Acknowledging students' different learning styles could improve tutoring
Reading Delpit's article was eye-opening for me as far as learning styles of students. I always knew that students learned in different ways, but I had never thought that those ways might depend on how the students expect to be taught.
I have been tutoring math for a few terms now and at times it has been frustrating when a student doesn't use my leading questions to learn a concept. After reading Delpit, maybe I will try more direct language when I run into this sort of a problem in the future. Perhaps this approach will help my tutor-to-student communication.
posted by sharon @ 11:07 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
You have a very interesting idea. It’s hard to distinguish when a teacher would want a student to come up with her own answers, when asking questions would be most helpful, and when a direct approach would be better for a student to understand a concept she is struggling with. Does it help to suggest or assume that there may be more than one way to solve a problem or express an idea? To help improve students’ writing or teach them a concept, do they need more direct instruction? Perhaps it depends on the subject as well. A student might be more defensive about her writing, but not about her way of solving math problems.
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting too, because I knew about direct and indirect communication in other cultures, like in Asian cultures, but I didn't realize it also existed in the different cultures in the U.S. as well. I wonder if it would work in math as well as it does in language? I remember when I learned math, I just couldn't think about it the right way, like I could with English.
There are times when I am learning math where leading questions are good, but there are other times where I really need to just be told the answer. A basis in understanding and a certain level of confidence are needed for leading questions to be an effective tool.
It is interesting to think that there are expectations on both sides of the educational system: students have expectations of how they will be taught and teachers have expectations of how their students will learn. Where do the expectations of students come from? Is it entirely cultural or is it also a product of the environments that we are raised in? Recognizing these expectations could be a very powerful tool indeed.
Math is a funny subject for myself. It was either I got it or I didn't. There were no in betweens. If math was taught to me using different tools, and different methods I might have understood it better and gotten better grades. I have noticed that a lot of teachers are set in their ways of teaching. I think that teachers should be more open to changing their approach if at least a few students are struggling to id the concept. I saw an interesting way to teach math, and it made me wish that math was taught to me like this teacher was teaching to his students. He used Fanstay Football as a way to help teach different math concepts like percentage, averages, etc. I would have loved math if it were taught using sports.
I found the part about student expectations interesting as well. I have now started to notice what I, as a student, expect from a prof/teacher and how that relates to my own learning experience.
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