Terms We Use in Teacher School: The Teachable Moment

Whether we are learning on the job from a mentor, learning to play a sport or musical instrument from a coach or learning in school from a traditional schoolteacher, the idea of the teachable moment is a feature of the learning process that seems to be ubiquitous yet whose definition is elusive.

I was a schoolteacher for nearly two decades, and now I teach teachers at the University level, and I have used this term many times, often regarding it as a universal term that everyone knows. Recently, I realized that it has been a large part of my teaching method for a long time even though I have never consciously analyzed what it means, how it works and how it stands in comparison to other terms in todays lexicon of teaching.

Where does the term come from?

The term teachable moment was first used in a short book, published in 1917 in Boston by a little known author named Walter E. Brandenburg. The book was called The Philosophy of Christian Being. And on page 84, he used these two words, teachable and moment together to imply when a learner has the potential be especially ready to learn a lesson about something significant and even difficult. And although page 84 of Brandenburg’s book was describing the learning of a religious experience, the connotation that he lent these two words when used together has become the foundation for what is implied every time these words are used together.

Peter Lawson and Susan Flock at Case Western Reserve are among the few who have researched the efficacy of the teachable moment as pedagogy. Their investigation into how teachable moments may be used to assist clinicians in changing patient behavior found that the teachable moments have the potential to reduce unhealthy behavior like smoking, but they also state that as a concept this phenomenon remains mostly unstudied, despite its potential for powerful results.

What is a Teachable Moment?

Teachable moments cannot be planned, because they are inherently spontaneous. However, teachers can plan for them — which is what I have been doing for a number of years now. Teachable moments are sudden advantageously educational occurrences arising due to the circumstances of every day life. And the trainer, coach or schoolteacher can take advantage of such circumstances, because these moments focus the learner in a poignantly relevant way to understand the nature of what is happening and what can be gleaned from it. These moments often do not fit with what the teacher has planned, but teachers like me set aside plans to use such a moment, because teaching and learning come easy in this space.

For the teacher who knows how to use teachable moments, it is not his or her responsibility to change the learner or convince the learner of anything, but instead to point at the phenomena that is (all by itself) instructive, to be present for questions from the learner and to support the learner as he or she interprets the situation.

Can a teacher make a moment teachable?

A teacher may also set out to create the conditions for the teachable moment to occur, but this usually fails, because, for example, creating a problem, just to have a student solve it violates the authenticity that makes these moments powerful. It is essentially the spontaneous quality of these real-life circumstances that focuses the learner, making the lesson meaningful.

One time I caught four eleventh graders plagiarizing information from a source on the internet for an essay they were assigned to write in my class. It wasn’t even a credible source. Although I had been trained to punish this they were still cheating. I taught them what a credible source is, how to find one and how to cite one. I explained that the difference between a disgraced cheater and a successful scholar is sometimes a simple citation. Instead of punishing them for copying information that was not theirs, I owned that I had at least given them the opportunity to cheat, if not set them up for it. A month later I caught two of them doing it again and was forced to punish them. But, the other two cheaters learned to ask for help, to cite sources and even to find credible sources to answer questions they had. The whole class cheated less after that and were better researchers in part because of I made this incident of cheating into a lesson.

Often failure, error, even trauma become fertile ground for teachable moments. Sometimes people refer to these as “cautionary tales.” These are traumatic events, mistakes or accidents that can be especially instructive, because they are memorable and therefore the learner wishes to avoid them in the future. In fact, one of the distinguishing features of the teachable moment is that it is deeply personal and often associated with vulnerability. Having used the teachable moment for many years as a teaching tool, I have to say that the more personal the circumstance, the deeper the understanding can be for the student. This takes guts, because most teachers do not want to risk making themselves or their students vulnerable, but if done right, it can be the basis for real progress.

The idea of the teachable moment was brought into popularity in 1952 when a chemist turned educational theorist named Robert Havighurst, wrote Human Development and Education. In his book he focused on the idea of timing, the readiness of the student and of a synchronicity that is required for the understanding of concepts and ideas.

Are there any teaching methods that are like the teachable moment?

Case-study-analysis, often used in medical and law schools is a nod toward the teachable moment. Medical and law students study real-life stories from those fields, and because they are authentic and resulted in a significant change in or even the end of a person’s life, the students’ attention is increased. But, it’s not until first year residents have to treat real live patients with real diseases that the teachable moment is used as a method. Those med students know that if they make a mistake, it could cost the patient his or her life. The med school professor doesn’t tell his or her first year residents Class, today we are going to learn about the shingles. Instead, the professor uses each patient in that hospital as a teachable moment. If a patient comes in with a blood disorder, then, the lesson for the day is blood disorders, not shingles.

I worked at a vocational high school where my colleagues who taught in the shops, used real people’s cars or computers that needed repair to teach students the skills they needed to be successful in their fields. One year the students there rebuilt the engine in my 1988 Jeep Cherokee. They bored out the cylinders and replaced the 216,000 mile old pistons that were bleeding oil, with new oversized pistons. It took them a while to do this, but when they were done, I drove the Jeep home. They understood that if they made a mistake, their English teacher’s car could be unsafe or simply wouldn’t start. Their teacher didn’t say Today we are going to learn about brakes, because that’s not what my car needed. They did a brake job the week after on my friend’s car though, so they did get the lesson on brakes — don’t worry.

