Tuesday 18 September 2018

incorporating social media and back-channel communication

I am beginning to be less and less concerned with online learning. Before I used to consider it to be inferior to what was happening face-to-face. But now, I think it is just a different mode of the educational medium. As Brookfield suggests in this 11th chapter, the F2F classes rarely live up to the billing or potential. Classroom teaching can be executed well or poorly. Online teaching is the same. But I do wonder if the best online learning experience can be favourably compared to the best F2F learning environment? Perhaps the issue is that it is so context dependent being affected by the skills and inclinations of the teacher, the student cohort, and discipline being studied.

Regardless, Brookfield, similar to Bowen, suggests that we make use of whatever educational tools are at our disposal if they make sense in terms of facilitating student learning. For Brookfield, social media and back-channel communication is a teaching tool that can facilitate democratization of the classroom by enabling quieter students to provide input toward the educational environment. In addition, it provides a conduit to instructors for the lens of students’ voices when critically reflecting on our teaching. The advantage here is that it can happen in real time as we are teaching. Critical to its success in conveying students’ voices is that students be permitted to log in with an anonymous name/handle/identifier. I am not sure how I feel about that. I tire of the social irresponsibility that happens with anonymous posting to blogs and online articles. I think we need to take personal responsibility for our expressed thoughts. I understand that Brookfield is making the case that anonymity is crucial for enabling students to feel safe in voicing their concerns or confusion but I have witnessed so many examples of online conversations descending to ad hominem. On the other hand, the classroom environment may have sufficient social constraints that students will regulate themselves. There will be those who want to learn rather than read vulgarity or needless harassment of other students or the instructor. Brookfield does assert that it is necessary to lay the ground rules for using social media as a back-channel to the instructor for questions/issues. Some of the examples he cites I have seen used well in instructional workshops: TodaysMeet, Twitter, PollEverywhere, among others. I wonder if my own LMS, Moodle has anything similar? The Forum module in Moodle is simply too slow/cumbersome to act as a back-channel. Are there other social media equivalents in Moodle?

Brookfield also makes the case that social media is good for the lens of our colleagues. We can allow our colleagues access to our online record or to even observe the social media feeds to get a taste of our teaching without the necessity of being physically in our classrooms.

I do wonder, however, if these teaching strategies and educational technology tools are as significant for my smaller classes? I think they could work well in my first-yr biology courses for which student enrolment is typically between 70-90 students. But in my more senior courses, the enrolment smaller: 30-50 in 2nd yr and 10-20 for 3rd and 4th year. Maybe in the 2nd year, but I don’t think it makes sense in my smaller enrolment courses at the 3rd and 4th yr. Also, using social media assumes that my classroom does not have many moments in which I am circulating among students as they work and discuss a problem. I can see social media use working very well when I am lecturing - it still happens often enough - but not when students are working in their groups. I get around to them when they have a confusion that needs clarification.

Bottom line, I think, is that social media can be a useful teaching and learning tool but that it requires judicious use that is context-dependent. I like Jose Bowen’s suggestion - ask the students what they want/need to support their own learning. Many of my students have indicated that they do not particularly like learning online. But I wonder if what they are really saying is that they do not like the work of learning - online teaching, done well,  typically requires reading and deep processing. Or I wonder if what they are indicating is that they view their online world as their personal world and they desire to keep it separate from their more formal learning world?

Not sure…

Resources

Tuesday 28 August 2018

learning from theory

I like using theory as part of my critical reflections. I seem to be doing already what Brookfield describes as scholarly personal narrative (SPN) in his tenth chapter of Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. But what I need to do to make it more critical is too actively search and incorporate/respond to theory that contrasts with my own understanding of my personal experience. Currently, I tend to use theory to justify my own understanding of events. Instead, Brookfield advocates to intentionally include alternative theories that help to problematize our own interpretation of our experiences. Doesn't mean that the alternatives will be correct and I will be wrong. Rather, what it does is help me critically assess my experiences and this is the point of being critically reflective. Being reflective is not useful if it simply continues to corroborate our own thinking. We need to use the literature to articulate what we understand but also to examine our experience from other points of view or other understandings of the world. This must be done courageously with an unflinching eye on what is truly happening in our classrooms.

Theory, for Brookfield, is not simply complicated and difficult text. Instead, it is simply another lens to consider our teaching and learning. For people without a critically reflective learning community, the literature can be used in their place. But also, in the context of a faculty learning community, it can help ensure that the community does not simply become mutually reinforcing of hegemony and status quo. Alternatively, it can help to nudge community members into new ways of understanding of what is occurring in our classrooms, with our students, and with ourselves in that particular teaching and learning context.

Scholarly personal narratives embed theory into the personal experience. This is what I have been trying to do with my blog: I reflect on an experience in the light of a particular paper or book I have read. The theory and the experience are woven together in an attempt to understand the experience and learn from it. We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience - to paraphrase Dewey.

Brookfield's discussion of repressive tolerance is something that I have not heard of before but have certainly observed and experienced in retrospect. By giving equal voice to all opinions and ideas, the marginalized and radical remain at the periphery. As an educator, we need to give students a voice, but we do need to rebalance the voices so that the marginal finds space to be at the centre. By tolerating all voices equally, the marginalized remains at the margins simply because their voice gets drowned out by the hegemonic and voices of the status quo. As instructors, we do have a responsibility to bring what we understand to be true to the centre: The majority voice is not always the correct voice. Repressive tolerance is found on news talk shows where journalists bring in contrasting voices to try to produce a balanced discussion even if the alternative view is ridiculous and unfounded.

Where in my classes do I inadvertently practice repressive tolerance?

Something else that Brookfield raises in this chapter is an idea that I have understood for some time. By virtue of being raised in Western Civilization, I am effectively racist and sexist. My upbringing in this culture has embedded in my thinking racist ideas and sexist views of my place in society - examples of hegemonic thinking. All I can do is be constantly vigilant and exercise inclusive thinking with action.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Learning from theory. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, (pp. 171-187). San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.

Marcuse, H. (1969). Repressive Tolerance. In R. P. Wolff, B. J. Moore, & H. Marcuse (Eds.), A Critique of Pure Tolerance (pp. 95–137). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 

Wednesday 15 August 2018

using personal experience

In his 9th chapter of Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, Brookfield argues that our personal experience as learners can inform our own teaching praxis. The most significant influences on how we teach are those that we experienced as students. Our favourite teachers we want to emulate, our worst teachers we ensure that we never teach in like manner. He provides a number of examples that are readily available to us as learning experiences. Brookfield notes how interesting it is that graduate students who are working as TAs do not apply their own learning experiences in their graduate courses to their TAing of their undergraduate seminars and labs. What we appreciate as students we should consider implementing in our own teaching. The same can be applied to teaching development workshops and conference sessions we attend. In addition to learning content and theory, we can also reflect on how the workshop leader or session presenter is communicating their topic to you as a learner. Are they sharing something of themselves first before they ask that you share something of yourself with the class or with a nearby stranger? In addition, do they explain the rationale for using a particular activity rather than simply speaking their thinking? What is the connection to what they are presenting to what they are asking you to do? Do you do this with your own students? This is an example that Brookfield has experienced at workshops and conferences. The point he is making is to document the situation: Where and when did the experience occur? How did it make you feel? Why do you think you had that response? How can this impact your own teaching? What might your students be experiencing in a similar situation in your own classes?

