Practical Paideia

Lindsey Ralls (Summit Christian Academy)

Teacher: “And that’s how you convert a fraction to a percent. Does anyone have any questions?”

Student: “I don’t understand.”

Teacher: “What specifically don’t you understand?”

Student: “I just don’t get it.”

Teacher: “Well, let’s start at the beginning, do you understand how to turn the fraction into a decimal number?”

Student: “Yes, I get that.”

Teacher: “Ok, what comes next?”

Student: “Well, I think you do something with 100, but I can’t remember if you multiply or divide.”

Teacher: “You’re right, the next step is to multiply by 100 and then add a percent sign. So, the question you were really asking was; “After you convert the fraction into a decimal, do you multiply by 100 or do you divide by 100?” 

The other day, one of my math teachers was telling me about a student who often raises her hand and simply says, “I don’t understand.” I was impressed with her approach to this situation. Rather than simply summarizing the lesson again, she required the student to articulate specifically what it was that was confusing her. If we are claiming that the dialectic stage is both “the art of argument” and the “art of talking things through”, than this is exactly what we should be doing. This student will walk away learning so much more when she has to ‘talk it through’ (even in her own head) and verbalize what specific step is confusing her. Even more, this teacher’s approach really resulted in an argument rather than a simple discussion. The student was claiming she simply didn’t understand, but by the end Emily showed her that she actually understood a great deal, but was only missing one small step.