It can be hard to see the advantages and disadvantages of teaching without procedures as we can’t line up the two side by side. Yet, the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages and they can have a profound effect on the future learning of students. One of the most important advantages is that this type of teaching provokes the inventive thinking of students as they use the skills they have to understand the world around them. This also causes them to think for themselves and gain real concrete understanding like the students in the paper did about fractions. I think that as teachers use this method, it also helps students learn to work, discover, and be productive in group settings. This can be seen in the paper as the students worked on 1 divided by 2/3. By the end of the paper, you could see that they had become confident in their ability to reason out things for themselves, a very useful skill in the world today.
There can be disadvantages to teaching math without teaching procedures and spoon feeding them. One that has been clear to me is certain students will not be successful in those types of situations due to different learning styles and even learning disabilities. Some students could be left behind. And sometimes, when a student thinks he or she is correct after doing their own thinking, and then is unable to understand the correct way of doing something, this can cause some to give up. Just like in all other types of teaching, it takes a lot of effort on the teacher’s part in order to make sure no one gets left behind. The other obvious disadvantage is that a teacher who is not skilled at this type teaching could spend way too much time on a given topic. It leaves a lot to be desired of in teachers. To impliment this teaching style, it would take a very collective effort of teachers from all grades.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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