All Learning is Active

One of the most intellectually engaging classroom experiences of my life took place during my senior year at UCLA, in Rick Vance's Mathematical Ecology class. In a small classroom that was somewhat the worse for wear but had the advantage of ample blackboard space, Prof. Vance derived and analyzed models of ecological processes and the rest of the class and I followed along. A visitor to the class would have observed me doing absolutely nothing, not even taking notes (a physical disability makes me unable to do so). But I was concentrating intently, my brain firing on all cylinders, pushed to its maximum capacity for following a chain of reasoning. Thought, no matter how intense, gives no outward sign.

“…the term “passive learning” is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. If students are learning, then they are NOT passive, and learning does not always include moving or talking…” Yes.  Yes. Yes.  So well said, and sums up in less than fifty words what took me over six hundred words to say in this post on engagement.
 Engagement and learning is an exercise of focused cognition.  Without mentally attending to material/information, there can be no learning.  The idea of passive learning vs. active learning as an outward expression of engagement is very misleading.  A student can look ‘active’ with their learning because they are having a discussion with others or using a manipulative, but without assessment of the student’s cognition, we (students and teachers) should not   assume learning has occurred.  Conversely, a student can appear ‘passive’ in their learning because they are quietly reading; not in a collaborative group or creatively working with material.  In both instances, the student(s) may or may not be learning.

Thought is both the end and the means of education. We learn to think, but we also think to learn. Things we think about are remembered; things we don't think about are not. In the words of cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, "Memory is the residue of thought."

This is why we must shift the discussion from active learning to thoughful learning. The methods commonly referred to as "active learning" can be effective but outward activity is only a means of provoking and guiding thought. It cannot be a goal in itself and particularly should not be presented to novice educators that way. (I sometimes want to ask how Stephen Hawking would have fared in an active learning physics class.) Start with what you want students to learn, identify what they should think about, and only then decide how to evoke that thought.