Flawed premise: Teaching is delivering curriculum to students. Teachers are "trained" in "methods" for this delivery.
This is "an overly simplistic view of teaching but also a dangerous one in that it puts the focus on the teacher and not the learner, casting the learner in a passive role and assuming that learning is merely takin gin what has been delivered." (25)
A great description of student-centered learning:
"In contrast, when we place the learner at the hub of the educational enterprise, our focus as teachers shifts in a most fundamental way that has the potential to profoundly affect the way we define teaching. With the learner at the center of the educational enterprise, rather than at the end, our role as teachers shifts from the delivery of information to fostering students' engagement with ideas. Instead of covering the curriculum and judging our success by how much content we get through, we must learn to identify the key ideas and concepts with which we want our student to engage, struggle, question, explore, and ultimately build understanding. Our goal must be to make the big ideas of the curriculum accessible and engaging while honoring their complexity, beauty, and power in the process. When there is something important and worthwhile to think about and a reason to think deeply, our students experience the kind of learning that has a lasting impact and powerful influence not only in the short term but also in the long haul. They not only learn; they learn how to learn." (26)
How making thinking visible serves learning:
"When we make thinking visible, we get not only a window into what students understand but also how they are understanding it. Uncovering students' thinking gives us evidence of students' insights as well as their misconceptions." (27)
"School is no longer about the "quick right answer" but about the ongoing mental work of understanding new ideas and information." (28)
How can we make the invisible visible:
(1) Questioning with authentic questions that are generative in nature. "A great question is one that gets us all thinking, including me." (32)
(2) Modeling an interest in ideas: "I was wondering..." and "What do you think?"
(3) Constructing understanding
(4) Facilitating and clarifying thinking: "What makes you say that?"
(5) Listening: Good question arise from students' contributions.
(6) Documenting
"Constructive questions can be thought of as those that help to advance understanding. These are questions that ask students to connect ideas, to make interpretations, to focus on the big ideas and central concepts, to extend ideas, and so on." (33)
"Again, it is switching the paradigm from trying to transmit what is in our heads to our students and toward trying to get what is in students' heads into our own so that we can provide responsive instruction that will advance learning." (35)
"[L]istening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us." (quoting the poet Alice Duer Miller on p. 37)