Through the mirror of my mind, time after time, I see reflections of you and me (The Supremes)

Photo by Saltiola Photography on Unsplash

Part 3 (of reflections on the Erica McWilliams' article on meddling-in-the-middle)

Following the terrific example from The Scottish Play in Part 2, McWilliams makes the following five points about what meddling involves:

1. Less time on transmission and more time on working through problems in a way that puts everyone in the thick of the action
2. Less time spent on risk minimalisation and more time on experimentation, risk-taking and co-learning
3. Less emphasis on teaching as forensic classroom auditing and more time spent on designing, editing, and assembling knowledge
4. Less time spent on testing memorisation and more time spent on designing alternative forms of authentic assessment
5. Less time spent on psychological counselling and more time spent on collaborative criticality and authentic evaluation

Phew - that's a shed load of more time people!!

In conclusion, teachers wanting to be meddlers need to:

• Allow their students to stay in the grey of unresolvedness
• Be active and inventive in the classroom
• Challenge and support
• Not make things too easy
• Use process of discovery, critique, argument and counter argument effectively
• Not rush to rescue their students from complexity

Next post - reflections on all this