Less teaching, not more
"Talk among yourselves and kind of figure this deal out," said the coach to his players
In the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament, the Arizona Wildcats were down by seven points at half-time. Coach Tommy Lloyd, as reported by the Athletic, did something unusual. Instead of going into the locker room and diagramming plays or yelling at his underperforming team, Lloyd and his coaching staff left the players by themselves. “You guys got a few minutes to talk among yourselves and kind of figure this deal out,” he told them before he left.
“He realized this team didn’t need more information. It needed ownership,” wrote the Jerry Brewer in Arizona’s breakthrough required less coaching, not more. He quoted Lloyd saying: “The most powerful thing in a team sport is a player-led program. The coach, you have to help them navigate it, but when you can get the players to kind of own these moments, you are just so much better.”
Think about that in terms of education. The more students own their own education, the better off they are and the better off the teachers are who help them “navigate” this kind of freedom and responsibility. To paraphrase the article, students need less teaching, not more. They need to learn for themselves and to take responsibility for their own learning. I’d argue this comes from not telling students what to learn, but creating opportunities to learn by doing it themselves. They are the ones playing the game, not the coaches, who nonetheless play an important role.
Maker education seeks to increase the ownership of the real stakeholders in schools - students. Sometimes that can happen by having teachers step back and see what happens. Let them figure it out.