Chapter 2: What Do They Know About How We Learn?

This chapter opens up with an anecdote that might a bit too seem familiar to STEM teachers and that Ken Bain calls “plug and chug”: students learn some formulae or procedures by heart and apply them without having a deep understanding of why they should do that. Sometimes, this “plug and chug” phenomenon might actually be the results of the way the teacher has constructed his learning materials or exercises. And so, the remaining part of this chapter is dedicated to actually building knowledge.

The best teachers obviously are experts in their fields, but not all experts are great teachers. Ken Bain has identified two characteristics that distinguish great teachers from the others: they have strong meta-cognitive abilities that allow them to, for example, distinguish foundational concepts from elaborations. They also know what needs to come first in their courses and where students usually have difficulties so that they can clarify important notions as much as they can. The second characteristic relates to the teachers' knowledge of some theories of the learning sciences.

In this chapter, Ken Bain briefly describes the constructivist theory of learning, which basically means that we construct our knowledge based on the accumulation of experiences we live. And these mental models are then used when we are faced with new and unknown inputs. This actually leads to inaccurate mental models being formed that are then very hard to deconstruct. As a result, the best teachers usually adopt a constructivist approach of learning which also implies that they design their courses and assignments so as to challenge their students' thinking and allow them to construct accurate mental models in a safe space.

Another aspect that is pointed out is the importance to have students ask questions. This is a first signal that students are actively participating in the creation of their knowledge. But more importantly, asking questions is the natural way to challenge one’s own misconceptions and to try to correct them. But we all know that it is sometimes difficult to have students ask their questions.

This is why the next section of this chapter is dedicated to what motivates students to learn. Regarding motivation, the books mentions research work conducted on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that states that the students' interest actually decreases when we feed them with ephemeral extrinsic motivations. In this regard, this book emphasizes on the language we should use as teachers: we should be “task praising” instead of “person praising”, we should try to avoid referring to extrinsic motivations (and usually, this includes grades or getting a degree). So how do the best teachers achieve that? Well, they generally avoided using grades to persuade students to study and instead appealed to the future benefits of understanding the notions at stake. While this type of discourse is usually held at the beginning of a course, outstanding teachers will design their entire course (and evaluations) around this idea so as to keep the students engaged.

Finally, this chapter concludes on what is called the “developmental view of learning”. This view details four stages of learning that all students must go through in order to independent, critical, and creative thinkers. These stages are “received knowers”, “subjective knowers”, “procedural knowers”, and “commitment”.

Received knowers are students that are simply listening to the “sage on the stage” without questioning anything that is being said. It is all about memorizing the contents. In order to appeal to this type of students, a teacher can try to encourage precise thinking (for example, by asking for a summary of the key points).

Subjective knowers understand that knowledge is a matter of opinion. As a result, they form their own opinions to draw conclusions. Such students would often reject their teachers' remarks by saying that “they simply didn’t like my opinion”.

Procedural knowers are students that get a good understanding of the discipline and thus become able to form “…” reasoning.