Spoonfeeding
Spoonfeeding
First let us describe spoonfeeding. The following are the definitions of spoonfeeding in dictionary.
What is SpoonFeeding (Spoon Feeding)?
Spoonfeeding as a noun
1. Spoonfeeding is simply feeding someone from a spoon by treating him/her as a baby
2. spoonfeeding (teaching in an overly simplified way that discourages independent thought)
Spoonfeed as a Verb
1. Spoonfeed (feed with a spoon)
2. spoonfeed (teach without challenging the students) “This professor spoonfeeds his students”
What is wrong with Spoonfeeding?
Nothing is wrong in spoonfeeding if one of the situations applies to you (see below). However, in education, things are different.
Spoonfeeding in Engineering Education
Spoonfeeding is the greatest harm to an engineering student. An engineer is expected to be innovative, creative in his/her career. How could someone expect these challenging task from an engineer in the real life if he/she was spoonfed during the engineering education?
An environment where an instructor simply rattles down information to be memorized and recalled during exams will kill creativity and reward a lack of critical thinking. A more ‘Socratic’ enviroment where the student is lead to ‘discover’ principles will assuredly lead to better understanding, retention, creativity, fun, ease of use, ability to apply in unfamiliar situations, etc…
By supplying readily available resources to engineering students in the classroom and solving some easy-to-digest problems in the classroom later to ask them in a similar fashion in exams by just changing some numbers may be seeming very attractive to students since they can easily pass the exams and obtain a good grade.
This kind of teaching can provide at most a second level of learning in Bloom taxonomy what we call as comprehension and in many cases memorization level only which is the first level of learning.
