“Why don’t students like school” – D. Willingham Book Review
Summary
This book is organized in 10 chapters with each chapter
discussing a new and different concept that teachers should apply in their
class room to be able to help better the learning of the student as well as
delivering the content of the material.
Each chapter had been broken down into three major concepts
that we as teachers should follow. In this summary I will briefly go over
chapters 1,2,4,5,6,7 and 9.
Chapter 1
In this chapter Willingham discusses about the cognitive abilities
our students will have. The chapter goes into three important concepts, working
memory, pleasure found in solving problems and that content is not enough.
Within the section of working memory he goes into detail that we as teachers
must respect our cognitive limits of our students. Age changes the developing
mind and what the mind is able to perceive and identify as useful
information. Willingham mentions that it
is very important that we use the background knowledge of the student to
greatly help achieve the cognitive understanding of new material. Next
Willingham explains how problem solving is a great tool to use within lessons
and teachings. There is a satisfaction that is created within one’s self when
solving problems that it is important that we create these problems not too
easy, but also not too difficult. Each task that we try and teach should have
some form of solvable problem. Finally this chapter mentions how the content
material simply is just not enough to keep the attention of our students. We
need to change the pace of the course material as well as change how we are
teaching the material. Students these days get easily distracted with
technology and other things going on in the class that it is important that we
are constantly keeping their attention focused on us the teachers as well as the
material we are trying to teach. It is important that we incorporate
technology, pedagogy and content knowledge.
Chapter 2
This chapter is about standardized testing and how it is
difficult as a teacher to get across some of the material in our curricula if
all people are caring about is standardized testing. The chapter goes into
detail that we should not worry about these tests, but rather focus on skill
development, background knowledge and facts. The first concept Willingham talks
about is the fact that background knowledge is key to understanding. If we can
tap into what our students already know about a specific subject matter, or
understand what kind of information our students have from previous times, it will
make it easier to teach new material by using this background information. Next
the chapter builds off this concept with reading comprehension tied in.
Cognitive reasoning is developed through memory retrieval which uses background
knowledge. The chapter suggests that it is very important to get our students
to read and keep reading because this will help with cognitive processing and
building on the ability to retrieve and retain knowledge.
Chapter 4
This chapter talks about a concept called abstraction which
is ultimately the goal of teaching. The chapter talks about how lessons in new
context is important to be able to help our students understand the
information. The chapter discusses three levels of knowledge, role knowledge,
shallow knowledge and deep knowledge. Role knowledge is that which is repeated
from text or what the teacher has said. Shallow knowledge is knowledge that can
be easily forgotten by distractions or other things that can easily take the
students attention away. Finally deep knowledge is that which is set in your
memory banks and can be placed into your working memory. Willingham then goes
into discussion about knowledge transfer and that it is accessing the working
memory and rearranging old ideas to help develop new ones. For example a
student is able to understand the calculation to figure out the area of a
rectangle, but when applying it to figure out the area of a football field this
becomes foreign to them. This is where the final section of the chapter comes
in handy which suggests that we as teachers need to be comparing and
contrasting information, old and new, so that students can create these links
and apply the rearrangement of old ideas into new ideas.
Chapter 5
This chapter is all about the age old saying “practice makes
perfect”. We need to ensure with our students that we give them opportunities
to practise skills and new ideas in class so that they are able to improve and
get a better understanding with it. The chapter indicates how our working
memory is quite limited and therefore we need to practise concepts so that they
can make it into our long term memory and free up more space in the working
memory. Willingham talks about an idea called “chunking” which is used to help
organize information in groups and be able to come to a solution to the idea.
Willingham suggests that it is very important for us as teachers to review and
re-teach concepts so they are not lost with our students.
Chapter 6
In this chapter Willingham proposes the idea to teachers
that we need to get our students to think, and to think critically rather than
just sit there and try to absorb information like a sponge. Three concepts that
are mentioned in this chapter are to use background knowledge, continue to
practice and allow students to be creative. As discussed earlier, background
knowledge will help our students understand new information easier and create
new links from old ideas to new ideas. The previous chapter went over how
practise makes perfect, but perhaps we should look at it more that practise
makes improvement. This is a concept we as teachers should be adopting with all
our material. Finally allowing students to be creative and allowing them to
explore new ideas on their own can help with internal motivation as well as let
them think.
Chapter 7
In this chapter Willingham goes over the different types of
learning styles and different learners. I would say throughout the whole book,
this chapter would be the most controversial with what we have learned in this
course today. But I will explain more detail in the critique. In this chapter,
Willingham brings up the idea of cognitive ability vs cognitive style.
Willingham brings up his own ideas that it actually does not matter the type of
learning in which a student does best in, because we are to focus more on the
individual outcomes and skills we would like our students to develop at the end
of the lesson or unit. He also indicates that not all learning comes from one
particular sense, and therefore we should not be so concerned on hitting those
different types of learning styles. He also mentions how not all intelligences
are equal but each intelligence is interconnected. Willingham suggests as
teachers we need to think more about the content that we are delivering, change
lessons up to adapt to different styles and that we should consider every child
as valuable
Chapter 9
This final chapter of the book is all about the teacher themselves
and how they can become better to help improve our students learning and
abilities. This chapter indicates that teaching is not all about the content,
but it is how we deliver this content and how can we improve on educating our
students. Willingham suggest some ideas that teachers should adopt such as
practice, watch for student reaction and invest outside school time. Once
again, as mentioned earlier, practice makes improvement, and this is even especially
for us as teachers. The chapter indicates that within the first 5 years of a teacher’s
career this is when all the practice and improvement takes place. We as
educators need to keep practicing and making improvements on ourselves and help
our colleagues as well. It is important that not only do we build on our skills
in the class room but to work on skills that can be developed outside of class
and in our day to day lives. This is a profession of social contact and
persuasion, therefore the greater we can develop our people skills, the greater
chances we have of improving and being able to help educate the minds of the
future generations.
Critique
This book is very valuable and I would recommend it to all
my future colleagues as well as any teacher old or new. Willingham provides
great detail and excellent suggestions for teachers to be able to implement his
9 strategies into classroom as well as the professional life of an educator. I
myself have gained a lot of knowledge from this book and a better understanding
of how I can become a better educator myself.
Most of the information in this book agreed with the context
of this course and what we have learned and discussed throughout the term. A lot
of these strategies and ideas have been brought up in class throughout our
other presentations or our readings. However, one chapter that disagreed with
our course work was chapter 7, as I mentioned in the summary. This is because
Willingham took a different approach to the multiple intelligences than how
Garner did. Willingham has suggested that there is no need to focus on the
different learning styles because they are not all equal and it does not make
sense to focus on one particular learning method, when it can all be
collaborated into a joint sharing. He also indicated in that chapter that we as
educators should focus more on the skills and the ideas that we are trying to
get across, not so much how one would take in these ideas.
Overall I would say this book is very helpful and useful for
teachers and I myself look forward to applying this information into my future
teaching career. I recommend this a read for everyone and hope others value the
information as much as I did.
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