Finally, a very powerful personal experience that can inform our own teaching is to learn a new skill. This reminds us of what it is like for disciplinary novices to learn our own field of expertise. Brookfield’s analysis is that teachers who have had to struggle to master the material they are teaching typically make the best teachers of that material or skill because they have had to articulate a strategy for learning it themselves. People who have found something easy to learn and master typically do not understand, cannot empathize with others for whom the skills and concepts are difficult to grasp. This gives them insight into their students' feelings and struggles and perhaps an ability to help bridge the novice-expert gap. But, as we age and become more familiar with the material, we can become distanced from what it was like to initially confront the course material. Somehow, we need to occasionally remake our courses, remake ourselves as teachers to bring us closer to where our students are when they first enter our class, enter our course and begin to engage with our material.

As a result of instructor familiarity with the material and thus distancing from novices, peers can become valuable resources for struggling students. I may be the expert in my subject area, but I may be less able to convey ideas about how to master the material. Students who have struggled but persevered may be good mediators of instruction between the teacher (the expert) and struggling student (the novice). This is a good rationale for implementing team-based learning which depends on collaborative teamwork. Brookfield suggests that we need to remember to not always cater to students' preferred modes of learning. We do need to stretch their learning abilities. But the converse is also true - if I am always challenging students with an unfamiliar way of learning (flipping the classroom) students may become fatigued with always being required to be an independent learner.

So is there anything I can do with my own implementation of TBL in my own courses? I could take aspects of TBL and implement them at different times during the term or during a class meeting. I think what many of my students have indicated on my end of term student evaluations of teaching for the last few years is that using TBL all of the time is simply too taxing - they need an educational rest while still participating in the course. This is certainly true for more junior courses. For the most part, students have the stamina and learning ability when they reach their 4th year of undergraduate studies. Even then, I do break up the active learning in our 4th-year capstone course with two or three videos throughout the term - a relatively passive learning experience but one that could be considered to be an educational resting point. I think I need to do more of this in my more junior courses.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Using personal experience. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 153-170. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Weimer, M. (2017, February 22). When the teacher becomes the student. The Teaching Professor Blog

Weimer, M. (2017, January 25). The benefits of peer learning. The Teaching Professor Blog.

Weimer, M. (2006). The lens of experience: Wisdom of practice. In Enhancing scholarly work on teaching and learning: Professional literature that makes a difference (pp. 53–90). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

Tuesday 24 July 2018

team-teaching as critical reflection

In chapter 8 Brookfield advocates for team-teaching as an incredibly insightful way to develop the critically reflective lens on our teaching. In his experience, team-teaching permits that ability to model critical dialogue between colleagues that share the same class. His sense of team-teaching is the same as mine. Team-teaching is not when a course is carved up between two colleagues but rather it is when two colleagues are present at the same time in the same class and engage with each other and with students as the course unfolds. Thus when one is in leadership mode (instructing students) the other(s) are able to monitor the interaction between students, the teachers and how both are responding to the learning that is happening. Often, Brookfield notes, when we are in the sage mode, we may be so focused on being clear and articulate in our explanations and justifications that we have difficulty seeing how students are responding, or when we do, we can become distracted from the necessary telling or facilitating that is happening. Co-teachers are able to watch for this. In addition, and more importantly, co-teachers are able to provide an alternate set of eyes to interpret how class activities unfold. Of course, they are not entirely unbiased - they are also part of the instructional team - but they will be able to affirm or realign our perspective of what occurred in the class. And this is particularly useful for avoiding the imposter syndrome that can happen when a class meeting does not go quite as well as had been planned. Affirming our perception and providing alternative interpretations are invaluable for understanding how teaching and learning are going and can provide insight into how to improve students' educational experience.

For Brookfield, what is even more powerful from team-teaching is the ability to model critical conversation for students. Co-teachers are able to discuss in front of the class their different perspectives on an issue and model for students how a critical examination of an issue does not have at its heart the desire to convert someone else to one’s own point of view, but rather to try and really get at the heart of an issue to try and distill some truth out of the different perspectives. This is the dialectical method and can be helpful in developing students from a dualistic understanding of knowledge and learning to one that is more multiplistic and relativistic and perhaps even come to a sense of commitment to a particular perspective without it becoming entrenched. Some of this section reminds me of the Perry Scheme of intellectual development in the language it uses.

For this to occur, colleagues need to cultivate trust among themselves and be sufficiently courageous to be vulnerable about their own mistakes, misperceptions and how they themselves are captive to hegemonic thinking. I like this way of being. It is where I feel most comfortable and alive. But not always, definitely not always. I think this is why my senior biology capstone course is so successful. I tend to be more transparent about myself and with my students than I am in my other courses. First-year biology is not so bad because I am sufficiently comfortable with the material that I welcome negotiating new things that students find in their own reading and sometimes research. In the past, my second-year courses (molecular cell biology and biochemistry) have been among my strongest. But over the last few years, I have become increasingly insecure as a result of implementing team-based learning in those classes. I am not sufficiently confident with the teaching strategy to allow myself to be vulnerable and transparent with my students. I am still trying to navigate what is appropriate to expect from students on reading quizzes (the two-stage readiness assurance tests) and how challenging to make the in-class applications of students' learning. I am still trying to figure this out. I think it works in the biology capstone because I have been unknowingly using some form of team-based learning since the 1990s. It works well in first-year biology because there is becoming available a wealth of resources to support this sort of teaching - I am finding good applications amongst the textbook resources. For molecular cell biology, I have developed what I think are outstanding experimental problems based on published papers but I wonder with the changes to our first-year biology curriculum (less emphasis on cell biology) if these are a little beyond what students can manage when they are trying to first master the content?

Anyways…. ! That was a big digression from this chapter.

Bottom line - team teaching can be an incredibly powerful way of incorporating the lens of our colleagues' perspectives in our quest to be critically reflective teachers.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Team-teaching as critical reflection. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 135-152. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Haave, N. C. (2017). Using history and philosophy as the capstone to a biology major. Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, 43(1), 3–11.

Monday 16 July 2018

learning from colleagues’ perceptions

Chapter 7 provides some very useful techniques for when faculty learning communities gather and I will need to regularly consult it when I set up my FLC. The reflective conversation techniques range from rather simple for FLCs that are just starting to those that have developed a relationship among themselves with trust. The critical reflection conversation techniques are designed to enable participants to uncover the assumptions of power and hegemony and to initiate a conversation without judgement on those sharing their own experiences. What Brookfield correctly identifies is that all too often faculty conversations typically degenerate into complaints about our students and administration. Students “these days” don’t know how to read, focus, work, (insert your own student stereotype here). Or we often accuse our administration that they don’t understand the demands of teaching or are expecting too much from our service and research to properly attend to our teaching. There are many additional stereotypes that faculty raise when discussing teaching. The critical reflection techniques among colleagues that Brookfield reviews in this chapter are designed to consider our assumptions and what the alternative perspective might be for a given situation or experience.

