Source 5: Teachers teaching how to learn

Source Five: How Teachers Can Teach their students to learn

Kiewra K, (2002), Theory into Practice: Becoming a self-regulated learner, (pp 69-78), New York: WH Freeman 

Poore M, March 2011, (Personal Communication)

Poona J, NSW Department of education, (2003), Quality Teaching elements, (retrieved March 25th 2011), http://www.newcastle.edu.au/Resources/Schools/Education/Pedagogy/2006/SummaryofQuality-JanPoona.pdf

Information and knowledge is something we now have an abundance of thanks to Web 2.0. What students lack, is the ability to learn. Teaching a student to learn involves harnessing and facilitating their unique learning style. Thus my final source, Kenneth Kiewra's paper ‘How teachers can teach their students to learn,’ suggests that, “Classroom teachers can help students learn.” (pp 1) Whilst students may harbor the techniques that enable them to rote learn information, they lack the “deep understanding...deep knowledge” (Poona, 2003) of course material, rendering them, “deficient learners” (pp 1). He names the duty of the teacher to be a, “good strategy instructor” (pp 8) in order to produce an efficient learner.

An amalgamation of my four previous sources that I have investigated in order to deconstruct New Media Literacies in my own terms, invites me to assume that a change in communicative dimension, (Woolsey, 2005), an evolving media-dependent curriculum, (Manzo&Dammers, 2010), and a potentially endlessly plastic brain structure, (Doidge, 2007), would also result a new environment of learning strategies, potentials and problems for students. This paper by Kiewra doesn’t investigate how we may achieve this new technique to faciliatet our students in their ability to learn in a digital era. Instead it focuses on the role of the teacher in facilitating a students ability to learn, rather than transmitting information to them. This is a fundamental teaching philosophy, made even more prominent in a digital era in which we have an overwhelming abundance of knowledge ad information sources. 

SOAR, (select, organize, associate and regulate) are four empirically supported components of learning addressed by Kiewra, which he believes effectively facilitate a students learning. (pp 3) He investigated if these where more beneficial study methods than the, NORM' (pp 8) or conventional methods employed by college students. The purpose of these experiments was not to confirm or deny that college students are “deficient learners” (pp 1), but to prove the need for educators who will, 'present information effectively and....give students the means to learn.' (pp 8) 

A conundrum presented in the article however, were statements such as, 'Little is known about what students actually do with notes following lectures." (pp 6) Whilst these sweeping statements are incredibly general and subjective, they are also completely unsubstantiated. A ten second google search on my basic home computer indicates that there is an abundance of knowledge on such an issue. Statements like these compromise the validity of Kiewra's paper, as well as bringing to the attention of the reader, the outdated sources informing his knowledge and opinions. Whilst Kiewra draws upon a variety of sources to construct his thesis, they are drastically outdated, including only one from the 21st century. This indicates a major gap in the information relevant to this topic. Kiewra's argument for this paper might have 

been progressive and ground-breaking in 2002, but in 2011 it is almost entirely obsolete. 

The dated information of this paper also means that it doesn't address the issue of ICT in the classroom. Perhaps a revision of this paper today would result in very similar cognitive problems in our students, or potentially very different ones. 

As Kiewra states, a students ability in the classroom should extend to learning efficiently independently, and to strive to become better learners, rather than just, "studying noted ideas by rehearsing them one at a time." (pp 2) According to the paper, this duty lies in the hands of instructors who should strive to become, 'fishing teachers.' (pp 8) by, 'embedding strategy instruction within their subject matter courses,' (pp 1) and 'develop matrices and build models on their own.' (pp 8)

Whilst this source was fundamentally quite problematic, I still found it effective in my understanding of New Media Literacies. In this paper, Kiewra puts forth a basic teaching philosophy. A teacher is not a transmitter of information, they are a facilitator of learning. (Poore, 2011) In an era of digital media in which teachers have even less of a grasp of truthful information that their students may access, it seems even more obvious that our focus should therefore be in, “teaching students to learn,” rather than just teaching them facts.