I just don't see this the same way you do.
I know, and while that is okay, and our opinions may simple differ based on interpretations of facts, I'm trying to explain why your experiences as a STUDENT may not reflect the reality of what is going on between students (as a group) and teacher as subject expert.
In my experience, students rarely interrupted a teacher's lecture to ask questions. The questions came to them when they tried to apply what they were being taught.
Right. Which demonstrates that you weren't in classrooms where students were ASKED TO WORK problems. This is never how I taught, nor how most of my (STEM) colleagues did, at any of four different institutions.
Since most students aren't interrupting lectures, a video is a decent stand in. Flipping the classroom gives them a greater opportunity to get their questions answered when they realize what they don't know. Until they try to apply it, I think students know that they haven't grasped the subject, but they don't know why. They don't even know what question to ask to get things cleared up until they try to go through things step by step and get stuck.
Correct-- but it's far more efficient to bring that part of the process into the instruction rather than shoving the instruction itself aside as worthless.
Personally, I hated wasting my time listening to teachers answer questions which were already clear to me. I knew it was slowing down an already dreadful pace of learning. If 3 or more kids have the same question at any time, what about the kids who DON'T have that question? Forcing them to listen to the answer is a waste of time. I guess the trick is to make sure that time doesn't get wasted anyway, for a different reason. I think that's possible. They certainly accomplish this in Montessori classrooms.
With all due respect, there is no way to KNOW that listening to a particular explanation is a "waste" of anyone's time. Ever. Including your own. Is it a "waste" of my time to listen to an explanation of something that I know perfectly well? Wellllll-- no, not really. I mean, assuming that I'm a student in a class where I'm actually
learning something to begin with, generally such explanations serve as a window into the thinking of others, and actually DO benefit me, albeit in less obvious ways than my personal "Aha" moments with the textbook. They also benefit me in
social ways-- by forcing me to consider the variety of needs that my peers have, as well as my own needs. It also happens with some regularity that an explanation to ONE student will answer questions that three or four others didn't (yet) realize that they had. Is it wrong that none of the five of them had to "struggle" with a homework problem later because of that??
Obviously, I'm not suggesting that grouping and pacing based upon ability is a bad thing, here-- NOT AT ALL. I'm suggesting that in light of that kind of grouping, instruction DOES need to be offered in real-time. If there are students in that grouping who are a 'drag' on instruction, then get them extra help or get them into a more appropriate placement.
But even gifted students need to learn that a classroom is a learning
community and that others have strengths and weaknesses as learners, too.
Even the 'smart' kids ask dumb things sometimes, and that's actually good for everyone who hears those questions (and their answers). It gives students a way of considering other
ways of approaching/contemplating the material.
Actually, that point (in previous paragraph) is one that people who have had kids in B&M settings probably underestimate significantly. My DD has not had much opportunity to witness that by virtue of all instruction being "canned" like in a flipped classroom, and the results have been positively TOXIC.
This isn't about Montessori-- this is about taking do/show-one, teach-one OUT of a communal setting and making it a pair of one-way streets. That's bad news, IMO. A
good college classroom has a lot more in common with Montessori than most former students realize, I think.
Research does indicate that as a
supplement, recorded lectures are good. It also shows that for some (memorization-based) material, they can be an adequate substitute for attending live lectures, when those live lectures are relatively non-interactive an non-dynamic. But it also shows that when students use them as a
substitute for attending more meaningful/complex instructional lectures, their understanding definitely suffers.
Most classroom teachers could have told anyone that. Students have been doing this forever-- getting lecture notes rather than coming to class themselves. It is a poor substitute, though better than NOTHING.
I'm just saying that the choice
shouldn't be "recorded" or "nothing."
