Learning is in the struggle

I have always considered myself to be a professional learner. Yes, I'm a teacher, but I get paid to learn, and then to create learning conditions in which my students can also learn. I'm always up for a challenge, and I am always open to learning new things.

I find it especially fulfilling when I learn new things from my students. Earlier today, some of my students showed me the video (below) by James Nottingham. He talks about the 'Eureka moment' that children experience when they discover something new for themselves. The Greek word Eureka literally translates as: 'I found it!' As I watched this section my mind was directed to Jean Piaget's famous quote: 'When you teach a child something, you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself.' Clearly, learning is in the struggle, not the teaching.

To my shame I hadn't heard of James Nottingham before, but as I watched his video, I found myself agreeing time and again with his concept of the learning pit. Watch the video and decide for yourself - is this the kind of teaching we should be promoting in our schools? If so, how can we realise it?



Photo by Ron Wise on Wikimedia Commons


Learning is in the struggle by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.