The simpler ones start with each colleagues completing a particular sentence such as “I know teaching happens when…” or “ I feel like I have not lived up to my teaching potential when…” And out of these responses, a conversation develops. The more complicated techniques involve rules and roles that different colleagues play. The one I like is where one is the storyteller and explains their experience, with another playing umpire who ensures comments are nonjudgemental with the remainder being detectives who ask questions to clarify the situation and offer alternative perspectives. Only once all perspectives are considered and the situation well understood are colleagues invited by the umpire to offer solutions.

These techniques are designed to ensure that critical reflection occurs between identifying the issue and offering solutions. Brookfield’s experience suggests that faculty tend to jump from identifying the issue to providing solutions without the intervening reflection phase. This feels like how my in-class discussions of course material unfold. I have students solve a problem and then I tend to immediately jump to explaining the solution rather than letting them explain and justify their answers to each other. I have had some success in having student teams justify their choices to each other, but I tend to get too uptight during this phase of the TBL apps. I wonder if it is because I myself do not feel comfortable with the ambiguous phase of students figuring things out for themselves? I am a problem solver - I want to solve their problem for them! But of course, this is not how learning works...

But back to the learning from colleague’s perspectives, I know that jumping from problem to solution often happens when I engage in teaching discussions with my colleagues.

So, a faculty learning community is what I think I have in mind when considering creating a venue for faculty to come and talk about their teaching. This is such a great idea. I hope I can implement it both at Augustana and on the North Campus. And I think I just have to be courageous to try it without completely knowing what I am doing. But this chapter has given me a foothold - I now have some ideas of how to start.

I am intrigued…

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Learning from colleagues’ perceptions. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 115-134. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Tuesday 10 July 2018

seeing ourselves through students’ eyes

Some very useful suggestions in chapter six for assessing how students are perceiving and coping in our classes. Brookfield advocates for doing this at the end of each week or even during class using a back channel via social media.  Using something like TodaysMeet students are able to anonymously post their questions or concerns and the instructor is able to check the commentary every quarter hour or so. He suggests that many online technologies can do this - he is not adverse to students using their smartphones to do this. I suspect that a Twitter feed or PollEverywhere could accomplish something similar to TodaysMeet. He advocates for the use of social media because it makes students’ positions and thinking public and transparent enabling introverts and students for whom English is a second language to have another venue for their voice such that it is not only public speaking that is available to them. Finally, he continually advocates throughout this book (at least for these first six chapters) the importance of democratizing the classroom. This is the basis for his other two points: social media as a back channel prevents the few students from monopolizing the classroom. I like that - give other avenues for students’ voices. Brookfield admits that there is a risk in giving students anonymous voices - it can enable crass, profane comments and risks bullying of other students and the instructor. But his experience suggests that other students will actually patrol the potential vitriol and has the benefit that the bullies or even the monopolizers may realize that their voice is not the majority opinion or viewpoint.

Clickers are also discussed. Note that he indicates that it is the discussion that debriefs the question that is most critical and useful to this technique. I still have not mastered this post-PRS question approach. I find that I am too concerned with ensuring that students understand the rationale behind the correct answer rather than having students discuss what they think. In addition, I find that students are willing to discuss the question in their teams but are reluctant to discuss their team’s thinking with the rest of the class. On the other hand, there is very robust intra-team discussion of the TBL apps (Plickers - my version of a PRS) so maybe that is sufficient.

Other suggestions made in this chapter I have heard mentioned before in other venues such as the muddiest point and the one-minute paper. The learning audit is a new one for me and is interesting. It consists of three questions:

  • What do I know now that I didn’t know this time last week?
  • What can I do now that I couldn’t do this time last week?
  • What could I teach others to know or do that I couldn’t teach them last week?

Clearly, this is something that is done on a weekly basis and helps to make explicit to students themselves that learning is occurring incrementally/developmentally. Brookfield likes to use this to circumvent students’ feeling that they are not learning anything. Sometimes they just don’t realize that the little victories are summing up to something significant.

But the student feedback system that Brookfield likes the most and strongly advocates is the Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ). He has mentioned this a couple of times in previous chapters and I have been both interested in learning about it but have had some trepidation about what it entails and what it may solicit from students. For whatever reason collecting feedback during the course makes me uncomfortable. I think it is because solicited feedback requires a response from the instructor and I am not confident that I can respond in a way that students will appreciate. There are some things that students want (e.g. more passive learning) that I know is not in their best interests and am unwilling to acquiesce to these demands. But what Brookfield suggests is that receiving this kind of feedback allows instructors to again explain their rationale for a particular teaching strategy and why it is in their best interests to persist. Also, CIQs over a few weeks can give an instructor a forewarning about brewing revolts to a teaching strategy and thus gives instructors a heads-up to prepare a response. I guess I am not confident that I can provide a sufficiently robust response to quell a student revolt. But on the other hand, if I don’t give students a venue to voice their concerns it can boil over into distrust and disrespect of the instructor and result in class resistance to learning and worse yet appeals to administration - which has happened to me before.

However, despite my misgivings, the CIQ list of questions is quite benign and I can see how it can foster a classroom climate of communication between students and instructor. These are the questions:

  • At what moment in class, this week did you feel most engaged with what was happening?
  • At what moment in class, this week were you most distanced from what was happening?
  • What action that anyone (student or teacher) took this week did you find most affirming or helpful?
  • What action that anyone took this week did you find most puzzling or confusing?
  • What about the class this week surprised you the most? (This could be about students' own reactions to what went on, something that someone did, or anything else that occurs.)

Brookfield has students write this anonymously on a paper form and has student volunteers gather them up to ensure anonymity. For large classes (>50) he has student volunteers summarize/consolidate the summaries into the top 10 comments that he then reads (e.g. 5 students each read 10 CIQs and provides their top 2 consolidated comments). For smaller classes, Brookfield simply looks at them all himself.

I like these questions. Our LMS (Moodle) has the capability to run anonymous surveys, so I think this would be a good way to collect these. Brookfield administers these CIQs during the last 5 minutes of the last class of each week. And then he changes what he can, what is reasonable, what is pedagogically sound. For the other comments, he uses those as an opportunity to again reiterate the rationale for why he teaches the way he does and how it promotes students' learning.

I can do this.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Seeing ourselves through students’ eyes. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 97-113. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Wednesday 4 July 2018

clarifying the benefits of critical reflection

Brookfield explains in chapter five the reasons for being critically reflective. And they are many. It helps prevent burnout and boredom because examining our teaching through the four lenses (peers, students, theory, personal experience) helps us to see the variety and diversity in our classrooms that underlies the lessons and activities that we re-use year after year. The content and exercises may be the same but the different sets of students’ experiences and backgrounds breathe new life into our teaching - if we are open to viewing through the lens of students’ eyes. What this requires is constant anonymous feedback from students in what Brookfield calls a CIQ - critical incident questionnaire - which he explains in a later chapter. This enables teachers to see what is received and what is misunderstood in their teaching.

