Why be the only explainer?

We teachers are good at explaining.

We have spent our days, weeks, and years honing the craft of content delivery, and we often do a better job than experts of explaining complex concepts in ways that our students can understand. We can produce clear and beautiful explanations.

But what do we lose if we limit our students to only our clear and beautiful explanations of the world?

What might it mean if we exposed our students to a variety of explanations, and asked them to choose?

Maybe we make things too easy for students, we shield them from the teeming complexity of human thought and perspective.  What if we exposed them to some of that complexity, carefully curated, and helped them construct their own explanations?

An Example: Gravitational Waves

As a single example (though there are examples for every subject area out there), let's take a look at the recent evidence for "inflation" in the very early history of the universe.

You could allow students to choose among a variety of short, captivating explanations of what the recent discovery at the South Pole means:

An article from the blog, Bad Astronomy, by Phil Plait	A video produced by the journal, Nature
A video on Veritasium, by Derek Muller	A very short TED talk by physicist Allan Adams

Or, for the emotional angle, have them watch as Stanford Professor Andrei Linde is surprised at his doorstep with a delivery of evidence that confirms his decades-old hypothesis. Never have the words "Five sigma ... R of 0.2" been so moving:

Then, what if you challenged students to:

• Compare/contrast two versions -- what information is left out of each?  How does each get at different main ideas? Which was most clear?
• Explain their own understanding of the concept now
• Evaluate the explanations -- which was most effective and why?
• Create their own explanation -- in whatever form they wanted
• Craft questions that frame and sharpen their remaining areas of ignorance or curiosity?

"Well, I show videos all the time to illustrate concepts."  True -- you might.  But how often do you present each explanation as a single, imperfect attempt to explain some part of the world -- and place it in direct comparison to other interpretations?

Of course, I'm not saying we abandon our own explanations -- it is our obligation to make sure that students leave our classrooms with the knowledge and skills they need, and we need to do whatever it takes to make sure that it happens.

But what if we let all those other explainers, and our students, share some of the heavy lifting?