Today I
finished teaching day # 3 in class. We have been studying a summary of research
on teaching and learning by Jere Brophy, a professor at MSU who passed away a
few years back. One of the key ideas he covers in teaching is that input,
processing, and output all matter. Unfortunately, we very often give greatest
emphasis to input. That is, we think most about telling people the content we
want them to learn. But Brophy points to the research that says students learn
more when we help them engage in meaningful dialogue with other people about what
we teach. And they also learn more when they engage in meaningful practice and
application of what we taught. If we spend all of our time telling them what
they should know, and we don’t take the time to help them process it or
practice it, they are less likely to learn as much or to use it later on.
So we
talked a bit today on how we, in the church, can do a better job of fostering
meaningful conversation among people about what they learn in church, and how
we can help them practice what they learn in realistic ways. It means that we
can’t “cover as much content.” But it also means that what we cover will likely
be remember and used again, instead of yet more content that we can vaguely
recollect and not use.
I hope
that these conversations are valuable for my students here. (And yes, I have
had them in meaningful conversations with each other about the content, and I
am giving them a chance to practice this next week when they get to teach in
class.) It challenges me to think about how I, in my own settings, can do a
better job of engaging people in meaningful conversations about a sermon or
lesson in church.
On
another note, I had the chance to walk about the city a little bit this
morning. I encountered a market that had lots of fresh meat and fish. And lots
of color!
Myanmar
has a high power distance. That is, those in authority are to be shown great
respect. It was interesting to think about good aspects of this way of thinking
(such as obeying the fourth commandment to honor your parents as well as the
call to submit completely to God as God) as well as the bad aspects of this way
of thinking (such as people in church who are passive because they just let the
pastor do the thinking and working as their superior). We in the US have the
opposite problem in some ways … having to figure out how to have people see God
as God and not just their friend. Meaningful conversations for me as well!
Very interesting! Thanks!
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