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Sunday, April 17, 2011

"Cognitive Theft" -- Are you guilty?

“Cognitive theft” is a term that was coined by Gary Stager as saying that “anytime you go to ‘help’ a learner, pause and think about whether you are taking away an opportunity for them to learn it themselves.”  It even helps explain why students feel so cheated when you do give them the answer to a problem they are working hard on, and why they feel so strongly that “they need to do it by themselves.” We feel a sense of injustice when someone steals our ability to reason through a problem on our own.


Gary has a great video about his and story behind the video. I encourage every new teacher (and experienced one, too) to take a minute and listen to his talk and read his story about how he arrived at the term "Cognitive Theft" -- I won't be doing this. I'm one of those that like to figure things out on my own, too. So as a good teacher I must model what I'm teaching. Shouldn't we all? 
                          Click HERE to read and see Gary's video.
|D|

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