THE BENEFITS OF MARRYING “HANDS-ON” AND “MINDS ON” LEARNING

As we at WATG work on our preparations for the fall 2020 conference entitled, “Hands On, Minds On,” at the Wilderness Conference Center in Wisconsin Dells on October 18-20, 2020, I have been thinking a lot about teaching, learning, and educational coaching, and how metacognition (minds-on learning) enhances the experiential learning (hands-on learning) that has become so popular.

With the myriad of learning opportunities that celebrate hands-on work (think Problem Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, Challenge-Based Learning, STEM, Maker Spaces, Genius Hour, Project Lead the Way, Service Learning, etc.), sometimes, it seems, the hands-on “doing” has become the holy grail, and the minds-on thinking processes behind the work may not be given their full attention or full credit.

So it was with great interest that I came across this article, Experiential Learning: Hands-On Doesn’t Mean It’s Minds-On by the late Grant Wiggins in December 30, 2019’s Teach Thought. In particular, this quote by Wiggins spoke to me, “ Just because work is hands-on does not mean it is minds-on. Many projects, problems, situations, and field trips do not yield lasting and transferable learning because too little attention is given to the meta-cognitive and idea-building work that turns a single experience into insight and later application.”

As a teacher, a parent, a grandparent, an educational coach, and a fellow learner, I have often focused on what I believe to be the three big components of learning -- Why are we learning this? What are we learning? And how do we do this? In teaching and learning, if one of these components is missing, I have found that the learning usually fails, or is not as complete, satisfying, or long-lasting.  When we don’t understand why we are learning something, this can lead to apathy, confusion, or failure to connect the current learning to future learning. When we are unclear as to what we are learning, we may not understand the content, context, or the scope and sequence of the learning. When there is confusion about the how, we may have false starts, poor procedures or execution, or poor final products. Failure to adequately teach the why, the what, and the how almost always affects performance. In much of our hands-on learning, it is common to teach the what, and especially the how, but sometimes, I think, the why is not fully processed.

Wiggins, in his article, talks about checking for understanding by using metacognitive questions during the learning process to address this deficiency. He suggests asking these questions:

• What are you doing?
  
• Why are you doing it?
  
• What does this help you do that’s important? (I believe this gets at the question how will this help you in the future?)
  

I have often added questions such as these when helping students or adults process their learning metacognitively:

• What is working? What’s not working?
  
• How is your team functioning? Whose voices have been heard? Whose voices need to be heard?
  
• What did you learn from this?
  
• What might you do differently next time? Why?
  
• What else do you need to know? How could you get help with this?
  
• Who or what might be able to help you find materials or resources or ideas?
  
• How does this connect to something else that you’re learning?
  
• Who else could benefit from learning about this? Why?
  
• Would you do more of this learning again, or something similar to it? Why or why not?
  
• Where does this learning lead you next?
  

Alas, according to Wiggins, and in my observations, many kids and adults do not provide adequate answers to questions such as these. And, Wiggins sums up the thinking this way:  “that’s why we need to worry about merely hands-on learning – even as hands-on learning is vital for making abstractions come to life.”
So how have you made hands-on learning come to life with minds-on thinking? What questions and strategies do you use? How has this enhanced teaching and learning? As always, I look forward to hearing your ideas. Together we grow.
Jackie Drummer, Past President
WI Association for Talented and Gifted

​