Learning by Doing is Back in Vogue
After receiving a $300,000 grant from the National Center on Education, a public school in South Carolina is implementing what it describes as a "cutting edge" program. The school wants to lead the way for a national move toward improving school culture.
The program will use literacy "coaches" and new training materials in an attempt to boost test scores and reduce overall student-failure rate. The new method calls for spending more time on a subject and for a greater percentage of that time having students do handson practice in the subject. Lecture time would be reduced, though not excluded.1
Until recently, performance-based teaching has been more the method of choice, and the results have been less than encouraging: student apathy and passivity are rising. Memorizing facts and recalling them clearly fall far short of teaching students how to use their subjects.
Furthermore, performance-based teaching discourages students from asking questions; therefore, the exchanges that help the teacher to gauge and guide students’ comprehension are stifled. All in all, students are seriously short-changed; those who are less inclined to be competitive lose interest if they do not see practicality. Students who are eager to please find that they can do so simply by engaging their recall skills and nothing more.
The discernment demanded by interactive teaching—conversational discussion and critical thinking questions—on the other hand, takes students far beyond just the literal response level and eventually brings them the reward of personal application. They make a connection between what is being taught and life situations. With application and the realization that the subject is "useful," comes appreciation that helps the students maintain interest. They become eager participants. They learn to think inductively, evaluating and forming ideas. A cycle of success is born.
BJU Press philosophy has always been that students students should be led to Truth through thinking rather than by imposing ideas on them. The principle being taught must be seen at work. Placing the teacher at the helm, both as the question-asker and the question-prompter, BJU Press materials help draw students deep into their subjects with discussions and projects that require critical thinking and end in practical application. This kind teaching requires students to exercise judgment gives them the sense challenge and purpose they crave.