The answer defines not only your personal teaching philosophy, but also the daily practices in your classroom.
When learning is viewed as a product, and the same performance measure applies to all students, learning facilitation can be reduced to cookie-cutter teaching: same pieces of information and instruction are seen sufficient for all students. This is also visible in classroom practices: proving students with a template and asking them to copy that – whether it is an “art” project, notes, homework, an essay or anything else. There is not much room for individualization or differentiation, because the products are seen as the measure of learning – which of course is not reality, but may satisfy administrators and policymakers.
In a product-centered learning environment emphasis is often in doing activities, either teacher-made or others, or the ones provided by the publisher – and getting them right, because they are often graded. Skilled and obedient students comply with these requests and try hard to get their tasks done right, yet there are many students who just leave them undone. Completed products may show the “level” of each student, and let the teacher know who needs more practice in writing, multiplication or something else, but they don’t tell when the student acquired the skill, or if s/he is more advanced it it. Pre-designed materials are handy and easy to use, but they often lead to cookie-cutter teaching, simply because they were designed for another group of students in different educational setting with diverse connections to the subject. Your group of students is unique!
What about viewing learning as a process? Many things will change from the previously described situations: the first premise is that because students begin their daily/weekly/yearly learning from different levels of knowledge and understanding, they also will end up in different competency levels. And that is okay, honestly. We are not clones. Students shouldn’t be treated like ones.
When learning is understood primarily as a process differentiation and individualization are natural consequences. Assessment becomes comparing your achievement to your previous level of individual proficiency or competency, not against the achievements of your peers. Student evaluations are extremely non-punitive by nature: mistakes and second attempts are not only allowed but treasured, because they show the growth of understanding and the height of the learning curve. Isn’t this the recipe for providing the experiences of success for each and every student? And from educational research we already know how important that genuine thrill of achievement is for intrinsic motivation to learn.
Worksheets, exercises, activities and even homework are individualized, because learners have diverse needs and the teacher wishes to accommodate every student’s needs. As you can imagine there is not much need for cookie-cutter activities in these classrooms, but flexibility for students to choose within well-defined limits and pick activities they find meaningful or are interested in doing. I have heard people say how students will not do what they need to do, but what pleases them. Funny enough, students who get to choose usually learn much more than those forced into performing and producing, and they often pick tasks that are almost too hard for them. The same phenomenon happens when you let students choose their homework, from an appropriate selection, of course – and it is harder for even an under-performing student to explain why s/he didn’t do the homework s/he got to choose.
Approaching learning as an individual process helps us refocus learning and teaching: the student is in the nexus of her/his own learning, and the oh-so-tiring power struggle is minimized. I know most of my teachers and readers are bound to the state/national/other high stakes testing – yet, I think approaching learning as a process is applicable everywhere, because independent learners also perform better in the tests.
What a beautiful approach! Learning as a process and not a product!
Thanks for a wonderful insight, Nina.
Process or product. Such an important distinction. I also value your comments about letting kids choose their own level of difficulty. I refused to sort the classroom reading and take-home books according to some formula of perceived difficulty. I wanted my youngsters to learn how to browse and to become discerning readers, aware of their own competencies. It only took a very short period of time before they were selecting books that were just challenging enough for them. What was particularly encouraging was that sometimes they would choose books that were very difficult simply because the subject matter was of sufficient interest. It was marvelous to see how they would struggle and learn to read this super challenging text, books that would never have been made available to them if I had worked on a teacher leveled reading program.
Thank you, Pat! I am glad you discussed the important idea of choosing in your comment! It truly caters for learning success and intrinsic motivation to learn when students are allowed to challenge themselves. Your example shows excellently why too vigorous pre-selection would be very harmful for the growing learning competence, and why allowing choice within a structure yields so excellent learning results.
