Episode 31 5 ways to turn knowledge into understanding

In this Episode, Dan explains the difference between knowledge and understanding. He also provides 5 ways to turn knowledge into understanding to help create lifelong learners. Five Ways to Turn Knowledge into Understanding is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Join the Facebook CommunityShow notesHi and welcome to the Effective Teaching podcast from TeachersPD. I’m Dan Jackson and today I am going to compare teaching for understanding with teaching for knowledge and explain why understanding is so important when we are training our students to become lifelong learners.Firstly, let’s differentiate between knowledge and understanding. I think as teachers we all know that there is a difference between the two, but we often don’t think about it in terms of how it affects or should affect what we do in our lessons.Knowledge is basically the content. It is what the teacher presents, or what the student could read or watch in a video. Knowledge is essentially the students ability to replicate what the teacher has taught them. It is a regurgitation of ideas and can include applying this knowledge in the same context in which it was taught. For example, if I teach my class how to add 3 and 3 to get 6 the student can then do this sum. Or, if I teach my students how the biceps is the agonist in a bicep curl and the triceps is the antagonist, they can then repeat this back to me.This is different to understanding. Understanding is when the person can take their knowledge, identify the essentials, the concepts or the processes and transfer these into other settings or contexts. If we revisit our examples then…If we are teaching addition, the student can not only add 3 and 3 to get 6, they can also add 2 and 4 to get 6 or 9 and 9 to get 18. If they have a better understanding they can even add 23 and 54 to get 76 or add 1,230, 345 and 10 to get 1,585. If we revisit the agonist antagonist muscle relationship, a student who has understanding can then tell me why the pectoralis major, and anterior deltoids are the agonists during a push up and pair them with the posterior deltoids, rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, trapezius and teres major and minor which all relax and, therefore, function as the antagonist muscles for the same contraction. Understanding is not just the same application, but a different application. When I use this definition I can also speak of skills as being a form of knowledge. If I teach you how to build by building a birdhouse and you then build a birdhouse to show your skills, you are simply replicating what you were taught. However, if you demonstrate your skills by building a cubby house, or cabinet, you have understanding because you are transferring the skill into a new context or to a new problem or project.So, if we think of knowledge as replication of what is taught and understanding as transfering what is taught by applying it to a new context it becomes obvious which one is the desired result when trying to create lifelong learners… Understanding in case you weren’t sure.Now if understanding is our goal, there are a few ways we can help our students to get there:DON”T USE EXAMS as the main form of assessment! Exams may have a place in education and in schools, but they lend themselves towards assessment of knowledge over understanding. This is not to say that they cannot assess understanding, there are just much better ways of doing this. Often exams are limited in the types of questions they can ask and students sitting them can regurgitate what they have learnt without the need to apply it to a new context. This is a broad statement about exams, which can differ and can assess understanding, but often they do not. Where exams or tests can be useful is in identifying that students have the knowledge and are thus ready to begin to try and understand. That is, the students are ready to apply the knowledge to new contexts ..