Excellent and highly useful article. Sometimes I think there are a lot of teachers who unconsciously take joy in seeing students draw erroneous conclusions. That gives them (the teachers) the chance to demonstrate to kids that teachers are necessary. What your article suggests is that instead of reveling in/bemoaning these sorts of student "mistakes," teachers should see them as evidence that curriculum materials and/or instruction aren't leading students to confront their assumptions. And that means that teachers should be taking the lead in constructing more thought-provoking, effective lessons and sets of problems.
Approaching student responses by first thinking about and acknowledging the sense-making that's happening has revolutionized the way I do math (and honestly, probably some of my relationships with students).
The title is absolutely spot on! This to me is a no-duh and find it that most professional educators still need PD or just plain old basic teacher education to know such fundamental ideas about students.
Somewhat ironically, I am taking a class on Curriculum Design and submitted a video discussion for an assignment about 6 hours before Dan posted this article which aligns perfectly with what he said! The post is ~18 minutes, but the part relevant to Dan's article starts at time 0:53 if you are interested. https://content.screencast.com/users/ChadTLower/folders/Capture/media/f91f2cee-a65e-4b02-954e-614d68ad67ef/LWR_Recording.mp4
Excellent and highly useful article. Sometimes I think there are a lot of teachers who unconsciously take joy in seeing students draw erroneous conclusions. That gives them (the teachers) the chance to demonstrate to kids that teachers are necessary. What your article suggests is that instead of reveling in/bemoaning these sorts of student "mistakes," teachers should see them as evidence that curriculum materials and/or instruction aren't leading students to confront their assumptions. And that means that teachers should be taking the lead in constructing more thought-provoking, effective lessons and sets of problems.
Approaching student responses by first thinking about and acknowledging the sense-making that's happening has revolutionized the way I do math (and honestly, probably some of my relationships with students).
The title is absolutely spot on! This to me is a no-duh and find it that most professional educators still need PD or just plain old basic teacher education to know such fundamental ideas about students.