The critical principle in Chapter 4 of Daniel T. Willingham’s book Why Don’t Students Like School is that we understand new things in the context of things we already know, which is mostly concrete as opposed to abstract.
Willingham uses the word “abstraction” so lets begin by explaining what “abstraction” is.
Abstraction is a process of formulating generalized ideas or concepts by extracting common qualities from specific examples. To Willingham, “Abstraction is the goal of schooling…The teacher wants students to be able to apply classroom learning in new contexts, including those outside of school. The challenge is that the mind does not care for abstraction. The mind prefers the concrete.” (87)
Lets begin by focusing on the three key ideas of this chapter.
1. Question: Why is understanding difficult? (What is understanding and why is it so difficult?)
Willingham reminds us that learning, understanding, and knowledge need to be built on prior knowledge in order to make it stick. Students have a difficult time understanding new ideas especially ones that aren’t related to other things they have already learned. “In addition, students have difficulty applying the underlying concepts to new situations.
For example when a student is given a problem to solve the area of a table using the equation A=L x W, they can simply solve the problem. However, when given a problem that asks the student to calculate the area of a soccer field, the student cannot apply information from the previous problem.
In order to understand why it is difficult for your students to solve these types of problems, we need to look at question two.
2. Questions: Are there different levels of comprehension?
Willingham highlights 3 levels of comprehension.
Rote Knowledge involves simple where no understanding takes place. Students simply repeat information from their textbooks or teachers without understanding the information.
Shallow Knowledge involves limited and surface level understanding. This could be from not paying attention, missing information or weak connections that get in the way of deep knowledge.
Deep Knowledge occurs when everything, the parts and the whole, is understood. Students can apply new ideas in relation to prior knowledge and make connections to new situation.
3. Why does Knowledge not transfer?
Willingham echoes that knowledge does not transfer because individuals cannot take what they know about one area and apply it to another. “Understanding new ideas is mostly a matter of getting the right old ideas into working memory and then rearranging them – making comparisons we hadn’t made before or thinking about a feature we had previously ignored.” We understand the problem Willingham poses here, so what? What can we do in order to support students to make connections and make knowledge stick?
4. Applications to the classroom:
“How can the information about comprehension and abstraction apply to my classroom? What are some things I can use to help my students think deeper?”
1.) By comparing and contrasting, teachers can show students that even though the context of the situation might be different, that they can still apply their knowledge “across-topics”
2.) Be sure to ask high-order questions. You should always ask why and how, not only what
3.) Students need the basic comprehension (rote and shallow) before their brains can achieve deep comprehension. They need to be able to walk before they run.
What are three classroom implications?
People looking for functional, applicable solutions might walk away from this chapter not feeling much fulfilled. Do not underestimate the difficulty of deep understanding. If understanding came easily, teaching should and would be easy. We know from practice that teaching is not easy, therefore understanding must be extremely difficult. However, some ideas on how to meet this challenge in the classrooms are offered to comfort our anxiety.
1. To help student comprehension, provide examples and ask students to compare them. Experience helps students see deep structure, so provide experience via lots of examples in order for students to make connections with prior knowledge. The more practice examples, the better! Willingham’s implication is built on the idea that we learn through experience, so students need more of it when teachers are trying to get them to assimilate new knowledge.
2. Make deep knowledge the spoken and unspoken emphasis. The classroom should be driven by deep structure, which is in essence the quest for meaning. Teachers must ask questions and create assignments that drive students toward meaning, rather than fact retrieval questions. Teachers need to give students opportunities to practice higher-order thinking skills through inquiry based learning.
3. Make your expectations for deep knowledge realistic. Reality check! Teaching the meaningful, abstract things [ideas?] are tough. Progress will be slow and teachers may never see the fruits of their labor and should consider themselves as seed planters. Willingham encourages teachers that students obtaining shallow knowledge is better than no knowledge, because shallow knowledge is something students can build upon in the future.
Jeffrey Fisher 