Strategic Confusion

I recently watched an hour long video from Robert Duke about learning and how to create exceptional learning environments. He caused me to reflect on the learning environment that I aim to create daily while facilitating mathematical thinking at the high school in which I teach. Robert has helped me to realize that how I teach has very lttle to do with the learning that our students experience. The learning that is significant is how our students deal will confusion, uncertainty and misunderstanding. Through his talk, I've come to realize that real learning stems from learners knowing how to optiminally navigate confusion. Our students' learning can be much more effective if we learn together how to handle "strategic confusion". The following big ideas I extracted from his talk and I highly encourage you to provide yourself the opportunity to challenge the learning that you offer to your learners.

• Retrieving what we know requires various types of practice.
• We need to practice getting content out.
• If nothing goes wrong during our learning, it's unlikely we're going to learn anything.
• Learning requires much more doing on the part of the learner.
• Teach how to be optinally confused.
• Two central ideas of learning: a) You're a learner, too. b) Learning is error correction.
• Learning is not efficient. Learning is chaotic.
• "Because I'm an excellent teacher, I'm going to wait a few moments while you figure it out for yourself."

After you've experienced the shift in thinking that provides for real learning through strategic confusion, I look forward to sharing thoughts with you.