Ever since reading Sarah Cottinghatt’s blogs and subsequent In Action book about Ausubel and meaning making, I’ve found it a massively useful reference point for examining teaching practices. The idea is that each individual student has to make meaning themselves, building from their existing knowledge to make sense of new ideas. The extent of their prior knowledge is a massive factor – but so is the process and the time given to that building/bridging process.
In very many lessons, it seems to be a missing piece in the pedagogy with teachers hoping and assuming that meaning making is happening more or less automatically or that this might happen later – or that it’s just too complicated to explore in the moment.
At its worst, we get the ‘bad check for understanding’:
- Teacher: Explains, demonstrates, explains, reads, tells, explains.. Then asks: ‘ok, is that clear ,, does everyone get that yeah? ‘
- Class: Murmurs and nods; nobody speaks.
- Teacher: Great, let’s move on.
