These children are engaged in what developmental psychologist Barbara Rogoff calls “intent participation.” Each group is learning to perform an engineering task with no teacher. The girls at upper left are constructing a book support out of newspapers and masking tape. The other two groups are constructing parachutes out of coffee filters. None of them has been taught how to complete the product. They are learning what they are already doing.
The notion that a teacher, someone with knowledge, must tell learners what they should be thinking is the single most crippling unintended result of Modern European-American style education. Most Americans leave school feeling stupid, because they are unable to figure out what teachers are telling them to think. No wonder American students continue to perform so poorly on measures of problem-solving and critical thinking. If we want children to think for themselves they must have opportunities and encouragement to do so.
I am not, of course, talking about the elite children, those who are able to guess what the teacher is thinking and reproduce it. My experience is that most such children, who get good grades and score high on standardized tests, have a very difficult time performing unstructured tasks that have more than one solution. They wait to be told what to do.
Anyway, if we want self-reliant learners, who can figure things out for themselves, children must work in groups with peers with the guidance of an adult.
More tomorrow about learning in groups…