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Words Versus Understanding

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An interesting realization I have made on my journey as an #education researcher is how problematic it is to solely associate words with understanding.

Words are definitely valid means of communicating understanding, but words neither automatically mean understanding nor are they the only way to communicate understanding.

In fact, researchers have found that simply having words to describe things to children (and sometimes, adults also) doesn’t make them understand it.

In her book, one of my favourite Education Researchers, Prof Duckworth posited that, #Knowledge has not one, but three access routes:

1. Conceptual: The kind of knowledge that expressed itself in words, formulas and frameworks.
2. Perceptual: The kind of knowledge that is expressed itself in awareness that is mostly innate and tacit. It is the kind of knowledge that is stored in mental representations, and helps the owner compare and contrast without necessarily using words and formulas.
3. Action: The kind of knowledge that expresses itself in the ability to simply do things.

Some people are able to combine these three access routes in the journey of understanding. Some people are not. That is why there are some people who simply know something, but they have no words to express it. You probably have experienced that before.

I am curious about how we can apply this phenomenon in formal education. What will it look like if we agree that understanding cannot be reduced to conceptual frameworks only? How will our assessment of understanding (examinations, tests, etc) change if we agree that words are not the only way to show understanding?

Teaching as Research

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Regardless of what must have been said about teachers, especially in developing countries like Nigeria, I believe many teachers really want to provide education that truly works for their students.

Sometimes the problem is not desire, the problem is they don’t know how to go about the issues they face in teaching. For example, how should a teacher help a class of students with diverse learning speed without abandoning the slow learners because she is too fast or causing the fast learners to lose interest because she is too slow?

The interesting thing is that there are several education researches that have been done to proffer pedagogical techniques about this but many times, the teachers have no awareness about them or they can’t access them (Talk of buying 1 journal article for $30 when your takehome salary is not even taking you home). These are some of the issues when we are talking about having equipped teachers especially in places like Africa. There is so much disconnect between education researches being done everyday and the very teachers that need the knowledge of the research outcomes to improve how education is being done.

One way we can address this is to equip teachers to be researchers themselves. It doesn’t have to be about them publishing education papers (although that would be amazing), rather it can be about them knowing how to design their entire teaching in such a way that helps them inquire facts about the teaching and learning process, to test new methods and see how much they work and in what context, to find the weakness in existing pedagogies and generally continue to search for better ways to make education truly open minds.

This was the core of one of my facilitation sessions at the teachers’ training session last week where I taught on “Teaching as Research”. I was truly excited to be able to share practical ways I have been doing this in my own work as a college faculty.