Goals: brainstorm ideas re relationship between trying to teach and discussion.
Brainstorming:
- People should be focused more on their own learning than other people’s learning.
- Thinking is a prerequisite for discussion. See curi blog post Thinking Before Discussion.
- So, one should first learn how to self-evaluate his thinking before trying to have a discussion (which uses thinking).
- How does doing discussion before learning to self-evaluate your thinking connect to teaching? If you try to have a discussion and you haven’t learned how to self-evaluate your thinking, then you will necessarily be teaching/lecturing.
- Why? You can't avoid it because you're overreaching. You can't tell when you're wrong, so you won't be able to switch to the learner role when needed. You will be in teacher mode in cases when you shouldn't be, and you won't realize it.
- Since you're overreaching, what else will that cause? You will make a bunch of mistakes that you won’t notice or notice and won’t fix because you're overreaching.
- What are some implications of that? You’ll be misrepresenting people's ideas, effectively spreading lies about them, and plagiarizing them.
- How does overreaching connect to whether one is focussed on his own learning vs other people's learning? If you're discussing with others and you're overreaching, it means you’re more focused on others people’s learning than your own learning.
- If I was to do discussion, how should I do it? I should follow the same general policy: document what I’m going to do (following a general policy), do it, analyze, problem solve, decide next steps.
- Am I ready for that? No because I haven't error-corrected my self-evaluation policies for my thinking enough yet, nor have I error-corrected my (not yet existing) self-evaluation policies for discussion.
- Should I view discussion similar to speedrunning? Yes because a discussion is like a series of speedrunning sessions in the sense that I should have general policies that describe what I plan to do and how I plan to self-evaluate what I did.
[I created this blog post while attempting to follow my general process of creating blog posts (which I haven't actually made the first version of, but I did do some brainstorming on it).]
I operate as if everyone (including me) is always wrong to some degree. This lets me enter into learner role easily.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with "If you're discussing with others and you're overreaching, it means you’re more focused on others people’s learning than your own learning." because of my perspective that everyone is wrong to some degree.
Self-evaluation (or learning from your own mistakes) is less efficient than learning from other people's mistakes. A good teacher can help you learn more efficiently than being your own teacher. But it is hard to find a good teacher, and learning to be your own teacher is valuable too.
I don't follow. I agree that everyone is not perfect (my paraphrase of your statement). And from my perspective, that is compatible with my idea that you're disagreeing with.
DeleteRe your last paragraph. Let's get into details. if a teacher tells a student a criticism of the student's work, that only goes well if the criticism is designed for the student's situation. That means that the student would need enough knowledge to be able to self-evaluate the teacher's criticism. So outside of this scenario, learning from teaching doesn't work at all (which means not efficient at all, like zero productivity). Thoughts?
The teacher may have a good criticism which the student would not understand without prerequisite knowledge. But a "good" teacher should be capable of helping the student gain the prerequisite knowledge.
DeleteI admit that my mind goes to my career because that is where I receive criticism. When I am criticized by my team, we always come to a mutual understanding. But it is not easy to do. Each person must have patience, empathy, and an ability to communicate their reasons. Each person also needs the ability to change their mind when provided with new or better information.
A "good" teacher would need to be able to make a criticism that the student is skilled enough to self-evaluate. (If the teacher knows the student well, he can more effectively make a custom explanation for the student.)
DeleteI agree. I have also seen the teacher "dumb down" the criticism so much that they have severely underestimated the student's abilities. But I think this simplifying or "dumbing down", while tedious for a teacher, is extremely valuable if the teacher is sharing a criticism for a large audience. There is a risk that the student feels as if the teacher is being patronizing (having a low judgment of the student's ability to self-evaluate) but that risk can be minimized if the student is able to provide enough feedback to help the teacher gain a better understanding of the student's abilities.
DeleteIf the teacher is overestimating the student's abilities, then the student needs to have the courage and curiosity to admit that they don't understand (student responds that the criticism doesn't make sense) so that the teach may attempt to adjust their explanation of the criticism with their renewed awareness of the student's abilities.
I admit that I am now more skeptical of my initial disagreement with the idea "If you're discussing with others and you're overreaching, it means you’re more focused on others people’s learning than your own learning." I think a statement like this may be true for many people, but I'm not sure it is true for me or for everyone.
I may be overreaching. But I'm not sure that I am more focused on other people's learning than my own. Maybe I was more focused on other people's learning when I wrote the initial response and I am more focused on my learning today. Maybe I was trying to have a more fulfilling life by practicing a process of outreach and engagement with people who are responsive.
I do see that my skill to self-evaluate can be better. Perhaps I could have done better self-evaluation when I wrote my initial response. Anyways, I hope this response clears things up about my perspective. Thanks! ;)