Lesson 11 - Exogenous Teaching and Learning

Presentation of Theoretical Construct

 

Lecture Information:

Exogenous Pedagogy (Transmission Teaching)

1. Location of Knowledge:

   1. The location of the knowledge base for a transmission style of teaching is outside of the learner.  The teacher and/or student who prefers this style believes that there is an objective reality that does not change significantly from person to person.  They believe that there is a body of knowledge for virtually every given field.  That field of knowledge, again, does not change significantly from one person's perspective to another. 

2. Content:

   1. From this point of view, it is the learner responsibility to reconstruct that field of knowledge within their minds.  An exogenous learner tries with all their might to simply rebuild what they are exposed to as the field of knowledge or the "real world." 

3. Values:

   1. The emphasis in this approach is with absolute accuracy and comprehensiveness of the details of that body of knowledge.  A learner who prefers this style would only feel that they really know the subject when they have complete command of every facet of the knowledge.  An exogenous teacher feels that the students only know a subject when they have every detail memorized.

4. Role of the Teacher:

   1. The teacher in this style is to be the expert.  A student should not be able to even dream of a question that this teacher hasn't got an answer for.  It is the teacher's responsibility to pass along their extensive depth and breadth of knowledge to the students.  The more knowledgeable the teacher the better the teacher.

5.  Assessment:

   1. The preferred method of assessing students for this style is through objective tests.  An exogenous teacher would give frequent and extensive tests and quizzes covering the whole topic thoroughly.  Test format would generally be virtually all multiple choice, true/false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank with a few short-answer essay questions.  There would be right answers and wrong answers to correct on each of the tests.  Grades would be based on a percentage of correct responses to question items.

6. Metaphor:

   1. The best metaphor to describe this approach would be that of a river that is "a mile wide but an inch deep."  I say this because using this approach a teacher can cover vast amounts of material, (a mile wide) whole textbooks in a single semester, but the depth of the learning on the part of the students is fairly shallow, hence an inch deep. 

7. Student Behavior:

   1. Recognizing what the expectations for their education on the part of the students can be really tricky but as a rule they are also consistent as well.  A student who prefers this style of learning would likely be the one who raises her hand and says something like, "Is this going to be on the test?"  They don't want to bother with stuff that isn't going to be tested.

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