Critical reflection also helps teachers to avoid self-flagellation. One of the things that Brookfield pointed out in an earlier chapter is that the impact and influence of teachers is limited. Sometimes learning happens despite our best intentions: learning can still happen when we seriously mismanage a situation or concept. What is important, thinks Brookfield, is that teachers be honest with their students about why they are using a particular teaching strategy or assignment and why the sequence of content makes sense. This is something I have read elsewhere - that teaching and learning are enhanced when we make explicit our reasons for teaching what, why, and how we do. Brookfield makes the case that being transparent this way inculcates student trust in the teacher and this is crucial to the teacher-student relationship. If students do not trust the teacher, they will not attempt the activity or deeply consider the material. They have to believe that the table the instructor has set is worth ingesting and digesting. This requires trust in the teacher’s ability to curate both the content and available teaching strategies. One of the issues that I think students were distrustful of me in 2nd-year cell biology this past year is that they could not believe the amount I was expecting them to learn. Yet, this is what students have always learned in cell biology. This year I actually winnowed the content from previous years. I think students just have such a difficult time understanding that learning this material takes such time, focus and effort. This was true of cell biology when I was an undergrad and it is still true.

What else did Brookfield provide as a rationale for being critically reflective? Being critically reflective helps us justify our actions, our instructional choices. How we teach is based on theory, experience, and student learning. As noted above, critical reflection enables us to make informed instructional decisions.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Clarifying the benefits of critical reflection. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 79-95. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Wednesday 27 June 2018

the lenses of critical reflection

In this 4th chapter of Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher Brookfield reiterates what he wrote in the first chapter briefly describing the four lenses of critical reflection: students, colleagues, personal experience, and theory.

Brookfield explains that the student lens has been critically important to his own development as an instructor. He makes the argument that unless you know how your students are responding to the material and the instruction, you cannot have any idea whether or not your teaching is having an impact and whether the instructional approach needs to be adjusted. He states that student mid-course feedback must be anonymous for students to be able to provide it honestly. But he also explains that instructors must keep the promises they make otherwise the instruction and the request for feedback will be perceived to be inauthentic. But note that although not all student feedback may be justified, all feedback must have a response from the instructor. If students’ feedback is mistaken or unjustified, instructors must still explain to students why the suggestions are not being enacted.

The lens of our colleagues helps us to compare or check our experiences with others. Is our experience unique or is it shared by others? Trusted friends are able to listen to us and carefully describe the experience and our understanding of its significance before explaining how they see it from their perspective. This can result in useful suggestions for interpreting and responding to our own experiences.

Brookfield suggests that personal experience tends to be discounted in our Enlightenment-influenced culture in which only objective data and analysis are acceptable pieces of evidence. Anecdote is valid evidence. It may be specific and applicable to a particular circumstance or context. But that does not make it invalid - it simply means that it may not be broadly generalizable. It doesn't mean that our own anecdotes may not be pertinent to our own development as instructors.

Finally, the theoretical lens is explained to be the most difficult to cultivate and incorporate, but that it can be the most powerful. Difficult because it requires seeking out the journals and browsing the articles and perhaps taking the time to work through difficult ideas. But the ability to use a cogent framework of analysis to understand our own teaching experiences, unstated biases, and automatic responses can help us uncover what underlies our instructional choices and illuminate alternatives. I think it can help you avoid path dependency or perhaps switch trajectories by seeing if we are comfortable in particular frameworks, ideologies, or philosophical schools.

What all of these lenses do is to help us uncover our unstated biases and assumptions and indicate alternative approaches to our teaching and students.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). The four lenses of critical reflection. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 61-77. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.


Monday 18 June 2018

uncovering assumptions of power

The second chapter from Brookfield's Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher is his own critical reflection on his underlying assumptions of the learner-centred classroom. The assumption that learning occurs best when the classroom is democratized and students are empowered to be self-learners results from when the classroom is arranged in a democratic way (a circle) and the instructor sets up class discussion (whole or in groups) such that the teacher is out of the way of students’ learning. Brookfield thinks this approach or understanding of learner-centred teaching is too simple. It assumes that students trust the instructor to not judge students for making mistakes and providing wrong answers to questions. It also assumes that students accept the instructor as a co-learner when, in fact, they place their own unstated assumptions of power and authority on to the instructor. An instructor is carefully watched by students for any indication of expectations of answer quality or routes to problem-solving.

These are issues that have been boiling to the surface for me as I have been developing my implementation of Team-Based Learning in my classroom. The assumption that students can always figure things out on their own is false. Students do need some direction and facilitation. Instruction requires careful attention to the verbal and non-verbal cues from students about what they need (but not necessarily what they want). Walking around the class during group discussion may be viewed as surveillance rather than making oneself available for consultation. The teacher may be removed from immediate dialogue but must always be prepared to intercede when it becomes apparent that an intervention is necessary. This is where an instructor’s intuition cultivated over years of experience comes into play. Teachers need to listen to their inner voice and integrate it with the lenses of colleagues, students, and theory.

My own intuition, informed by theory, experience (students and mine), and colleagues voices, suggests that active learning produces the best learning outcomes, but that it must be tempered by instructional intervention and pedagogical design. This takes work and close analysis (reflection) on our teaching praxis as experienced class to class, course to course, and term to term. Teaching is not the simple implementation of teaching tricks, tips, and strategies. It is a responsive action that is informed by theory, experience, and context. That context is the particular course, term, student cohort, and instructor.

Circles of learning and getting out of the way of students’ learning does make sense - the theory and evidence indicate this. But it does not mean that we should be slaves to technique. How we implement our teaching praxis must be informed by what the students in front of us need at that moment. In addition, as many have written in the SoTL literature, we are more inviting to students’ learning when we explain to them our reasons for implementing the teaching strategies we use in the classroom. I certainly explain this at the beginning of every term, but many of the problems I experience in my TBL classrooms I suspect result from my failure to regularly remind students why I have designed my classes the way I have. We all suffer from cognitive overload and need to be reminded why we structure teaching and learning the way we do.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Uncovering assumptions of power. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 21-37. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

Finelli, B. C. J., Nguyen, K., Demonbrun, M., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Husman, J., … Waters, C. K. (2018). Reducing student resistance to active learning: Strategies for instructors. Journal of College Science Teaching, 47(5), 80–91.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

Tharayil, S., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Nguyen, K. A., Shekhar, P., Finelli, C. J., & Waters, C. (2018). Strategies to mitigate student resistance to active learning. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(1), 7. 

Weimer, M. (2013). Responding to resistance. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 199–217). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

Monday 11 June 2018

what is critically reflective teaching?

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). What is critically reflective teaching? In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 1-19. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

I started reading this book a few weeks ago and will be blogging each chapter as I work through it.

From the preface, it appears that his first edition from 30 years ago was wildly successfully speaking to many people. This 2nd edition has been entirely re-written taking into account the impact of social media on teaching. He advocates for using four lenses to critically reflect on our teaching praxis: students’ eyes, colleagues’ eyes, theory, and personal experience. What I am going to find interesting is how critical reflection will apparently reveal whatever assumptions we hold about ourselves and our teaching and also what ideas in our environment/culture hold hegemony over our thinking, actions, and teaching. As a result, he apparently will help the reader avoid cultural suicide by inadvertently threatening colleagues as a result of challenging the culture and hegemony of current teaching practice. This is something I believe has been happening to me this past year as I continually challenge the hegemony of the lecture and passive learning. I have been experiencing this with my colleagues but of course also with my students - the instructional strategies I implement in the classroom challenge the hegemony of the lecture in students’ understanding of what it means to learn and be taught.

