Peter Liljedahl, a professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University, has spent twenty years observing classrooms in pursuit of effective teaching (mostly in K12 classrooms). He has concluded that the majority of students are not learning in classrooms – only about 20% are authentically learning.
So what are the students doing while instruction is happening? Liljedahl says they are studenting. That’s his analog to teaching. As teachers we have a massive collection of tasks to perform. When we are teaching we are managing the classroom, mentally taking notes of things to follow up on, worrying about classroom dynamics, dealing with technology. As teachers we also grade work, meet with students, attend meetings, participate on committees, design curriculum, wrestle with technology, and grapple with myriad other tasks.
Likewise, students are studenting. They are hopefully learning but also doing classwork, talking with other students, planning out their days and weeks, contemplating dinner, thinking about the social life of college, gaming the system, and trying to appease their teachers.
When a student is studenting, they may be tricking their teacher into thinking learning is going on. This is extremely pernicious because studenting can easily delude the student into believing that learning is happening.
But the real studenting happens right in front of our noses. Most students exhibit behavior that seems like thinking but is not.
Liljedahl categorizes students into five categories:
Slackers
These are students who are off-task and do not make an attempt to learn. Think of these students as the stereotypical slacker – no affinity for learning and no structured plan for learning.
Stallers
Students who get up and go to the bathroom during class, who might sharpen their pencils, might send their teacher an email during class during a lecture are stalling. They are kicking the can on learning. But this is very dangerous – these behaviors are oftentimes permissible in a classroom and their behavior might appear copacetic.
And think about it – if chronic stallers are supposed to be working on a problem but they know from previous experience that the answer will be revealed in a few minutes by the teacher, what’s the incentive to do the work? Why confront the possibility of failure if a high-quality source is going to provide the answer?
Fakers
Fakers fake their learning and thinking. In a computer programming class this emerges in two popular ways – typing code and then deleting it (repeatedly) and flipping between the lab description and their code.
In a math class you might see a student attempt a problem and then erase it over and over – leaving no evidence of the thought process. You might even witness a notetaker that is not even taking notes – though they may look attentive and engaged.
Fakers and stallers typically care what the teacher thinks of them.
Mimickers
Mimickers are not thinking – just reproducing. These students have learned how to play the Game of School. They have learned that producing work – which is not the same as thinking – is currency that buys praise and good grades.
These are students who can follow the process, the algorithm, the examples in class and convince themselves – and their teachers – that thinking has happened. That understanding has been achieved.
A mimicker hands in their homework but it’s incomplete because “you didn’t teach me how to do this type of problem.”
According to Liljedahl, mimicking is a highly addictive drug. Feeding the addiction might lead to academic success in the short term (at the expense of understanding and long-term gains). He also says that without fail, 100% of mimickers will ultimately struggle. And it won’t be graceful. Instead of going from an A to a B, most mimickers will drop from an A to a D. Some students can mimic all the way through high school.
Failure to think, despite producing, will ultimately lead to disaster.
“When we interviewed the teachers in whose classrooms we were doing the student research, all of them stated, with emphasis, that they did not want their students to mimic. Ironically, 100% of the students who mimicked stated that they thought that mimicking was what their teacher wanted them to do.”
Trying it on their own
This is the gold standard of students – learners who will engage with coursework regardless of if they get it right or not. These students are brave. Students who try it on their own are actively engaging with the content and building up sweet, sweet myelin sheaths around those neurons.
Unfortunately stallers, fakers, and mimickers often appear to be in this category, tricking teachers in the process.
Note that this is not an indictment on students – overwhelmingly students want to learn. The problem is that educators cannot fix what they cannot see. Being aware of the archetypes of students is a great first step in helping potentiate learning and thinking. Metacognitive practices are a good way to help students overcome thinking deficits .
Liljedahl authored Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning (Corwin Mathematics Series) in 2020 to diagnose the problem and propose an antidote.
If you are interested in thinking more about how to make classrooms “thinking classrooms” and diving into Systems Theory (and how to overwhelm systems to force recalibration), you might want to listen to Liljedahl’s recent appearance on the EdSurge podcast or read a primer here.
