Responding to Students’ Resistance to Learning, Stephen D. Brookfield

Chapter Seventeen in Review:

            As I near the end of  reading Stephen D. Brookfield’s The Skillful Teacher I find myself thinking about the resistance to learning that students so often present when learning new concepts. Firstly, I’m a big believer in creating what I call “buy-in” in the classroom. If students do not see any relevance to what course content is being  presented in the classroom they tend to develop resistance to the material. Secondly, if multiple instructional methods are not used to present course material an instructor will fail to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners in the classroom.

            In order to avoid creating resistance in students’ educators must be careful not to favor one particular teaching style, but rather offer various approaches to the delivery of instruction. According to Stephen D. Brookfield (2015),

“Teachers who work in ways that support only a limited range of learning preferences can pretty much guarantee for themselves a degree of resistance from those whose learning habits differ. So one Clear principle of effective college teaching is to strive to use a variety of different instructional approaches.”(p-231).

In my time as an instructor I have found that multiple strategies were essential in the classroom. When I present course content in multiple modalities I see many more ‘light bulb” and “aha” moments from the students. This moments are the moments in which resistance goes down and the importance of learning is realized.

            Another key concept Brookfield focuses on in chapter seventeen is the importance of creating the motivation that students require to learn. Educators need to demonstrate to students why then need to learn course material and how it will be useful in the “real world”.  Brookfield (2015) maintain

            “As teachers we see clearly the value of learning and we all to easily assume

            students can see this too. The reason that certain understandings or skills 

            are important is so obvious to us that we may feel they need minimal

            justification. Nothing could be further from the truth.  You should never be

            too proud to say why in your view it’s important to learn something”.         (p-234).

I couldn’t agree with this statement more, I have spend a great deal of time during my lessons stressing the importance of learning specific key concepts.  It is integral that students  “buy into” the importance of material that instructors deem to be critical. As instructors we must not only relate the important material to real world application but also demonstrate or model the essential material/skill.  As I’ve said before Brookfield’s The Skillful Teacher is an essential read for all educators.

References

Brookfield, S. (2015). The skillful teacher: on technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers