Typically for me, I'm not getting around to posting til the very last minute! So, I'm a little short on time, but this first week's readings definitely triggered a lot of thoughts for me.
The main thing these chapters made me think was, "Wow, I'm really glad I decided not to be a teacher!" All this sort of research shows just how complicated teaching is. A lot of people seem to think that education is sort of an easy career path or not one that requires a lot of work. If those people become teachers (and some do!), they certainly don't make very good ones.
As I read, I was constantly making connections between what was being said and my own experiences as a learner over the past... 20 years or so, since I've pretty much been in school nonstop since then, if you count preschool. :) My thing is that I've always been the "smart kid"... at the top of the class, with a reputation as the guy who "knew everything." I've been a valedictorian twice and a salutatorian once. But I always say that I'm just good at memorizing things, which is demonstrably true in a lot of circumstances, as most people who know me well can attest. I've always said that really "being smart" involves a lot more than that, even if that's what it takes to get good grades a lot of the time. This reading explicates in pretty extensive detail the ways in which that's true.
A lot of things really clicked for me while reading this and made me think, "yeah, that really is true" when it comes to actually being able to think critically and do real intellectual "work." It made me realize how being "good at memorizing things" (i.e., having "a great deal of content knowledge" in the language of the reading) has helped me along a lot when it comes to developing these higher-level skills. The discussion of organizing information contextually and being able to retrieve it "fluently" because it's been "conditionalized" really struck a chord with me as being a really good verbalization of the skills necessary to be an "expert" in a field. I particularly appreciated that examples from the humanities and social sciences-- particularly history, which is my area-- were used in addition to those from the natural sciences. A lot of times people seem to think that there's nothing more to history than facts, no real conceptual basis at all. I'm pretty sure I've even heard history teachers with this viewpoint, which is distressing.
Overall, I thought this reading was fascinating. It prompted a lot of thoughts about the work it takes to actually put this research into action in a classroom, particularly when classrooms are full of students with widely varying skill levels and sometimes backgrounds, and teachers face nothing short of legions of societal, institutional, political, and personal pressures when it comes to do their jobs well. I'm hoping that the rest of the book provides something a little more concrete with regards to this, though I know there are no easy answers.
One thing I guess I'm still confused about is what this all has to do with libraries. I mean, I understand how it does for an instructional librarian or a school librarian or something, to some degree. And since I'm planning to be an archivist, unlike most of the people in this class, it makes things a little more complicated as well. This just isn't the first things I expected to read in a class focused on "professional practice." But I guess we shall see.
And here goes my first blog post ever. I keep telling people this is a class where I'm going to learn about "blogging and stuff"... so I suppose I'm jumping right in!
