Learning Targets: A Theory of Action, or How to Catch a Monkey in the Wild: A Cautionary Tale

There are probably many ways to catch a monkey in the wild. One of the most effective is insidious in its simplicity. (full article)

The hunter gets a coconut and bores a small, cone-shaped hole in its shell, just large enough to allow a monkey to squeeze its paw inside. The hunter drains the coconut, ties it down, puts a piece of orange inside, and waits. Any monkey that comes by will smell the orange, put its paw

inside the coconut to grab the juicy treat, and become trapped in the process.

Capturing the monkey doesn't depend on the hunter's prowess, agility, or skill. Rather, it depends on the monkey's tenacious hold on the orange, a stubborn grip that renders it blind to a simple, lifesaving option: opening its paw.

Make no mistake: the hunter doesn't trap the monkey. The monkey's abiding tendency to stick firmly to its decision, ignore evidence to the contrary, and never question its actions is the trap that holds it captive.

The Beliefs That We Hold and the Beliefs That Hold Us

The beliefs that we hold also hold us. Our beliefs are the best predictors of our actions in any situation (Schreiber & Moss, 2002). And, like the monkey's death grip on the orange, our beliefs are deeply rooted, often invisible, and highly resistant to change. That's why so many tried-but-

not-true methods remain alive and well in our classrooms despite clear evidence of their ineffectiveness. Take round-robin reading, for example. This practice has been rightly characterized as one of the most ineffectual practices still used in classrooms. You know the activity: the first student in a row reads the first paragraph from a book, the second student reads

the second paragraph, and so on. Round-robin reading has long been declared a disaster in terms of listening and meaning-making (Sloan & Latham, 1981), and the reading comprehension it promotes pales in comparison to the effects of silent reading (Hoffman & Rasinski, 2003). So

why do teachers still choose it for their students, and why do the principals who observe it in classrooms continue to turn a blind eye?

Example fig. 1

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