Over at Pedablogy, Steve Greenlaw reflects on the end of week two of his experiment in a thoroughly (aggressively? persistently? recurrently?) metacognitive classroom. I’m interested to see that Steve’s exceptionally thoughtful account ends with a student telling him “now I know what you’re looking for.”

My first thought is, “what else would any teacher be looking for?” Identifying major concepts, distinguishing them from minor concepts, and applying either or both to new contexts: these are real school skills of the highest order and greatest importance. My second thought is that the comment typifies intellectual laziness and a kind of cynical cost-benefit analysis, viz., “I’m not trying to get an education here; I’m trying to suss out the teacher’s expectations and take the path of least resistance to meeting them.” My third thought is that it’s an honest question, and that enough teachers (for whatever reasons) don’t ask for metacognition that students are genuinely puzzled about the “rules of engagement” when one teacher does.

Perhaps the truth is some combination of all three thoughts.

I’m still haunted by Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” in this regard: to say what you’re looking for (which I distinguish to some extent from clarifying the assignment, which is what Steve did) is to guarantee the student cannot find it. It’s interesting that institutionalized education hides this fact from itself, or seems to. Or maybe (probably!) I’m just being willful to say to students, “I’m looking for you to show me something I didn’t know I was looking for.” The catalyst for student discovery can be a lecture, an aside, a moment’s discussion outside class, an email, a clipping, a cartoon. In short, real school is built on such catalysis (footnote here to my IT boss, Chip German), and such catalysis can appear anywhere at any time. The trick is to surround students with sense, or potential sense, and to strengthen them with a persistent feeling of expectation, and with the tools of preparedness.

Steve’s obviously doing that, and in that way his “experiment” feels more like a reaffirmation to me. You go, Dr. Greenlaw.

EDIT: Konrad Glogowski’s aptly named “Blog of Proximal Development” also treats these issues here. I continue to wish for a stimulating synthesis of a) pylons and b) the thrill of the run. Seems to me a curriculum ought to have both (and will need both). Tennis, with a net.