Never On Sunday

I’ve had a chance now to watch the workbook style of teaching math in action. Though the technique has much to recommend it, I don’t think it’s for me.

For those unfamiliar with the idea, teaching with workbooks is one of the most popular alternatives to the standard lecture-at-the-blackboard approach. There are many variations on the basic theme, but essentially the teacher prepares assignments to be done in class, encouraging students to work in small groups while the teacher circulates among them, helping them past the sticky parts. Obviously, some lectures at the board are necessary, since students can’t generally do exercises without at least a little initial instruction, but whenever possible, learning is hands-on.

Hands-on learning, if nothing else, works far better for getting the lessons to stick in the students’ memory, but advocates of workbooks also point to the way that active exercise engages the students’ attention rather than letting it drift under a droning lecture, the positive environment created by social support, and the multiplier effect of letting the brighter students, who get the lesson immediately, help teach the slower ones, possibly bridging a painful gap between the teacher’s familiarity and the students’ lack of familiarity with concept and jargon. All of that is true, to some extent, and a fine thing when it appears in a classroom. Like all educational theories, however, its application falls short of the ideal. So it goes.

I’ve noticed particularly that the engagement is partial at best. Energy is high, but rarely focused on the lesson at hand. Given the opportunity, students simply open their books and gossip until the teacher reaches them. Even with my assistance, Susan can’t keep everyone’s noses in a book. There’s also a greater danger that students who don’t really get the material seem to follow along, only to find come test day that they don’t understand at all. (Likewise, the teacher may get to grading the tests only to discover the lesson the students handled so well in their workbooks, with plenty of coaching, hasn’t been learned.) The same can happen with a lecture style, of course: students working at home can “study together” in a process wherein one student does the work and others copy, but workbooks can conceal problems even from honest students. My impression is that regular workbook activity undermines discipline on the days when students have to sit through instruction, though that’s hard to measure. And the noise is tremendous.

So I find myself thinking of using workbooks, but much less often than the technique calls for, perhaps once a week. Since each distinct new lesson tends to take about three days to sink in—a cycle of introduction, exercise in the abstract, and application to story problem—a workbook session every fourth school day could be an excellent way to reinforce the lesson. More important for my needs, it could be an excellent way to overcome a language barrier. I casually use ten-dollar words and rarely recognize times when I’m talking over someone’s head. In a variation of bridging the gap described above, workbooks could allow me to employ students as translators. Definitely a possibility to think about, though I’m not entirely ready to give up the lectures I’m preparing in my head, heavy on the illustrations of why a lesson is important and what’s really going on here apart from the ritual of calculation and proof.