What an interesting 1st chapter. I started to become elated and uncomfortable at the same time. Elated, because I began to recognize issues of hegemonic thinking in my own employment as a university professor - I recognized what Brookfield was analysing. But also began to become uncomfortable at the same because, well, for the same reasons I became elated at being able to recognize in myself the issues he was describing: the hegemonic power of seeing teaching as vocation and how that creates a sense that as instructors we have to say yes to our students, say yes to service requests, yes to publishing another chapter, article or book, yes to another conference presentation. This hegemonic assumption of teaching as vocation takes over our lives and we begin to think that unless we are exhausted at the end of each and every day, then we have not attended to our teaching vocation as much as we could have and thus have let down ourselves, our students and our institutions.

Of course, Brookfield is advocating that we critically reflect on this hegemonic assumption. Is the assumption of teaching as vocation good for our students? Good for ourselves? Good for our institution? In his experience, being slaves to the hegemony of teaching as vocation leads to burn out and collapse or becoming dulled to the needs of our students, ourselves, our friends and family.

I wonder if this is specific to Western culture, in particular, North American culture or if there would be a different understanding of teaching in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. My suspicion having spoken to colleagues teaching in other cultures is that teh USA and Canada are different and this may arise from what Brookfield identifies as the dominant ideologies of the US: positivism, democracy, militarism, capitalism, white supremacy & patriarchy. I am unclear how these would lead to teaching as a vocation, but it feels right to me. I have to think about this some more.

So that is what jumped out for me in this chapter: the hegemony of teaching as a vocation and how that co-opts our best intentions for students that ends up being what is best for the institution and not for ourselves and thus not for our students. If we don't take care of ourselves how can we care for our students?

This examination of the hegemony of teaching as vocation models how Brookfield wants his readers to understand critical reflection. Critical reflection examines the nature of power and hegemony and that is done best by considering our actions and thinking through four different lenses: our personal experience, students' voices, colleagues' voices, and theory. These different points of view or perspectives help to triangulate the issue being examined to reveal the underlying issue that is producing a particular behaviour or way of thinking.

The other thing that Brookfield considered while discussing the ideology of positivism in American culture is that it manifests itself in our teaching when we apply rubrics during our marking and grading of student work. Some things in student learning are not measurable in this way and are why I have so much trouble using rubrics. It is difficult to produce a rubric that really captures everything that you are looking for students to achieve and accomplish in the assignments we design to facilitate students' learning. Part of it I think is that students are able to surprise us with learning something valuable and insightful that we didn't plan or anticipate. This is what makes teaching and learning such an interesting and exhilarating process - there is always the possibility of students surprising us and teaching us, the teachers. Such fun!

Sometimes when students ask me for the guidelines for what they need to accomplish on an assignment or exam, what I really want to say rather than giving them the rules is - surprise me! I want students to cultivate their own curiosity and creativity. How does a teacher do that? I am hoping that developing my ability to be a critically reflective teacher will help me develop that instructional ability in myself.

One last thing to consider from this chapter. Critical reflection enables us to tease apart and examine the assumptions that we carry into our classrooms and I appreciate how Brookfield catalogues three different types of assumptions: paradigmatic, prescriptive, and causal. Paradigmatic assumptions are those that essentially form our worldview. I think these will be influenced by hegemonic ideas of our prevailing culture. These are foundational assumptions. Prescriptive assumptions are all of those that include "should" in the statement. These are the assumptions we think we should have and enact but do not necessarily arise from our worldview but rather may be externally imposed (e.g. professional conduct). Finally, causal assumptions are those ideas of how things are achieved: if I do this, this will happen. If I teach this way, students will respond in this way. I think this will help me to better identify what my own unstated assumptions are coming to bear on my own teaching.

Monday 14 May 2018

does learning style theory promote a fixed mindset among students?

It is interesting to read in Carol Dweck's Mindset how some people think with a growth or fixed mindset as if people have one or the other in some innate fashion.  In this book, Carol Dweck is arguing against fixed abilities or personal traits. She makes it very clear that growth mindsets can be developed and that individuals can have both at the same time for different skills. This is certainly true for me I find. I have a growth mindset about some things but not others. I know that it takes hard work and effort, for example, to be able to learn how to do something. A great example is learning biochemistry: I am confident that what I do not know or understand now, I will come to understand later with some time and effort. I am also beginning to view my writing in this light: even if I cannot write something now, I will eventually be able if I continue to write a little each day. And this is the message that Dweck is trying to convey - that development of a skill or attribute is a process that takes time and effort. It does not happen overnight and it does not happen without focus and effort on practice and learning. One example in my life where I have a fixed mindset is about learning a second language. But, I am working to develop a growth mindset around languages. This is something that Dweck has also found in her research: having a growth or fixed mindset is itself not innate and fixed. It is possible to cultivate a growth mindset.

So, I am complicated. The growth and fixed mindsets exist inside of me at the same time. I wonder if MCQ tests encourage a fixed mindset because there is no meaningful feedback that accompanies it - it is either correct or incorrect. Perhaps this is where electronic quizzing can be used to develop a growth mindset because there can be feedback tailored to each of the responses that encourage students to think about why they choose a particular distractor in contrast to choosing the correct answer. This is one reason why I prefer to go over each test in my classroom so that I can unpack the question and think through the possible answers and explain why one particular answer is better than the others.

Similar to a fixed mindset, labelling students with a particular learning style implies that students have a fixed mode of learning and that the other modes cannot be developed. This was certainly the mindset that some of my first-year students presented to me this past year. The resistance to the flipped classroom style of teaching with TBL seemed to be from their assumption or desire that there was no need to read before class. There was a seeming expectation from students that they would be able to be successful in university without needing to read very much or very deeply. There was a sense from students that teaching would cater to their preferred mode of learning. But they did not view it as their preferred mode of learning but rather as their innate or fixed learning style. Learning styles had produced in the students a fixed mindset about how they learn. Granted, not all students felt this way. I had a healthy handful of students who were successful and it seemed to me that this was because they embraced the work of reading rather than trying to avoid it.

So the equation I am trying to make with these learning styles and mindset is that inventorying students for their learning style in secondary school develops in some students a fixed mindset about their reading ability. And as such inculcates in them a sense that the ability to read is an innate skill that they do not need to develop because they do not learn that way. Rather, they learn by listening to instructors and seeing videos. Not that there is anything wrong with that: listening to a teacher and watching a video of a process can certainly facilitate learning. But the written word is still where the majority of our knowledge is found and avoiding reading is avoiding a rich information source. In addition, the evidence to date does not support the theory that teaching with students' preferred learning mode enhances their learning. Rather, the learning mode needs to mirror the type of skill or ability being mastered (see the many resources below).

How should instructors respond to this fixed mindset and instead design an environment which nurtures a growth mindset around reading ability? Reading is a skill to be developed. But that requires showing students that reading ability is required for success and that reading can be learned/developed. Of course, they know this - they learned how to read in primary school! But the ability to read fiction vs non-fiction or non-fiction vs academic articles are very different skills. And I think this needs to be explained to students: that there are different ways of reading and reading rewires their brains to facilitate learning. Reading for pleasure vs reading for information vs reading for learning. Each of these reading modes requires a different approach to the text that many students have not learned and continued reading practice allows the brain to reconstruct itself.

