Controlled confusion. Is this an oxymoron? Educational neuroscience reminds us that excess stress - when all you see on the board is hieroglyphs or the white hot panic when Teacher asks you a question and you're not even sure it was in English - gets in the way of learning. And not just a little. Chronic experience of excess stress will actually re-wire the brain in such a way that it can no longer properly regulate emotion. Imagine trying to concentrate when your body is in a constant state of fight, flight or freeze. It's obvious, then, that confusion has no place in the classroom.
But is it? One of the tensions expressed in educational neuroscience and effective learning is that there is an optimal level of stress. Too much gets in the way, but too little does also. Learning is hard, and in order to make the cognitive jump to higher understanding, we need a little oomph. Healthy stress is an incredibly useful motivator. In this way, Teacher must balance on one scale a Safe Learning Environment and on the other Active, Challenging Engagement. To my mind, this is where our seemingly contradictory term comes into teaching practice. Do you remember a breakthrough from your own learning? We experience Eureka! moments throughout our education, and they are essential to fostering student growth. In fact, I bet there has been a time when you thought you understood something, but it wasn't until you were pushed to think about it differently - until someone confused you - that your conceptualization became strong. Before we get to "I get it!" we have to go through ¿‽⸘﹖⁇ ⁉︖⁉ ﹖⁈︖¿?‽⸘
Think of it like a stress test for safety specs on a car. You have to poke and prod and push and twist to make sure all the pieces are fitting together the way you want them to. Controlled confusion gives educators an opportunity to predict ways our students misconceptualize ideas and to force the issue, so to speak. Doing this is not easy. If students are under-prepared then adding complications can lead to that unproductive, overly stressful confusion we've all experienced. For me, properly integrating healthy confusion into my practice is one of my long term goals. I'm smart enough to know that there are still many blind-spots in my teaching experience, and that I just don't currently have enough data to manipulate student understanding in this way.
Given this, one of my priorities on my short- and long-practica is to observe how students learn new concepts with the following questions in mind:
➤What are the common scientific misconceptions?
➤What language choices or teaching methods make concepts more or less clear?
➤How much is too much pushing for the average student/What factors make students more or less ready to be pushed?
➤How are working teachers using "controlled confusion" in their practice?
But is it? One of the tensions expressed in educational neuroscience and effective learning is that there is an optimal level of stress. Too much gets in the way, but too little does also. Learning is hard, and in order to make the cognitive jump to higher understanding, we need a little oomph. Healthy stress is an incredibly useful motivator. In this way, Teacher must balance on one scale a Safe Learning Environment and on the other Active, Challenging Engagement. To my mind, this is where our seemingly contradictory term comes into teaching practice. Do you remember a breakthrough from your own learning? We experience Eureka! moments throughout our education, and they are essential to fostering student growth. In fact, I bet there has been a time when you thought you understood something, but it wasn't until you were pushed to think about it differently - until someone confused you - that your conceptualization became strong. Before we get to "I get it!" we have to go through ¿‽⸘﹖⁇ ⁉︖⁉ ﹖⁈︖¿?‽⸘
Think of it like a stress test for safety specs on a car. You have to poke and prod and push and twist to make sure all the pieces are fitting together the way you want them to. Controlled confusion gives educators an opportunity to predict ways our students misconceptualize ideas and to force the issue, so to speak. Doing this is not easy. If students are under-prepared then adding complications can lead to that unproductive, overly stressful confusion we've all experienced. For me, properly integrating healthy confusion into my practice is one of my long term goals. I'm smart enough to know that there are still many blind-spots in my teaching experience, and that I just don't currently have enough data to manipulate student understanding in this way.
Given this, one of my priorities on my short- and long-practica is to observe how students learn new concepts with the following questions in mind:
➤What are the common scientific misconceptions?
➤What language choices or teaching methods make concepts more or less clear?
➤How much is too much pushing for the average student/What factors make students more or less ready to be pushed?
➤How are working teachers using "controlled confusion" in their practice?
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