"What if they come at you with a pointed stick?"

Brain Camborne has spent his career researching learning in natural settings in an effort to "find an educationally relevant theory of learning." This research led to Camborne identifying eight conditions present to support learning. The figure below comes from his book, The Whole Story, and shows how he envisions the conditions working together in a language arts classroom.

Engagement is central to these conditions; "the necessity for engagement underlies the whole plan, guiding and influencing all of the teacher's actions and interactions with the learners." Camborne found that three factors impacted learners' level of engagement (see figure to the right). 

In watching this Monty Python sketch, I was reminded of these factors and how they are too often ignored during instruction. [Sometimes it takes the extreme to become aware of the obvious.]

Why did only four cadets show up for the self-defense class? What might they expect from past lessons? Did they not show up because they felt they did not have the resources (guns, 16-ton weights, or tigers) needed to be successful? Were they uninterested in learning how to defend against assailants wielding fruit (instead of pointed sticks)? Or did they feel unsafe (and rightly so)?

More importantly, how do we unsure that our lessons address potential, purpose, and protection?

Are you ready for "something completely different?"

My wife gave me The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus for my 48th birthday. I just got around to watching the first episode and saw the following sketch. It demonstrates perfectly what happens when we fail to use formative assessment to inform planning and instruction.

It is important to understand that formative assessment does not need to be in the form of a test. We can gather data simply by observing. Imagine how this Italian class might have looked if the teacher had really seen the students during the lesson and adjusted his instruction accordingly. In the Design Thinking methodology, this is a part of the first phase - Empathy.

This reminds me of an article by Dr. Rheta Rubenstein titled, "The Learning of Mathematics: Perspectives of Different Researchers." (It comes from our text, Teaching and Learning Middle Grades Mathematics.) Under the section on Vygotsky, she includes the following diagram attributed to Dr. Lauren Resnick.

Vygotsky in Venn Diagram Form

As Terry Jones's character discovers, when teachers use scripted lessons that do not take learners' current level of understanding into account very little learning actually occurs.