What are those different reading approaches? Reading for pleasure simply requires understanding the context of the written word and the descriptions/explanations of plot, character, and setting to wash over you. In contrast, reading for information requires carefully noting the facts and figures and ensuring that no piece is missed. This requires focused attention and effort but not necessarily for understanding. In contrast, again, reading for learning requires understanding of what is being conveyed by the text - the meaning of the text or process being described. This often includes attending to the information, but also attending to how the information relates to itself and what has been read before, especially if it is reading to understand a process (e.g. metabolic regulation) or an argument (e.g. philosophy). Reading for meaning vs information vs pleasure requires very different levels of engaged effort and not all students have been made aware of those differences. Not all students have learned the strategies that can be used in different contexts: transmission vs transactional reading.

But students' expectancy values do make them wonder if it is worth their effort to develop this familiarity with the course material. This is what students are thinking when they view the reading requirements of my assigned pre-class coursework. Is it worth their time and effort to read the assignment? This is something that Ambrose et al and Cooper et al consider. How to develop students valuing of the effort required to learn? So in my context, how do I develop students' valuing of reading effort?

Anecdotally I know students begin to value reading when they begin to see their reading efforts producing learning in themselves. When their reading efforts result in better understanding of the material which translates into better exam scores, which, unfortunately, is the currency that students & institutions value most.

So, how do we develop students' valuing of reading? How is students' expectancy value of reading for learing developed for coursework?

I honestly do not know. What I do, is set up the course structure using team-based learning so that students are held individually responsible for the pre-class learning by administering a reading quiz. In addition, by having them repeat the quiz as a team via two-stage testing, students are able to see for themselves the learning that results in their peers who do put in the effort to read. But that simply shows them that students who read carefully and with effort and attention earn the benefits of increased learning. But they may not necessarily know how to go about reading effortfully. So it does require training/teaching on my part as an instructor to show/teach students how to read for learning.

How do I do that now? I do explain that there are different reading modes: pleasure and learning. And then I suggest strategies for reading for learning. Read with a pencil in hand to write thoughts/notes in the page margins. Avoid excessive highlighting (better yet, avoid a highlighter altogether). Take time to look up new words in a dictionary (online is fine). If you want to keep the book in pristine condition (e.g. a library book or a rented book or a book you wish to resell) then read with a pencil and blank piece of paper at hand. The important point is to have a conversation with yourself while reading. Ask questions about what is being read. What does this mean? How does that connect with what I just read before? Why did the author take the time to write this? What are they trying to tell me? To convince me of? Why does Haave think this is important to read? How is it connected to the course? How is it connected to my life? Why should I care? Why do the author and my instructor think I should care about what I am reading? How can I use what I am reading to improve my understanding of the course, of the world, of my life? How will I be able to use what I am reading in the career I aspire to? In the person I am trying to become?


Resources

learning styles theory
An, D., & Carr, M. (2017). Learning styles theory fails to explain learning and achievement: Recommendations for alternative approaches. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 410–416. 

Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Get beyond learning styles. In Make it stick: The science of successful learning (pp. 131–161). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Franklin, S. (2006). VAKing out learning styles—why the notion of ‘learning styles’ is unhelpful to teachersEducation 3-13, 34(1), 81–87. 

Husmann, P. R., & O’Loughlin, V. D. (2018). Another nail in the coffin for learning styles? Disparities among undergraduate anatomy students’ study strategies, class performance, and reported VARK learning stylesAnatomical Sciences Education, March 13. 

Khazan, O. (2017, April 11). The myth of learning stylesThe Atlantic.

Kirschner, P. A. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles mythComputers & Education, 106, 166–171. 

Newton, P. M. (2015). The learning styles myth is thriving in higher educationFrontiers in Psychology, 6

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidencePsychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. 

Riener, C., & Willingham, D. (2010). The myth of learning stylesChange: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 42(5), 32–35. 

Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M., & Tallal, P. (2015). Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehensionJournal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 64–78. 

Willingham, D. T., Hughes, E. M., & Dobolyi, D. G. (2015). The scientific status of learning styles theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), 266–271. 




reading
But, J. C., Brown, P., & Smyth, D. S. (2017). Reading effectively across the disciplines (READ): A strategy to improve student success. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 12, 30–50.  

Chevalier, T. M., Parrila, R., Ritchie, K. C., & Deacon, S. H. (2017). The role of metacognitive reading strategies, metacognitive study and learning strategies, and behavioral study and learning strategies in predicting academic success in students with and without a history of reading difficulties. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50(1), 34–48. 

Dai, D. Y., & Wang, X. (2007). The role of need for cognition and reader beliefs in text comprehension and interest development. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32(3), 332–347. 

Haave, N. (2018, February 1). Reading to learnFaculty Focus Premium

Haave, N. (2018, January 30). Second thought: Read to succeed. Camrose Booster, p. 26.

Hermida, J. (2009). The importance of teaching academic reading skills in first-year university courses. The International Journal of Research and Review, 3(September), 20–30.

Horbec, D. (2012). The link between reading and academic success. English in Australia, 47(2), 58–67.

Knoester, M., & Plikuhn, M. (2016). Inquiry into the independent reading development of first-generation college graduates with advanced degreesJournal of Literacy Research, 48(1), 105–126. 

Linderholm, T. (2006). Reading with purposeJournal of College Reading and Learning, 36(2), 70–80. 

Manarin, K., Carey, M., Rathburn, M., & Ryland, G. (2015). Critical reading for academic purposes. In Critical reading in higher education: Academic goals and social engagement (pp. 47–64). Bloomington, In: Indiana University Press.

Schraw, G., & Bruning, R. (1999). How implicit models of reading affect motivation to read and reading engagementScientific Studies of Reading, 3(3), 281–302. 

Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research, 2(article 4), 48–64. 


Wolf, M. (2008). Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.


mindset
Dweck, C. S. (2016). Mindset: The new psychology of success - how we can learn to fulfill our potential (Updated ed). New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302–314. 


motivation
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). What factors motivate students to learn? In How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching (pp. 66–90). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Cooper, K. M., Ashley, M., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). Using expectancy value theory as a framework to reduce student resistance to active learning: A proof of conceptJournal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 18(2). 

