Episode 245: Can ‘aha’ moments be engineered?

Adam Gifford

Well, it's the big reveal. I broke first. We didn't really know who was going to introduce, but I'm jumping in. I'm going to jump in here. Welcome. It's an episode of School of School, the podcast that always seems to have the usual suspects, Andy and Robin. And I know they're raring to go. We're talking about architecture today, not even any pleasantries straight into it. And wondering about whether it's possible or what happens at talking about aha moments, know, like school life learning those sorts of things and talking about the sort of architecture of those moments. Is it even possible? they always spontaneous? Hollywood would suggest at times that these moments are always sort of spontaneous, but are they? You know, like can we can we engineer them? So I'm going to ask the two of you to think of either moments for yourself or you can just imagine. What are our moments and are they the result of hard work and incredible planning and all those sorts of things or are they just pure chance? Over to you.

Andy Psarianos

So you know what? I have a lot of, I've thought about this a lot and I, I I'm having an aha moment right now and, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you how, how I see it. as a teacher, so we're talking really about teaching here, how do you orchestrate a class or you know, whatever, a learning experience so that, so that there's a high probability that there's going to be this aha moment, right?

Robin Potter

You're having an aha moment right now.

Andy Psarianos

You gotta, you gotta really, really do your homework. Like you gotta really understand what the aha moment that you want everyone to have is. And then it takes tremendous amount of patience and kind of like just coercing, almost off into a really uncomfortable point where you don't blow it. By blow it, what I mean is just tell them the answer. Right. And I think that that's a mistake that, that teachers make. And then the, the other thing is when somebody blurs out the answer that you don't blow it for everybody else by acknowledging that that's the answer because that, so you got to understand how aha moments happen. First of all, usually has nothing to do with the teacher, but has everything to do with the learning environment. And if you have the classroom where lots of kids are talking and blurting out ideas and stuff, half of them are not going to be your aha moment. And you don't want to single out the one that is because you want everyone to get a chance to get to that point themselves and own that aha moment. So I think that that's how you orchestrate it. Right. But you need to have, you need to have prepared a lesson that's likely to bring up that aha moment. And that's, that's where, that's where the craft of teaching is, is, is that when you can do that, that's, that's when you reach the pinnacle, I think of, of teaching a lesson, right?

Robin Potter

Andy, I've seen you in action. I have seen you in action and you have, you are the architect in when you're training people. seen it happen, Adam. I'm sure you've seen it too. And of course, Adam, I'm sure it happens in your, of course he does. Of course it is. I, I absolutely, but I have actually just happened to see you do this because I've been a participant when you've been doing this and, and

Andy Psarianos

I'm sure Adam does it too. mean, don't don't Adam is no lightweight.

Robin Potter

So there's no question that you can orchestrate something for students to have an aha moment. They, of course, can also just happen organically. But as a teacher, if you're up at front of the class, it's certainly possible.

Andy Psarianos

Well, you can drop hints, right? And like ideas are like viruses, right? So in a classroom, it's an idea of, I call it an idea of virus, right? You see it hops from one table to the next, right? And you don't even sometimes even really know how it happened, but it's like one group of kids will pick up on something and then the table next to them. No one's like, like, I don't know. I guess if you're really cynical, you can call it cheating, right?

Robin Potter

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Psarianos

But I don't see it as cheating at all. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's just how, how, how, learning happens. Right. And he calls it, you know, the more knowledgeable other and the fact that people learn from each other. But, know, you know, like I give you a physical example here, this is, this is just the typical thing that I would do. So we've talked about finding the area of this shape, right? Trapezoid trapeze. And we talked about it in a previous podcast, right? I can just give you the formula, but, you know, what I really want people to discover is like, I could break this down into different shapes. I could make a triangle on how to work the area that I've got a rectangle and know how to work the area that. Okay. And then from that, could figure this out, but also there's all these, these little magic tricks, like really, you know, what I, what I kind of want them to understand is like, if you play with this long enough, eventually you're to come up with this idea that if you have two of them and you put them together, you can make a rectangle. Right. And that's really easy. And then you just divide the rectangle by two because these two are identical, right? They're congruent. Right. That's that's a really easy thing. Now, I'm kind of hoping that's going to come around in the classroom. But if it doesn't come around in the classroom, I'm not going to tell them. But I might walk around with two of them in my hand. Right. And and at some point, I may actually you might see me doing stuff like this, like like, you know, like just, you know. Like I might say that what, can you do with these? And I might do, I might even do something like that, right? Like I'm dropping hints, but in their mind, they came up with it. They didn't even notice that I did that. Right. And then all of a sudden it just sparked something. And that's kind of the magic when you can hit those, those points. So you can totally engineer them. Doesn't always work. And if it doesn't work, don't force it. Right. Maybe it'll happen in the next lesson, you know.

Adam Gifford

I think the part of it though, the architectural part of it is that you've got that built in, you know what you're doing in that part but I think the step even before that is getting a really clear idea of what's the hard bit in this so when I look at that shape and I go what's the hard bit? well it's because it's all over the place it's got a bit of triangle and a bit of this and a bit of that and it's got a... I don't even know what to do with it where do I even start?

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

And I think if you know that and you can identify what's the tricky bit and how do I make it accessible, ideally in its most simple form. And the way you showed that, now if you're listening to this, you're at a slight disadvantage, but we'll find a way you can work it out. The way that you show that is about as simple as you can get. It's a piece of paper cut into two parts, congruent.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah.