Thanks for giving much to reflect upon, Nina. Without having structured my thoughts on teaching practice anywhere as precisely as you, I feel we have similar outlooks. Thus your text puts into words, and thereby clarifies (which greatly helps!) an approach I try to follow. In fact, I’m generally the learner and my students probably assess my teaching (yes, I have good and bad days) as much as I assess their learning. And I’m sure give me higher marks, as a teacher, when they take more control over their own lessons and just use me as a resource to aid their learning.
In fact, in reality, we’re all just getting on with it all together, quite democratically, all learning from each other – the best way. Teacher’s often have more to learn than their students so that it’s good to learn from the students.
This is the first post of yours that I’ve read and it has made me follow you blog straight away! I would also like to reblog it on mine, if I have your permission, where I will also make something of my own comments. For here I would like to say I agree with your stance wholeheartedly though I would say the product is still not redundant. The philosophy I have followed over 20 years of teaching is that if you teach the process well enough, the kids move forward much more effectively and the product – the grades, qualifications or whatever – are reached more often and more positively. This is not to detract from your view at all, but merely complements it. Best wishes!
Thank you! You certainly have my permission to reblog, and I am looking forward to read your commentary. Of course learning results (or prodcut) are improved when learning process is improved – but too often we seem to think how end justifies the means, and that doesn’t apply well in learning.
Indeed it doesn’t! I shall being reblogging forthwith!
Learning is both a process and a product. However, if one goes through the process, but fails to demonstrate the knowledge gained (the product) in an applicable situation, have they really learned? Thanks for the wonderful post.
Nice book
I love your distinction between treating learning as a product or a process, and how to describe the dangers of product-based learning as leading to cookie-cutter teaching. My son is only in Pre K and I already see a lot of copying going on, whether it’s the “art” on the wall that consists of nothing more than a print-out that the kids color in, or the Pearson worksheets that they do all the time–they all look the same to me, and it just seems rather dull to me. Kids are naturally curious– they WANT to learn so I fully admire your approach of giving them choice within well-defined limits. Would you mind if I reblogged this? This topic is very interesting to me, but you’ve described it so clearly and eloquently–I wouldn’t do it justice to put it in my own words right now!
Thank you for your kind words! I truly see the problems arising when we focus too much on teaching and not enough on learning – which of course is also visible in the use of open-ended vs. closed questions.
Please do reblog, and feel free to share otherwise too.
I think learning is both process and product. You cannot have a product without a process. A student cannot write a paper/essay product, without having learned or mastered a process. Process is so important because it leads to the ability to create a product. Good question to see where one’s teaching philosophy falls. I love learning. If I want to learn how to produce new products, then I certainly must learn the process to make that happen. This often means mastering the process, procedures, or steps. Because let’s be honest, no one wants to put out or present a less than stellar product.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! The problems in education arise when we are pushing for products without taking enough time to have students engage with the learning process itself. While I agree with you most students wanting to present stellar products, I also have experienced the opposite where students spend lots of time and energy in the appearance of the product, but not enough in growing the quality of the content – which means their learning remains too thin, or shallow.
That’s an interesting way to think about it – students getting so caught up in “how” the product looks. Kind of scary. Imagine if doctors and engineers only went by looks? We’d be in a world of hurt. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen students produce pretty work with no substance all because they were allowed to use their creative side, but they got caught up in the looks and lost points on analysis and divergent thinking. It’s quite the challenge. I can see why some educator want the facts only without the artistic expression, yet I also think creative expression can give way to deeper think if facilitated and not just left happen on its own – which is least likely to happen.
I love your reminder analogy. If we can help students see how valuable process and quality are, maybe it would change the way work and impact the contributions that make in life beyond the classroom. Hopefully what we teach will stick! I want my students to experience depth rather than breadth alone.
Creativity is important for learning, because by following the thinking of someone else we will never gain the same competency as we do while thinking it through with our own brain. Guiding creativity is necessary, and my preferred way of doing it is to grant students as much freedom as possible, within appropriate boundaries dictated by the task/competency/objective. Students are intrinsically motivated to “deep learn”, but this requires learning to be meaningful for them.