Chapter 9- Conclusions

Teaching with Your Mouth Shut, by Donald L. Finkel

Chapter 9- Conclusion: Providing Experience, Provoking Reflection

Key Points:

“Teaching with your mouth shut entails (a) avoiding the natural temptation to teacher through Telling, and (b) providing students with instructive experiences and then provoking them to reflect on those experiences” (p. 162).

“The only limits to how far a teacher may go in “creating circumstances that lead to significant learning in others are (1) her own imagination, and (2) the practical constraints within which she must operate” (p. 162).

·         Students learn from experiences, not verbal instructions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau posited that this type of education relies upon four pillars:

1.    Focus on the child’s natural development

2.    Remove the child from dangerous influences

3.    Create a supportive relationship between teacher and student

4.    Careful supervision of the environment by the teacher

·         By “providing an experience” that is “provoking reflection of the that experience”  you are creating a thinking environment

·         John Dewey reflected on the need to distinguish the difference between intelligence and thinking. According to him, “No person can directly convey an idea to another person”; this can only occur indirectly through creating a situation that promotes thinking (p. 151).

·         To make a thinking environment, the teacher needs to understand how to organize it so it can connect to an experience

·         There are two recommended prompts when trying to solicit a thinking outcome. These are the secret to leaving Telling behind:

o   1. Instruction needs to create a disequilibrium

o   2. It should encourage reflection on those experiences

·            Great books offer powerful experiences for reflection. Teachers should be aware that there is a difference between “immediate experience” and “reflective experience” (p. 153).

·            The open-ended seminar permits students to direct their learning from each other. The teacher’s role is to provide them the opportunity to discover and discuss.

·            An inquiry-centered course not only meets the criteria set by Dewey for a true learning, it also provides opportunities for experience and reflection.

·            Writing, both teacher-generated and student-created, are direct methods that encourage reflection and promote personal relationships.

·            Conceptual workshops, when designed around sequential questioning, address intellectual and social experiences.

·            Prompting experiential learning environments allow students to become “a self governing group of equals”; this “self-reflective group” creates a democratic classroom (p. 157).

·            Collegial teaching can be experientially beneficial and also helps the teachers and students when redefining authority roles.

·            Telling is ineffective because:

o   1. Student experiences are presumed by the teacher

o   2. Reflections is done by the teacher, not the learner

o   3. Telling is a “default setting”; teachers teach according to the way they were taught (p. 160). This is not necessarily the best methods for the individual learner.

·            Reflection on this book can be maximized by re-reading it, organizing simple devices to help you facilitate discussion, and participating in the conceptual workshop provided in the appendix

Finkel, D. L. (2000). Teaching with your mouth shut. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.