Rote Learning vs. Understanding Concepts

[boulderjohn]

I think what he's saying is that because people learn in different ways you have to be willing to teach in different ways. I can certainly follow his criticism of the "stand and deliver" model we're taught to use if he's looking at it from the perspective of someone with a background in education. It must seem very simple to someone with experience teaching. For the rest of us nobodies, like me, I was happy to have some kind of handle to hold on to coming out of the gate.

The point I think he's missing is that with a little experience we all start to let that go. If I'm reading him right, he seems to be confusing the "survival guide" which is what we get going into the IE with the way we're expected to teach for ever after....

R..

I understand what he says about a stand and deliver approach being other than worthwhile, but I did not see that I am required to do it. I was not talking about the theory--I was talking about what I am expected to do in my instruction.

 

[Diver0001]

Yeah. I get it. I think he may be confusing what they teach new instructors (like me) to help them get over the first few courses with the way they expect everything to be done.

As an intersting aside to all of this, PADI's "stand and deliver" model teaches us to explain the "why" of everything they do as the second step

1) what do we do?
2) why do we do this?
3) how do we do this...

etc. etc.

Kind of completely refutes the OP's observation, tbh. Agencies are not evil and they don't have a secret agenda to make everyone fail.... sheesh

R..

 

[boulderjohn]

IAnd to whoever mentioned something about the truck tail gate.... I resemble that remark and and have on occassions left it down and now because of your remark, I will have to look it up when I get home and waste valuble time cause you told me it didn't work but didn't explain WHY :cool2:

When you leave the tailgate down, it creates a turbulence at the back which causes drag.

With the tailgate up, you do not have constant air whacking the tailgate, as you might expect. Instead, a pocket of air is trapped in the back of the truck. The effect is that your truck becomes roughly the same shape as a sedan. The air flow goes over the top of the trapped air.

 

[boulderjohn]

Yeah. I get it. I think he may be confusing what they teach new instructors (like me) to help them get over the first few courses with the way they expect everything to be done.

As an intersting aside to all of this, PADI's "stand and deliver" model teaches us to explain the "why" of everything they do as the second step

1) what do we do?
2) why do we do this?
3) how do we do this...

etc. etc.

Kind of completely refutes the OP's observation, tbh. Agencies are not evil and they don't have a secret agenda to make everyone fail.... sheesh

R..

I am a big fan of the why, in fact, I often ask the why question first. If students can figure out the correct process on their own before I tell them, then they really understand it.

I have students work on groups on some story problems that describe dive scenarios. On one of them, they realize (on their own) that a diver is going to run out of air on the dive described. That leads to a discussion on dive planning, which they now understand is important before I tell them.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Yeah, what is it about you, Bob, that you attract neurotic, perfectionist women as students? (Betty, Barb, me . . . )

Just lucky, I guess ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Thalassamania]

I prefer to teach everything that I can from first principles, e.g., gas laws start with the kinetic model and we move from there.

 

[Teamcasa]

I prefer to teach everything that I can from first principles, e.g., gas laws start with the kinetic model and we move from there.

As most teachers should.

When I was teaching at a local JC, the first classes were 100%, hands on lab work. Even if they did not understand all of the principals they learned how the nomenclature applied to a physical component. It made the lectures much easier.

In addition, on the first day of class I told them that I was the smartest guy they would ever meet and I knew more about the subject than they would ever know. This was not to be boastful but to drive them to prove me wrong or trip me up by something they learned. By the end of the course, many had indeed taught me something new!

 

[sambolino44]

Wow! I was hoping to start a discussion, but this has turned out better than I expected. Thanks again, everyone!

First let me say that I don't feel insulted by any of the remarks; it's all part of the discussion. And I understand that my first post didn't include enough information about the whole situation for anyone to make accurate judgments about everything that came up, but that's OK as far as I'm concerned; you play the cards you're dealt.

Also, I understand that "rote vs. understanding" is an oversimplification; there is a place for both.

And I don't feel that the agencies are evil, just that they are caught in a Catch-22 situation, because it's hard to get people over that first few hurdles. Getting started in diving is expensive, and there's a lot to learn just to be safe. If the gear and training requirements are too high, there won't be very many new people taking it up. That's just a dilemma, not anybody's plan. I don't know much about it, so I really wasn't even thinking about the "education of the educators" issue, but I'm glad you brought it up, because it goes to the heart of my point.

I really appreciate the post somebody made about the curriculum being designed more by marketing folks than education experts. I think it's a shame that we have so many qualified people to do things, but it ends up being done instead by some goombah who doesn't know the first thing about what he's doing only because he's the one with the clout. Bah!

Anyway, thanks again, all. I'm learning a lot from reading the discussion.

 

[boulderjohn]

I really appreciate the post somebody made about the curriculum being designed more by marketing folks than education experts. I think it's a shame that we have so many qualified people to do things, but it ends up being done instead by some goombah who doesn't know the first thing about what he's doing only because he's the one with the clout. Bah!
.

The fact that it was said does not make it true.

In the mid 1990s I was a staff developer whose job it was to be on top of the latest educational research and try to convince a very unreceptive audience of high school teachers that they would be more effective if they adopted many of these methodologies. These methodologies are still very much at the core of what top educators believe work, but in the 1990s they were revolutionary. During the previous decade, a lot of research and experimentation had upended traditional thought, and it was (and still is) hard to get that through to educators who were (and are) clinging to outmoded beliefs.

When I was becoming a scuba instructor, I had to read a lot of background materials, including all the articles that were written in the mid 1990s to try to persuade scuba instructors to use the (then) new approaches to scuba instruction. They tried to explain the learning theory behind those changes. It was like a trip down memory lane for me--while I had been trying to convince teachers to adopt new methodologies, so was the scuba industry, and they were citing some of the same research I was.

A few days ago I met with someone from PADI dealing with an issue related to scuba curriculum design. Before becoming involved with this, that person had spent a lifetime in curriculum design for a major textbook publisher.

So, despite what you read on the Internet, scuba instructional design was and is directed by educators, not marketing people.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

So, despite what you read on the Internet, scuba instructional design was and is directed by educators, not marketing people.

But as someone who's been writing manuals for the past 33 years I have to ask ... how much real-world diving expertise do the folks who design the classes and write the instructional manuals have? It's one thing to know how to create a curriculum ... it's another altogether to understand the target audience well enough to understand not just how they need to learn it, but what they need to know.

There are ... in a lot of scuba diving text I've read ... things that make me go "huh?" ... not because the book is poorly written, or even necessarily incorrect ... but somehow just seems inconsistent, out of context or simply irrelevent to diving as I've experienced it.

As an example ... Jeppesen's Open Water Sport Diver manual (5th edition) ... "The frog kick is not commonly used in scuba diving, but is good for providing a restful variation in kicks on long surface swims" ...



My understanding is that the author of that manual ... Lou Fead ... is one of the legends of underwater instructional curriculum ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)