Mental Models

Wow! I don't know where to start. I am simply a jumble of different thoughts and ideas. I've been reading a very good book entitled, What the Best College Teachers Do, by Ken Bain. I've read the second chapter of this book, and I wanted to record several thoughts. The first thing that struck me was the fact that many students complete a class and do not change their thought patterns at all...even A students!

The thing that Dr. Bain points out is that students mostly attach the new knowledge to their old ways of thinking. If the new knowledge challenges the old way of thinking (isn't this one of the points of getting an education?), then students are more likely to merely memorize what they need to know for the class without caring enough to change the old way of thinking. I almost changed "caring" in the above sentence because it could be misread to think that I'm putting down students. Far from it. The point is that changing mental models is hard, and it disrupts one's life. Most students (even most people) would rather stick with a mistaken mental model than change it...unless the mistaken model fails so much that the student is forced to reevaluate.

The point that Bain makes is that there is a difference of opinion in what needs to happen first. Some believe that students must first acquire a certain basis of knowledge before they can reason, evaluate...all of that stuff that involves a mental model. Bain sides with the other side. He states that new information is constantly being evaluated based on the old model and if the new information doesn't fit, it is quickly forgotten. If we really want students to learn, then we need to engage the mental models.

Students must learn the facts while learning to use them to make decisions about what they understand or what they should do. To them [the sample of the best college teachers], "learning" makes little sense unless it has some sustained influence on the way the learner subsequently thinks, acts, or feels. So they teach the "facts" in a rich context of problems, issues, and questions. (29)

I hope that those in the Humanities division find this book as inspiring as I do. I find myself eager to get back into the classroom to try some of this stuff out.