of the other books I have read in this area emphasizes the why’s of learning, i.e. the methodology; this book shows us the how’s that we need in order to execute so that we can be better learners. I highly recommend this for anyone, whether you are math phobic or not, or if you are just concerned about being the best learner you can be, this book will help you get well on your way.

Book Review-How Learning Works 7 Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, and Norman

This book is a part of a series from Jossy-Bass Higher and Adult Education series. I bought it on the recommendation of the learning resources center staff. They presented parts of the material during their new staff orientation.

I had two intentions, one was to have some resources at my disposal for the latest pedagogical theories to help my teaching and I also wanted to learn about these research based principles to help my coaching.

The structure of the book is straightforward, the introduction laid out the seven principles and stated their purpose: to bridge the research and teaching practices. The succeeding seven chapters laid out the seven principles, gave scenarios for the readers to digest and analyze. They discussed the theory and experimental results that supports each argument within the principles. The last section is a conclusion that reiterates the principles to close out the book. They have also included the eight tools that they have cited in the body of the book in the appendices to help the reader learn more about the implementation and pitfalls associated with these tools.

I found the presentations workmanlike, which is as intended. The idea is to present the principles cogently and logically, even though the topics that are covered are anything but coldly rational.

I was personally very interested in how students develop mastery and how they can become self-directed learners. Those two chapters drew me in when I first looked at the table of contents. As I read the book in the sequences presented by the author I was drawn into other principles, specifically, the chapters on how the student’s prior knowledge affected their learning and how they organized their knowledge made them look at the knowledge that they are accruing really made me think about those topics. I knew that those topics affect the students learning but I was not clever enough to see how teachers can incorporate tools to help the students deal with their lack of prior knowledge and how much the knowledge organization affect their learning process. Indeed, I started to think about my own learning process, and how ineffective some of my learning habits are, and yet I continue to persist in pursuing the same methods.  I am changing my ways in response to that lesson.

The chapter on how the practice and the kind of feedback help the student to learn is enlightening because it gives me ideas on how to change my usual teaching tools to make the experience more productive for my students. The feedback topic is an important one and it is here that I received a lot of reassurance that the feedback skills that I have employed in my teaching and coaching are good practices and that my instincts were good ones. I did also profit from gaining more understanding of how feedback can be used.

The chapter on motivation and course climate were difficult ones for me, I took for granted that the motivation for the students are their responsibilities, that they were taking the class or playing on a team for a reason, that they were thusly motivated and I would have something to do with that, but not a lot. I am still a bit skeptical. I feel that motivation should be a personal decision, while I, as the teacher, can help them get more motivated by being a great teacher and being fair in my assessment of their abilities, I didn’t feel that I can make that much difference in how they are motivated. I am still dubious.

On the topic of the course climate, I can see where this chapter would be very useful and very pertinent in a social science class. I am in engineering so that we don’t have too much social discussions. I do see where the social climate of a class can make or break the classroom success of the students by how the class interacts socially and the kind of expectations that they the students and me the teacher would have due to the social constructs, societal norms  and stereotypes that are realities in our society. Those issues really speak to the kind of person the teachers are and how their root beliefs guide them in their daily interaction with the students. Knowing that the effect on the students is an important part of opening the teacher’s eyes to the reality that they face but I m dubious about how they can transform their teaching according to this principle without completely changing their world view.

I will be referring back to this book often as I go forth in continuation of my teaching career. The principles are somewhat commonsensical, which makes it so much more acceptable.  The no-nonsense layout of the arguments and methods are very welcome. The magical thing about the book is that it gives practical advice while also providing the readers with enough untethered hooks to hang onto intellectually so that they are challenged. This gives the readers some degrees of freedom to reflect on the ideas and allows them to progress the principles forward in their own ways.

Book Review-Make it Stick

Make It Stick-The Science of Successful Learning

By Peter C. Brown. Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel

A friend recommended that I dive into this book since I was hoping to learn about the latest theories on learning and cognition; one reason for my search is to be a better coach with volleyball athletes, but as it turns out, this book is helping me become a better college professor.

The authors devoted the opening chapter to the myths and sacred cows that we carry in our minds about how we learn and how to best create an environment that is suited for teaching.  They recount the large number of beliefs that many hold dear as the absolutely truth and then give evidence which debunks them one by one.

The central tenet for the book is stated clearly very early in the first chapter:  learning needs memory and the ability to recall from the memory; people will need to continue to learn and remember throughout our lives in order to function; and finally learning is an acquired skill, not a natural skill, one that need to be practiced.

Very early on in this book, the authors laid out their own beliefs. The first is that learning needs to be effortful in order to be effective, that is, we learn better when learning is difficult. They also believe that people tend to be poor judges when it comes to determining how well we learn a subject; we often overestimate our learning prowess. One of their biggest pet myths is that rereading and massed practices - the perennially preferred studying practice of most people - is the worst and least effective practice habit.

What do they believe in? They believe that learning comes from our ability to retrieve knowledge from our memory, and that we need to exercise that memory retrieval constantly in order to makes sure that it is always there for our recall. They believe that the exercise of retrieval and recall needs to be done with built in gaps in timing, i.e. they need to be spaced; they believe in making the repetitions be unpredictable and irregularly spaced in time, i.e. interleaved.  They believe that before being shown how to resolve a problem, the learner needs to wade into the problem without any clue as to how to solve the problem. They believe that searching for and discovering the underlying reasons for a piece of knowledge is much more important that just being able to perform a skill repetitively, although they do acknowledge the importance of being able to repeat a task procedurally.

Although the ideas and methods that is covered in this book is not all completely new to me, the presentation and organization is quite interesting. They can cite a great number of studies in the scientific literature that effectively and sufficiently support their arguments against the stated myths while citing enough studies which also amply support their arguments. The most interesting part of the book came to me after I had read it from cover to cover and was sitting down to review what I had learned. What the authors cleverly did is to use the very desired practices that they are espousing in structuring the book. They spaced the same descriptions of the desired practice repeatedly through the text, they interleaved certain arguments in all the chapters, they gave the reader time and room to discern the underlying principles, and they motivated the reader to elaborate on what they had learned to themselves, at least I did.

I am relatively certain that this was deliberate.  Indeed, I followed the rut that they had called out in their recitation of bad learning habits and strategies as I was reading, rereading, and taking massive amounts of notes in order forcefully lever the ideas into my head. Little did I know that the authors had, by the nature of how the book is structured, created an opportunity for the reader to practice what they had preached.

As I stepped through my memories of the time that I was reading this book, along with a couple of other books on how to best learn, I unintentionally spaced and interleaved my learning from this book because I was switching between books, a practice that I had picked up as a matter of habit as my learning habit throughout my life. The real question is then whether this tactic was successful: did it accomplish the goals in the way that the authors had intended? I can’t speak for the longevity memory retention of the lesson from the book, but I can say that I did spend a lot of time thinking and understanding the underlying principles. I will be able to speak to the longevity of my learning with their preferred methods when someone asks me about the book in a few years, but as of now, I had worked long and hard on learning from this book.