Those students didn’t learn how to rebuild an engine or replace brake pads and rotors from a book or lecture. They learned it from actually doing the work under the supervision of a teacher. This is often called experiential learning, popularized by philosopher John Dewey.

Learning from failure.

Nowadays, part of my job is to supervise student teachers in what the university calls a practicum, where they practice-teach for 14 weeks in a real school, in a real classroom with real students. My students are naturally anxious before they begin their first day in the role of teacher. I try to reassure them that they are ready, but I don’t tell them don’t worry the students won’t bite, because you never know. In fact, I did have a student who was bit once by a student. She was not one of my student-teachers, but she sure learned a lot from that moment.

It’s the authenticity, that makes case-studies, medical school, shop, practicums, and labs are effective at teaching skills that are important. And, ultimately, it is when my students make mistakes during their student teaching practicums that they learn the most.

Why? First of all, these mistakes are indelibly memorable, because they place the student in a vulnerable position. Second of all, making a mistake with real people in a real classroom has consequences for that student, the other students and for the student teacher. Third, they have the opportunity to reflect deeply on what happened and to consciously evaluate all their options before making a decision. When they discover such a mistake, they can learn that they must own it, that people are not perfect. And, most importantly, any one of my students-teachers who simply forgets one of their student’s names, gets angry and yells at a whole class or chooses material that is too difficult for their students, causing them to fail, can take the lessons they learned from those moments and carry forward into every class they teach in the future, not as a burden but as a reminder that they will make mistakes, learn from them and move on.

And, they can expect their students to make mistakes and get the same benefit; therefore, they learn that when they become professional teachers, they do not want to punish error, but instead help their students reflect on error. They might even — as I do — model how I learn from my failures by talking about mistakes I have made openly. Verbally unpacking what I learned from them and how I learned from them.

As a former high school English teacher turned university professor, I often irreverently refer to my new home as “Teacher School,” and I sometimes find myself thinking about how academics in teacher school teach students how to teach. This leads me to question the efficacy of the current trend of identifying learning objectives, of backward planning and of scripting learning activities in light of what I know about the power of the teachable moment.

How can you plan for the teachable moment?

I know that teachers have to be prepared every day before they come to class, that although teachable moments might be ignored if a lesson plan is too strictly followed, teachers still do have to plan learning activities that are based on goals. That said, when I observe teachers in local schools using the types of instruction that high stakes tests and new teacher evaluation models tend to spawn, I see teachable moments going unnoticed or ignored. And, I see students whose experience in school is narrowed to a set of skills and a base of knowledge they are neither excited about nor believe are important.

So, the teacher can’t write a lesson plan for the teachable moment, but he or she can write a lesson plan that is flexible enough, so when the moment comes, the plan can include the new direction where the circumstance takes the teacher and the students.

The teachable moment might be the only moment in which children learn meaningful, sustainable, applicable and relevant information and skills today. Their world is awash with information. Wikipedia, alexa, google, siri, twitter and facebook bombard them with information that trains them to look only for what matters to them right now. There is no shortage of information, fake or real, and prescriptive curricula like The Common Core and other state standards are irrelevant to them. But, the teachable moment has the potential to make academic learning important, even in the 21st century.

The problem with these academic standards is they require the complex mapping of a whole school year’s educational journey and don’t allow teachers to take their students on any adventures. It’s like going across country on a road trip without the flexibility to go off the beaten path, without have the freedom to explore unexpected events and to answer unanticipated personal curiosities where you will learn lessons you can apply across all the various parts of your life. Instead, the map shows very specifically, where you will stop, what you will do and even states exactly what you should learn in each location. If you get a flat tire near a mountain, there is no time to go for a hike to see the ancient Native American historical site. You have to put the spare tire on quickly to get back on track. You will have to miss the ancient hieroglyphs carved in the rock face that are half way up the mountain, but you won’t miss the next common core standard about the origin of written linguistic signs. It’s just that the lesson on the origin of written linguistic signs will not mean mush to you devoid of any context or connection.

The teachable moment requires the kind of patience that policymakers do not have. It requires faith in teachers that department of education officials and some school administrators lack. It also requires letting go of a traditional curriculum that policymakers, school administrators and academics are deeply invested in, but one that students are less invested in every day.

It’s not the content of these curricula that conflict with the idea of the teachable moment as much as the structure and sequence of these curricula and the controls placed on teachers, prescribing them to teach specific information on specific days in specific ways. The best private schools in the world don’t do this. Why should public schools?

What does a schoolteacher need to make use of teachable moments?

Teachers need to be brave, and honest, so they can go places where they do not know the answers any more than students do, so they can cast off their role as expert for that of a tour guide. They have to be observant, patient and present, so when the moment comes, they know it and can seize the opportunity within it. They need to understand how to turn to the moment, how to point at it, how to let go of their agenda and walk down that path, but also when to turn back. Sometimes its a dead end, or the road is short. But, there is a lot of country out there, so we don’t want to waste time looking for lessons at the dead end or making a narrowing path into a grand universe.

When a teachable moment comes, don’t ignore it, use it. It’s a gift that no teacher ought to waste, but when Christmas is over, go back to work, thus inviting the next moment.

Don’t worry. There will be a lesson in it.