Relational Understanding and Instrumental Understanding by Richard Skemp

The first part of this article that made me stop and think is the explanation of instrumental understanding. It made me stop and think back to my own high school days and I felt very grateful for my teachers, because I wanted to learn relationally and that is how they taught. I know a lot of people who get frustrated because their teachers taught them instrumentally, and they didn't understand a lot of things. The next part that made me stop came right after, in the football analogy. I too held the belief that relational is a better method of teaching, and it is interesting to look at instrumental and try to understand it. The last part that really struck a chord with me is in the devil's advocate part when Skemp talks about how one reason it could be argued that instrumental understanding is better is that it is a faster way of teaching. This reminded me of a reading I recently did for another class, which was about learning objectives. According to the article, if students spent half an hour on each learning objective that they are given in school, it would take them 9 extra years of schooling to complete all of them. Skemp talks about an over-burdened syllabi, and this other article talks about making clear and concise learning objectives. I think the 2 could work together.

I think that for the most part, I agree with Skemp. There were so many parts in the article where I stopped because I felt such a connection to what he was saying. So many of my friends dislike math because they had teachers who taught them instrumentally, because they learned instrumentally and didn't understand how to teach relationally. These friends are all people who regularly question things and want to know why they're learning these things and how to apply them and can they be used in these situations. I think math should be taught because it helps develop logical thinking, not because people need to know how to find the area of a triangle. I think teaching relationally can lead to logical thinking much easier than teaching instumentally.