Spoonfeeding

"Spoon-feeding ... is excellent for obtaining good examination results, but is it quite so productive of good practioners?" (Reany, 1905 )

Most teachers would agree that "spoonfeeding" students does not encourage them to become independent learners or to take responsibility for their own learning. However, there are different views on what constitutes spoonfeeding. Most commonly it is used to describe a form of teaching that provides students with "facts" and answers rather than one that encourages them to learn through inquiry, discovery and problem-solving. Spoonfed facts, to continue the analogy, are then "regurgitated" in the exam. Some teachers complain that their students want to be spoonfed, resisting activities that involve them in finding their own answers and even accusing the teacher of not doing his or her job.

Spoonfeeding may also be seen as providing students with resources that they could produce or acquire themselves. For example, putting lecture notes on the Web may be seen as writing the students" notes for them instead of having students take their own lecture notes and make sense of them. Providing students with a photocopied collection of articles or setting up key Web links for a unit may be seen as pandering to lazy students who would learn more by going to the library and doing their own research. Are these examples of spoonfeeding, or simply providing students with basic resources so that they can spend a greater proportion of their study time researching a topic of interest, designing an experiment, or following up on unclear issues from the lecture?

How we define spoonfeeding might say a lot about who we are as teachers. What does spoonfeeding mean to you?

• Reany, M.F. (1905). Medical Profession, 1.21. In J.A. Simpson, & E.S.C. Weiner (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., Vol. XVI, p. 312). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.