Second Blog Entry

In Richard R. Skemp's article 'Relational Understand and Instrumental Understanding', he explains both of these ways of learning and points out their advantages and disadvantages. Both of these will be reviewed in this summary. Both of these styles are unique in their own way, yet they are both related. Relational understanding is the big picture, it incorporates everything, including Instrumental learning. In other words, in order to have a completely relational understanding of something, one must need to understand it instrumentally as well. Relational understanding is not only understanding how to do a problem, or applying a formula, but it is understanding why it works the way it does. It is simply knowing why one would do what they were doing. Instrumental understanding is the more basic idea of simply knowing how to do a problem. Skemp reviewed advantages and disadvantages for both. Relational understanding is often times is a great method for helping to understanding something when it is a brand new concept. Also, when trying to remember all of the rules in things (especially math) when the whole picture is understood, it is easy to remember it because a knowledge of why is included. Relational understanding itself can be used as a goal to understand basically the blue prints for different mathematical concepts. On the down side, it is difficult to test if a person actually fully understands the why factor. It can be overwhelming when trying to not that a class will be assessed based on relational learning, it is harder to set and achieve a specific goal, especially when being tested over a basic complete understanding and as a teacher being able to regurgitate what one already knows is quite difficult as well. On the flip side, instrumental understanding has its own positive attributes. One a basic level, it is generally easier to understand something instrumentally. When testing or just trying out a problem, knowing if it is understood instrumentally can be assessed on the spot, and lastly, one can get the correct answer after a short amount of work, because they do not have to think through it. However, this has its downfalls as well. Skemp shows that by simply knowing how to do something, the right answer will not always be obtained. He showed the example through music. It is easy to do parts of music through the basic instrumental way, but without knowing why something is done, it can not be applied in a broader sense. All in all, both styles have their pros and cons, and Skemp does a great job at displaying both.