Facilitate Wonder

Again, this pondering begins with a TED Talk:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

Barry Schwartz lays out a compelling argument on how the affluent are afflicted by too much choice.  He describes the problem of having too many choices for salad dressing, jeans and cell phones.  And more importantly in medical care.  And when to marry and have kids.  And how to save for retirement.

Historically, we didn’t have conspicuous choices about any of these things.

Schwartz also briefly touches on the problem of having no choice. That’s not the focus of the talk as it’s not the problem of the affluent folks he’s talking about and to.  Americans, generally, have too many choices in a lot of things.

In situations without choice, Schwartz notes, we’re miserable but we can blame the world for our misery.  In situations with too much choice, if the choice doesn’t meet our expectations, we blame ourselves.

In schools, we have the problem of too much choice compounded by the problem of not enough choice.

We have effectively no choice about what to teach — a New York State Earth science teacher must teach the content on the Earth Science Regents Examination.

On the other hand, the array of materials and methods to help us teach more effectively can lead to either analysis paralysis or more straightforward disappointment.

It also seems that if we want kids to learn this stuff, we have to teach them in a class on the stuff, even though we know that it typically doesn’t yield durable understandings. (Watch Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk and consider the need for extra chunky educational approaches (and consider how Gladwell’s talk is seemingly in direct contradiction to Schwartz’s)).

So, we have no choice on either the content or the the fact that we’re supposed to make something like 25 kids at a time understand it in roughly 180 forty minute blocks (plus, in New York State an additional 1200 minutes of lab time).  But we’ve got scads of choices on materials and methods we use within those constraints.

We are stuck between no choice and too much choice — what to do?

We want neither to maximize nor minimize choice but rather to optimize it.  As we go about the work of our grant, we need to consider how to make our materials and programs to be not only the best choice to fit their niche, but also the easiest choice to make and a choice that leads to further options that are both manageable and desirable.

We want to make some choices for our teachers and provide heuristic and logarithmic ways to help them make other choices from bounded sets of choices — and still allow for their own creativity to enrich the project and their teaching.

A choice we’re making is that it makes sense to use the local to understand the global.  We assume that participants in the project have made that choice too.

We need to:

• Create and/or compile a set of conceptual and technological tools that help students and teachers learn about their local Earth system science (and to do so with the collaboration of teachers).
• Create a scaffolded approach to move outward from the local.  The emerging database should be a central part of this.
• Remain ever flexible and able to respond to what we learn from our work and our collaborators.
• Describe and teach how big ideas meshes with the need to optimize choice.

What kinds of choices do you, as a teacher, want help in making?  What kinds of choices do you want to make without much input?  What else are you thinking?

An aside:  If you only listen to the audio of this talk, you miss several amusing visual aids (but it’s still good).