Thursday 3 May 2018

teaching naked: the naked campus

Another thoughtful chapter concludes Bowen’s book. In this 11th chapter, he considers what issues integrate student learning with the on-campus/in-class experience. I like his suggestions about attending to classroom furnishings and layout as opposed to the technology in the classroom. This is an approach that my campus that houses the Augustana Faculty of the University of Alberta has used for some time. Rather than trying to implement the latest and greatest technology in our classrooms, our Technology and Learning Services department has focused on ensuring that each classroom has a computer, projector, document camera, speakers, blu-ray player and whatever connections (wired and wireless) are required to teach using a tablet or laptop. Currently, we are considering implementing Bowen’s suggestion to simply facilitate faculty’s ability to bring their laptop from their office to the classroom and plugin to the system. We have even had success using Apple TVs to link laptops or tablets wirelessly to our computer projector. In addition, as Bowen suggests, whenever we renovate a classroom we consider whether or not it is feasible to install whiteboards on every spare wall of the classroom to facilitate students’ in-class group work. I am quite pleased with the results - none of our classrooms has a Cadillac version of classroom technology, but they are all able to facilitate what is minimally necessary. Interestingly, what I have found in my own teaching is that as I increasingly move to a flipped classroom, I find that I use technology less and less in the classroom because I am responding to students’ questions for clarification and posing to students problems which provide practice in applying what they have learned outside of class in preparation for our face to face class meetings. In order to be able to respond to my students’ immediate learning needs inside the classroom, I find that a canned PowerPoint is too inflexible for me to adequately address students’ questions. And when students resist and request me to lecture more, I find that I end up being more reliant on my prepared PowerPoints and notice student engagement decrease. It is odd that my students resist out of class preparation in order to practice their learning in class which produces obvious student engagement. They insist that they would rather have me lecture, yet they clearly look more bored when I lecture. How do I square this circle? How do I get students to appreciate that their ability to learn will increase if they put in the pre-class effort and practice thinking with the material under my guidance in-class?

Enough about me and my students! Back to this final chapter.

Something I really appreciate in this chapter is Bowen’s assessment that as the middle ground for higher education becomes crowded out by online alternatives, that it will be necessary for universities and colleges to find their own particular niche and do that well. Bowen’s assessment suggests that the vast majority of university and college programs are far too similar but that we survive based on most students choosing what is locally available. Online learning breaks down the barrier of localized learning. Thus higher ed institutions need to articulate a clear mission of what it means to learn and teach and what is being taught and learned and how that mission is unique and well delivered. I do get weary of the rhetoric which emphasizes learning and teaching as a commodity. Suggesting that universities and colleges be evaluated on the basis of whether or not our students learn assumes that all students are actually willing to learn. Is it possible to coerce students to learn if they do not want to? Many students do not understand that learning is actually only the result of what they do themselves. Teachers simply design and deliver the conditions for learning, we cannot actually make students learn - this is something they need to do themselves. This misunderstanding of learning as something that is done to the student (open the skull and pour the knowledge and understanding into the brain) rather than something that is constructed by students themselves is what produces student comments that complain that the teacher didn’t teach, students had to learn it for themselves. Of course, students have to learn it for themselves, no one can do their learning for them.

What will be interesting as we move forward is the different niches that higher ed institutions develop for themselves. What niche will my Augustana campus carve out for itself over the next couple of years? How will we become a destination institution for some students here in the heart of central rural Alberta? How can we harness the opportunities that present themselves by using educational technology outside of the classroom in order to enhance the sparks that fly when people meet face to face in the same space to discuss the issues that need to be addressed today and in the future? I firmly believe, based on my own experience, that there is nothing like the immediacy of the engaged in-class experience to fire up the curiosity and passion of students. And I think this is what Dr Bowen is advocating for us - find ways to produce an exciting engaging learning environment for our students. The best way to do that is to stop squandering the in-class experience with content delivery and instead provide students with an opportunity to practice applying their skills in a real and immediate way under the guidance of curators and designers of learning experiences. Those curators and designers need to be us: the faculty.

Resources

Bowen, J. A. (2012). The naked campus. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 11. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 267-288.

Tuesday 1 May 2018

teaching naked: the naked curriculum

I think this 10th chapter is my favourite of the book. It is written with an immediacy that demands our attention: we know how to teach better than we are - so what is stopping us from designing our learning experiences so that they best promote student learning?

It is a frightening prospect for me because I learned and was successful using the old passive lecture model that Bowen decries. Of course, he understands that sometimes lecturing is required to clarify a misunderstanding, but he is ardent in his assertion that all surveys of post-secondary teaching indicate we are lecturing too much relative to what the pedagogical research indicates. So why do we do that? Why do most of us continue to lecture despite the evidence to the contrary of what constitutes the best learning environment for our students?

There are myriad reasons.

One is that to redevelop our teaching approach is too costly. Most faculty evaluation committees (FEC) award merit, tenure, and promotion on the basis of research not teaching. Which is unfortunate because teaching is a scholarly activity. It is certainly not a scholarly activity when all we do is teach how we were taught without keeping abreast of the research evidence for how to improve learning outcomes. Why are we adamant in basing our research programs on published evidence but not require the same of our teaching? Why do many of us assume that we already know how to teach best when we were never actually trained how to teach? Possibly because we were successful being taught under those conditions. However, what many are demanding now is that we design the learning environment so that more students can be successful.

However, our FECs do not award sabbaticals for redesigning courses or programs even though such a redesign would require research. Teaching is often not viewed as a scholarly activity and hence is not rewarded as such.

So that is Bowen's take on transforming our in-class learning experiences by using active learning rather than passive lecturing. This chapter also discusses how to redesign curricula - something in which my campus is currently engaged. Bowen makes some bold suggestions about not confusing the package with the product. Learning is the product, not the course or the degree. Our credit system assumes that time spent equals learning. We all know that is not true. Many students earn course credit without the learning sticking. Bowen suggests that using a cookie-cutter approach to all disciplines and programs may not make sense. Maybe what constitutes a program in the humanities is different from what it is in the sciences or creative arts. Perhaps units of learning are different. Maybe professional programs are best mastered in smaller concentrated units where students take one or two courses over six weeks, whereas others require integration of multiples ideas over time and thus requires 3 or four courses completed simultaneously over 15 weeks. We don't need to assume that the same programs require the same curricular structure.

A point Bowen makes that has particular resonance for me is to scaffold learning over the time that students are learning. Educational programs need to be designed so that students' learning and skill mastery are developed to increasing levels of proficiency as they progress through their education years. This requires a different level of expectation of students' writing and thinking in their first and second years relative to their third and fourth (or fifth) years. How do we scaffold that into our courses? It means that there does need to be some linearity in course sequencing: students cannot take any course at any time in any sequence. Skills are developed sequentially over time. There is a foundational knowledge that students must first master so that they have something to draw upon when they are critically thinking, researching, or communicating.

So Bowen throws out some suggestions to see what might stick as colleges and universities try to determine how to recreate how learning occurs on our campuses in the midst of the myriad of online learning resources. As he has argued before in the book, faculty need to view themselves as curators of content and coaches of skill development. We do not need to tell students what to learn. We simply need to point them where the resources are located and then hold them accountable in our classrooms where we can then coach our students as they actively learn how to apply their learning. Of course, this will require the occasional mini-lecture in order to clarify student misconceptions. But most of our time should be spent in class engaging the students in the application of their learning in order to provide them with the opportunity to develop their thinking, researching, and communicating skills. And of course, the balance between telling students what to learn vs students applying what they are learning will depend on the level of student learning ability, on the level of the particular course, or the demands of a particular discipline.

I very much appreciate Bowen's suggestion that FECs and dept chairs provide space for failure as faculty try to implement new teaching strategies and curricular structures. We always tell our students that the best teacher is failure. Why do we not do the same for instructors as they develop their ability to teach? Why do we not do the same for programs as they field test different program structures? Bowen suggests that perhaps we need to approach changing our learning environments in terms of smaller incremental changes rather than large punctuations. That way if something does not work it is easier to backpedal and try something different. This is certainly what I have read in the SoTL literature - don't change everything in our teaching and learning all at the same time. Make the change in a manageable way that permits reassessment. The suggestions in Teaching Naked amount to a culture change in teaching and learning. And changing any culture takes time - if it happens too quickly there will be resistance and burnout.

