Notes on Enquiring Teachers, Enquiring Learners: A Constructivist Approach

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Constructing a Pedagogy for Language Arts (p. 70)

David was nodding in agreement. "Yes," he commented. "It makes me realize the inadequacies of corrective spelling from a stage-5 perspective if the learner is at Stage-2. Instead, it seems the role of the teacher needs to involve, first, figuring out how the learner thinks; then, second, providing a challenge to encourage rethinking. You have to be the tug that expands the circle, but the supporter to help the upward shift."

Investigations and Reflections on Learning: Teachers As Epistemologists (p. 88)

Jack Lochhead (1977), at the University of Massachusetts, began a study of strategies used in problem solving. He simply gave college students some math problems to solve, and, as they were working, he asked them to explain their thinking outloud. He also asked questions about their thinking in order to understand more fully what they were doing. To his surprise, the subjects in his study thanked him after the session, remarking that they had learned a great deal of mathematics from him. He was astounded, since he had not attempted to teach anything! From that early work, he went on to study the effect of probing questions on learners and found evidence that simply asking learners to explain their thinking enabled them to advance to higher levels of understanding. It seems that asking questions about thinking causes people to think more. In contrast, leading questions by teachers usually result in a guessing game, with learners trying to figure out what the teacher wants. The learner's thinking moves away from the problem and focuses on the teacher."