When you teach a child math, it’s tempting to give them explicit directions and order them to solve the problem the same way every single time. After all, isn’t it simpler for everyone to just memorize the algorithm?
A very cool study on pre-schoolers, however, suggests that students may learn better when the teachers don’t give them directions at all. It might even be best for the teacher to pretend they don’t know anything.
An experimenter showed 4-year-old children a toy studded with various tabs and handles (or as the study called them, “rubbery protuberances.”)
The adult performed a complicated series of actions to make the gizmo play music — pulling tabs, squishing or shaking the toy, etc. In the first experiment, the grown-up told the child that she wasn’t sure how to use her “new toy” and invited them to “see if we can figure out what makes it play music.” In another experiment, the grown-up declared, “I’m going to show you how this works.”
When the grown-up was in teacher mode, kids tended to imitate her actions exactly, even when they were unnecessarily complicated. When the adult asked them to “figure it out,” however, the kids felt free to experiment with novel ways of making the music play, and could thus find novel, and often simpler, solutions.
“When children think they are being taught, they are much more likely to simply reproduce what the adult does, instead of creating something new,” wrote study author Alison Gopnik wrote in the New York Times.
This study really struck me, because my job at City Year will revolve around the principle of “teaching without telling.”
I’ll be working with middle-schoolers on a computer game called ST Math, where you play a little penguin who travels the world solving math puzzles. The catch is that the children are never given explicit math problems — or directions on how to play the game.
For example, instead of being told “find 1/2 of 6,” the kid might see six circles on the screen and the fraction “1/2.” They need to deduce that they should click on three circles to pass the level. I’m allowed to help the children if they’re stuck, but only if they’ve made a real effort to figure out the game on their own.
The program’s a lot of fun, but still, I had to raise an eyebrow when I learned that playing this computer game with kids would be my main job all year. The students I’ll be working with are the ones who need the most support in math. They’re middle-schoolers who are still on a third- or fourth-grade level. Is this game the best use of their time? Or would it be better to double-down on extra tutoring and math drills?
Gopnik’s study gives me more confidence that “teaching without telling” could actually be a brilliant strategy. Children aren’t just told how to do the math problem: they discover the method themselves. That kind of learning might grow their brains more effectively than a hundred drills.
Pedamagog 