Resources

Bligh, D. A. (1998). Evidence of what lectures achieve. In What’s the use of lectures? (5th ed., pp. 10–23). Exeter: Intellect.

Bowen, J. A. (2012). The naked curriculum. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 10. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 243-266.

Ellis, C. (2010, November 16). Tweckling, iconoclasm and lecturing as a normative discourse: Reflections on two ALT-C keynotes. cathellis13.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–5.

Haave, N. (2017). Assessing teaching to empower learning. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching, 10, iii–ix.

Moran, L. (2015, January 11). Why can’t we teach properly?

Stains, M., Harshman, J., Barker, M. K., Chasteen, S. V., Cole, R., DeChenne-Peters, S. E., … Young, A. M. (2018). Anatomy of STEM teaching in North American universities. Science, 359(6383), 1468–1470.

Weimer, M. (2013). Taking a developmental approach. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 218–238). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

Monday 30 April 2018

teaching naked: the educational product in the internet age

I became somewhat sad when I first read this 8th chapter. Sad because I feel a sense of loss for how higher education is changing as Bowen describes it. On the other hand, the possibilities he envisions for how teaching and learning can be an active, engaged process is incredibly invigorating.

There is nothing new in this chapter that he has not been alluding to in the previous chapters. But he clearly articulates why he expects higher ed to change in response to the online educational resources becoming freely available. He uses the example of the music and book industry to illustrate his point. It was recording & print technology that transformed these two professions/industries. In both cases performing music and providing books was a local, social, live experience. In the 19th C, you could only hear music if you played it yourself or went to hear a live performance. As a result, local performers and composers had a niche livelihood. This changed first with the ability to print sheet music - international compositions could now be played and heard - and then recording which increased listeners’ expectations for a flawless performance. Online availability of music and books again changed the industry and professions by enabling a few star performers to monopolize what was read and listened, but it also changed the nature of performer vs composer. With recording, the performance became more important than the composition. Online consumption of music and books changed from being social and local to individualized/private and global.

Bowen thinks the same thing will happen with higher ed with a few gatekeepers producing standardized introductory courses (History 101, Chemistry 101, Biology 101, etc) available online but perhaps, as has happened with online sales of books, produce sufficient numbers to warrant more niche courses locally produced. Bowen’s advice is to embrace the coming change and remake traditional courses into hybrids which use freely available online lectures delivered by excellent lecturers but still meet face to face with students and instructors. Course instructors then become curators of online content and in-class guides for how to think with that content. This coalesces well with the movement to change higher ed teaching from sage on the stage to guide on the side. Hybrid courses (blended learning) could facilitate this revisioning of what it means to teach. Rather than teaching being the delivery of content, teaching becomes coaching to think with that content. And Bowen argues that this has already been available and possible with textbooks. Textbooks can play the same role as online content - something I have always also argued. Use the textbook for delivering the rote learning outside of class and use the in-class experience to practice thinking and applying that content.

This is basically what Bowen is arguing for with Teaching Naked: stop being the sage and become the guide. Instructors should curate the course content not deliver the course content. Of course, he is more nuanced than this. It is not a cookie cutter approach. Each course and locality will require particular approaches for the local students because teaching in higher ed will continue to primarily cater to the local populace. But the principle is still sound: move content acquisition out of the classroom and move engaged thinking with the content (I like the idea of playing with the content) inside the classroom.

This is something that I have been trying to do with my implementation of Team-Based Learning in my classes which has been met with some resistance from students. And student resistance to this sort of active learning that results from flipping the classroom has been documented many times in the literature by different educators. Reading Tanner’s reflection on teaching a large introductory biology course and also rereading Weimer’s Learner-Centered Teaching reminds me that it is possible to transition a class from passive didactic lecture to engaged active learning if the time is taken to acculturate students to a new way of viewing what teaching and learning are. This requires a myriad of things to keep in mind when becoming a naked teacher. It requires being transparent with students about the pedagogical reasons for doing so but also being mindful of students’ cognitive load and time for the effort at being independent learners outside of class. Higher education aspires to produce self-regulating independent learners, but it does not happen on the first day of students' first year of university. So, I think it is even more nuanced than Bowen asserts about curating content in large introductory courses. Of course, this could change if students are given the experience of flipped learning in their primary and secondary education. But until students are experienced learners with naked teaching, it will require instructors to be careful with its implementation nurturing their students’ understanding from passive recipients of knowledge to active seekers and creators of knowledge.

Resources

Bowen, J. A. (2012). The educational product in the internet age. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 9. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 217-242.

King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College Teaching, 41(1), 30–35.

Prince, M., & Weimer, M. (2017, November 2). Understanding student resistance to active learning. Faculty Focus Premium.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

Tanner, K. D. (2011). Moving theory into practice: A reflection on teaching a large, introductory biology course for majors. CBE-Life Science Education, 10(2), 113–122.

Weimer, M. (2013). Taking a developmental approach. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 218–238). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.


Friday 27 April 2018

teaching naked: the naked classroom

This 8th chapter continues the argument inside the classroom. Now that Bowen has explained the advantages of using technology to move content mastery outside of the classroom, he offers suggestions for how to use the time freed up in class to produce a more engaging learning environment inside the classroom. Many of these ideas I have heard before and some I have implemented. But it is worth thinking about the difficulty in designing these in-class activities. And I appreciate his supportive stance that developing the active learning classroom takes time. Just because it does not work as smoothly as your well-polished lectures does not mean that the attempt should be abandoned. It takes time to become an excellent teacher. And he makes a distinction between students complaining about the pedagogy when really what they are noticing is the quality of its implementation. This is something that I have experienced in my implementation of team-based learning. Many students complain about my use of TBL thinking that it is a poor pedagogy when the real issue is that I need to improve how I implement its use. Knowing when students need a guiding lecture vs when they need an activity to either wake them up or solidify conceptual understanding is a skill that I am still attempting to master. In addition, the skilful implementation of active learning requires that the instructor appropriately pitches the difficulty of the material because we are expecting students to engage the material first before coming to class. It is critical that that first contact not be too beyond their abilities. Most textbooks are not necessarily written with the understanding that this will be students' first contact with the material. Just as in the Star Trek universe where the Federation has established guidelines for first contact with an alien species, instructors (and textbooks) need to consider what is at stake and how to best manage first contact between students and the course material. This is the challenge I have with implementing active learning - knowing how to pitch the initial reading assignment (which pages? which figures? Are there sections that should be skipped?) and to what level should students be held accountable for their pre-reading? What I expect them to be able to do on a reading quiz is different from what I expect them to do on a MT or final exam. This will likely be different for every discipline, every cohort of students, and year level of course and student. Which means that a master teacher can never completely rely on what was prepared for the previous iteration of the course: a new instance of the course will require careful consideration of the course context in students’ real time. This is a difficult task.

Resources

Bowen, J. A. (2012). The naked classroom. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 8. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 185-214.