{"id":32263,"date":"2017-10-05T16:00:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T21:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/?p=32263"},"modified":"2017-10-05T10:22:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T15:22:56","slug":"receptive-learning-active-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2017\/10\/05\/receptive-learning-active-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need Receptive Learning to have Active Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent issue<\/a> of Notices of the AMS<\/em>, Benjamin Braun, Priscilla Bremser, Art M. Duval, Elise Lockwood, and Diana White make a compelling case to include active learning in mathematics. I want to make a less popular move and ask, what is so bad about the flip side of active learning, or in other words, what\u2019s so bad about receptive learning?<\/p>\n

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The phrase \u201creceptive learning\u201d conjures up a vision of a lecture hall filled with students, eyes glazed over, starting forward as the instructor, with their back to the class, writes on a chalkboard. Students in this classroom become, as the radical educator Paulo Freire contended in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed<\/em>, \u201ccontainers\u2026 receptacles to be filled by the teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last October, I presented a paper at the Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice, entitled \u201cThe Pedagogy of the Student: Reclaiming Agency in Receptive Subject-Positions.\u201d In this presentation, which went on to be published in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing<\/a>, I discuss the active\/passive dichotomy and the way in which being active has become masculinized and being passive has become feminized. I discuss work by feminist scholars who seek to reclaim the idea of receptivity. Zelia Gregoriou, in her chapter, \u201cDoes speaking of others involve the receiving the \u2018other\u2019?\u201d<\/a> (in the 2005 volume, Derrida & Education), argues for an alternate conception of receptivity, one that involves choosing to invite in, welcome, and host the other.<\/p>\n

Imagine what happens if we reconceive listening not as a process of passivity, but as an active process of making sense of ideas?\u00a0This is where things get tricky; do we want to define listening as an action (much like talking or raising ones hand is?)\u00a0Or is listening, like receptivity, its own category of not-quite-passive but still not active actions?\u00a0I suggest in my article that listening can be something that gives students agency without necessarily being active.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for math educators?\u00a0For one, I think the terminology \u201cactive learning\u201d is misleading, insofar as it implies that \u201cpassive\u201d or \u201creceptive\u201d learning is undesirable and that receptivity is a therefore a negative quality.\u00a0I think that we need to consider the ways in which we want students to interact and to find ways to value and respect the act of listening rather than only considering talking to be the important part of learning.\u00a0We can also think about the ways in which we use discursive moves when we teach; do we direct students to consider and think about each others\u2019 ideas, or do we merely judge the ideas that students present to us?<\/p>\n

I am a strong believer in group work and participation in the classroom.\u00a0I am not calling here for a return to the days of boring lectures and disengaged students. But I do think that we need to be careful about the terminology we choose and the conceptions we develop in our ideas of teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent issue of Notices of the AMS, Benjamin Braun, Priscilla Bremser, Art M. Duval, Elise Lockwood, and Diana White make a compelling case to include active learning in mathematics. I want to make a less popular move and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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