Spoon fed answers are never as effective or long-lasting until they are owned. And someone else’s answers rarely provide the ownership. After a certain point, many of us don’t like to be spoon fed – we want to know for ourselves, to make our own decisions, to come to our own answers. It’s really not a ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ issue, we will consider others’ opinions, if we trust them, but we need to know OUR answers.
Ownership, in my opinion, is one of the most critical factors in learning and applying what we know. If our knowledge is only based on what someone else (hopefully an expert) then how do we incorporate this into our frame of reference? Some answers have to come through our own experience, our own ‘knowing’. Granted, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but once faced with the existence of the wheel, our issue is applying that understanding. And, to me, understanding has a stronger root in ownership – regardless of the focus of the learning, the method of the learning, and the expert knowledge of the ‘teacher’.
With that as my frame of reference, this is why I tend to teach through the method of asking questions. If I can point people to the source of answers and provide the impetus of the question(s) then when they find their answer and can articulate it – it becomes part of their knowledge library. The refining part comes when we all bring our understandings and share them so that we can come to a fuller understanding. That’s the ‘iron sharpening iron’ basis of learning.
Dialogue is an exciting method of presenting, sharing our learnings. The point is never to ‘win’ the discussion but to grow in understanding and then to apply this. If all that’s done is spoon feeding then ownership is more difficult to attain. Besides, regardless of our ‘level’ of learning, we can always refine. My students have always taught me in the process. All this points to critical thinking and discovering what and how we can expand on what we think we know.
