Dr. Michael Wesch flipped the minds of over one hundred Tufts faculty and staff members this past December with his dynamic presentation on teaching. The University Wide Teaching Conference, sponsored by the University Wide Council on Teaching and Faculty Development and hosted by the Grafton campus, addressed the topic of transformation in learning.  

Dr. Wesch discussed the importance of wonder, curiosity and good questions. In moving toward teaching to transform, he encouraged reflection on the questions "Who are our students now?" and "Who do we want them to become?" How do we move our students from strategic learning to deep learning, and from routine expertise to adaptive expertise?

In his presentation, he outlined the developmental process through which people move from being strategic learners to deep learners. As teachers, consciously moving students through these stages can fundamentally transform the way they learn. 

1. Initially, students are receptive to and curious about a subject. They want to learn a lot, and they memorize a lot.
2. At the next stage, students move toward thinking of knowledge as subjective. A student will gain confidence and begin to challenge others' thoughts. They begin to question authority and often think that all opinions are equally valid. 
3. At the next stage, students begin to think procedurally. They realize that perhaps there are some facts and truths, and that each discipline has procedures for getting to these truths. There are two basic types of procedures - separate and connected. Separate means stepping back to see things from a distance, and connected is getting inside to understand an issue. Either type of procedure is valid, but a combination is ideal. This process leads toward deeper thinking, and begins to create connections and thread concepts together. At this phase, however, thinking can be limited by considering only one disciplinary lens.
4. The constructive stage is where we ultimately want our students to arrive. We want them to   "...feel responsible for examining, questioning, and developing the systems that they will use for constructing knowledge." They begin to understand when and how to move between formulas and procedures. They move from routine expertise (formulaic) to adaptive expertise, which inspires them to ask big questions, to wonder, to make connections, to be open to possibilities. We need to move students through all of these processes to get here. 

Dr. Wesch has successfully moved his students through these stages by using play as a teaching tool. He states that play, by design, elevates and rewards beginners while challenging all levels of learners; it builds and broadens perspectives while encouraging empathy. In play, the structures and rules are arbitrary and changeable, conflict is normal and can be resolved, and failure is normal and can be overcome. All of these qualities make deep learning possible.

To learn more about Dr. Wesch's presentation, please visit our website. Using your Tufts login, you can access the presentation here. The part 2 video is where you will find this portion of his talk.