Adam Gifford

Put them together and it makes sense everything makes sense and in fact if you were to describe what to do Find the area of this rectangle to know how to do that, you blah blah And then what do you do? We'll have to break it in half like so it's half It's only half that but yeah, okay then and you've literally you've voiced the Formula the procedure to get it and I think that's the thing I think that if you know if you can see the difficult bit So you're not just thinking this is the solution. So I know the formula and not attending to the difficult part, then it's really difficult, I think, to kind of drop the breadcrumbs that says, come on, you're just about there. All you need to do is see it like this. I might need to drop a few more breadcrumbs, but I know where you're going to get stuck. I know how this works. And I think that's the part again that spending time in that space, what is it that makes this tricky? And how can I kind of let people see what's going on in its most simple terms. You know, that takes a bit of time, but once you start thinking like that, then you try to do it with everything, I think. is what is it that allows you to see that?

Andy Psarianos

There's a, yeah, absolutely. I think your intuition. So, so at a part of it, talked about intuition earlier, you know, it's kind like your intuition as a teacher should tell you like this, with this class, they're going to need a few more breadcrumbs. And then, so how can I do that? You might just, if you're thinking that that might be the thing, then you can orchestrate the lesson. didn't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it, but you know, instead of giving them like pre-cutting them all like this for them.

Right? What you could do is say, okay, class, I need you to make a bunch of trapeziums. Right? Right? So what are going to do? They're to cut that corner off, right? To make the trapezium. Right? And they've just figured out a way to figure out because, that was a rectangle. Now it's a surprise. Yeah. I know how to work out the area of a rectangle. Hmm. Interesting, right? You you're already getting like, you're already setting them up for success because you've given them a hint on how they might be able. And it's those kinds of things. How many hints do you draw? But you never tell them because that's a valid way by the way, is to say, well, it's almost a rectangle. It's just got this bit missing. So if I add this, you know, cause you can say, well, there's a triangle and a rectangle, but you could also say, well, if I did this, that's a rectangle. All I need to do is add a triangle, you know, then, then you can use subtraction instead of addition. And it's, it's the same method, you know, there's so many different things, right? But, but it's like, as a teacher, I guess the main thing is get used to teaching that way. And then think about it, spend a minute of time thinking about it.

Robin Potter

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

And that's the point.

Robin Potter

Yeah, like there's, yeah, there's absolutely no, no reason that as Adam's been calling it bread crumbing, your students isn't going to like, it's going to help with an aha moment, but that aha moment may not have gotten there, at least in that, that one session together, or maybe it would have taken, I don't know, two months otherwise. So I don't see that there's anything wrong with the teacher. You know, speeding up the process of the aha moment, I guess is my point. So yeah.

Andy Psarianos

No, you have to, have to, you have to, that's the whole skill is to orchestrate a lesson that's going to bring up the aha moment. Because if you give it kids a bunch of right angle triangles and say, okay, guys, you know, good luck, they're not going to come up with, yeah, they're not going to come up with Pythagoras's theorem on their own. This is not going to happen. Right. You know, people were alive for a long time before someone figured that out. Right. So, you know, it's kind of like, but if you ask the right questions and you give them the right materials, you can bring them there, right? And that's so much more powerful than just telling them, this is how you work this out.

Adam Gifford

And I think that's the point. It is, and I know you're both saying, but just to really reiterate that, that end point is the aha, but it's that moment of discovery. And that's the part that is so powerful in their learning, because we can reach an end point, as you said, it's that crafting, that carefully scaffolded, dropping in the supports, whatever it is, but the discovery's theirs. And once that's done, that's really powerful because it... it ensures that their attitude towards learning is one of which, well, I'll just look at this differently, because I will get there in the end, because that's what's happened in the past. They may not have even known that you've walked past with your two bits in your hand, and that's actually influenced them, you know, but they'll feel like, what if I put those together? Really? I didn't even know. I don't know. Have a go. Tell me how it goes. Let me know what happens. And then, and I think that the counter argument, just one more thing before I forget is... If I give the formula, because I've had it where people have said to me, it takes ages, just give them the formula and they'll get the answer and that's the important bit. And I kind of feel like, yes, that will make getting the answer today faster. There is an argument to say that is absolutely right. But every day, I'm going to have to slug it out, giving them formulas, giving them formulas, giving them formulas. We're in the long run, the understanding and learning, A is going to be far deeper and greater, but actually the discovery time might become less as these ideas develop. within the example Andy gave, might be able to just go, I could do, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, the teacher might not even have to mention formulas because they've already got it. I know how to use it.

Andy Psarianos

And the thing is too, Adam, and I think the other two profound points to add to that is that if you just give them the formula, you're taking away the pleasure of figuring things out, right? Because it's actually a joy when you have those, it feels really good when you figure stuff out. And the other really important point is, that if you, if you build this, this idea in their minds that they can figure things out, it makes them more resilient and more tenacious. And also it, you know, when you get to the exam, when you get to the test, and this is why a lot of children hate math and they say, I, I'm really bad at math is because when they get to the test and they can't remember what the formula was, it's hopeless. Cause they don't know how to figure it out.

Right? So they don't have the skills to figure it out. So it's like to them, it's just like hopeless. It's a hopeless situation. they get that sense of hopelessness is what makes you think that you really suck at math. But, but if you know, like, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure if I can work out the area of a triangle in the area of rectangle, which I do remember I can work out the area of the shape or any polygon. That's really powerful. Right? Throw a bit of intuition in there, a bit of like, you know, pleasure of figuring things out, sprinkle those things on. It's the magic formula, right?