It took me over a year to finish reading this article. Why?Incremental Reading
In summary: lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn—transmissionism—which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” – Andy Matuschak
I’d say constructivism is a more accurate cognitive model than transmissionism to describe how we actually learn.Bada, & Olusegun, S. (2015). Constructivism Learning Theory : A Paradigm for Teaching and Learning.:
Constructivism’s central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning. This view of learning sharply contrasts with one in which learning is thepassive transmission of information from one individual to another, a view in which reception, not construction, is key. Information may be imposed, but understanding cannot be, for it must come from within.
The first [important idea of constructed knowledge] is that learners construct new understandings using what they already know. There is no tabula rasa on which new knowledge is etched. Rather, learners come to learning situations with knowledge gained from previous experience, and that prior knowledge influences what new or modified knowledge they will construct from new learning experiences.
On the role of teachers and educators:
An important restriction of education is that teachers cannot simply transmit knowledge to students, but students need to actively construct knowledge in their own minds. […] This constructivist view of learning considers the learner as an active agent in the process of knowledge acquisition.
The [constructivist] classroom is no longer a place where the teacher (“expert”) pours knowledge into passive students, who wait like empty vessels to be filled. In the constructivist model, the students are urged to be actively involved in their own process of learning. The teacher functions more as a facilitator who coaches, mediates, prompts, and helps students develop and assess their understanding, and thereby their learning.
It took me over half a year to finish reading this paper. Why? Again,Incremental Reading
Constructivism learning model provides a good foundation to explain why books don’t work and understand how we actually acquire knowledge. Transmissionism puts the learner at the back seat while Constructivism at the driver seat. One analogy of Transmissionism is that students are like sponges “soaking up” the knowledge. For Constructivism it’s more like piecing together a puzzle that’s different for everyone. Whether it’s reading a book, watching a video, or attending a lecture, for Transmissionism the focus is on “absorbing”, “putting in” or “taking in” the information presented. For Constructivism, what matters is what you do with (i.e., construct) the information, not what and how it’s delivered.
I believe Constructivism is a central theme behindMake It Stick,Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques,Learning as a Generative Activity: Eight Learning Strategies that Promote Understanding. They all describe “what works”, but if you view it as “Constructivism vs. Transmissionism” we can get a glimpse of “why others don’t work” since these are two opposing ideas. With a learner-centric perspective, you can see that what works has one underlying principle: the learner is an active agent “making sense” of the information.
The following are some quotes from them.