The Importance of PRE-flection

Learning skills is a process largely based on expectation failure — we do something expecting a certain result, we get an unexpected result, we stop and analyze why we were off in our estimation and try again. It’s a practice that applies as much to doing complex math as learning to play guitar.

Roger Schank, the learning theorist, used to refer to this as the importance of expectation failure. The there are two scenarios where learning cannot happen — first, where everything goes as planned, and second, where no initial expectation is set.

Great teachers know this, and gravitate towards activities that create expectation failure. But even with the activities you are already doing you can usually create some form of expectation failure for the students by having them briefly record immediate reactions before class discussion or project work. What is there impression of Hamlet’s character? How do they think U.S. Vietnam casualties compared to Korea or Iraq? What will happen when you combine Chemical A with Chemical D?

It’s not enough to throw the question out there to the students. Make them talk about it in groups, or write it down. Make them own the expectation. Because it’s only through that that they will get the expectation failure they need to learn.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 8:12 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.