Here is a quick thought on the questions posted for this weeks discussion :
1) What do institutions of higher education currently do for people seeking refuge (refugees, asylum seekers, people fleeing forced migration, etc.)?
The most important factor is that university admissions are not based on citizenship status. In graduate school, this is in site of the fact that some of the funding opportunities requires citizenship.
2) What do you think institutions of higher education should do for people seeking refuge ?
I’m jotting down ideas for specific to our contemporary situation:
Purging databases that might compromise refugees in a legal challenge given the volatility of the decisions in current administration.
Diversifying funding sources from federal funding to mitigate the pressure points of a federal government hostile to inclusion. States (VA itself or others), philanthropists and global partnerships are examples of funding sources.
Provide legal services to refugees, as has been done on other occasions (+)
When I was a girl, I would often retreat to my favorite thinking place: a fallen, yet still-growing tree on the highest hill on my family’s land and there I would spend time until either my brother found me or until my parents would call me inside for supper. I recall liking this activity because I was alone with my thoughts and it game me time to reflect on the things that had happened to me during the day and I could spend some time wondering. Much of that wonder translated into the subjects I would pick to read about on trips to the library with my mother and brother.
Reading Bell Hook’s Critical Thinking in Teaching Critical Thinking (2010), I resonated with so much of what was written, but the statement “the heartbeat of critical thinking is the longing to know–to understand how life works” gets to the root of what motivated me all those years ago to seek refuge in nature for time and space to think.
In my early schooling, critical thinking was both encouraged and discouraged–depending on who was teaching the class. I had the good fortune of being identified early on as a bright student and was placed into a gifted classroom for a couple of hours each week. In this alternative classroom, I had opportunities to engage in a wide range of critical thinking exercises and early research projects that gave me invaluable experience which I believe has helped me on my educational journey.
At the same time, though, I was in mainstream classes for most of the day, and the fact that I was separated from the group in this other setting was alienating for me. I was rejected by some of my peers and despite this, I tried my best to fit in. It was in these mainstream classes that the desire and will to think critically was nearly educated out of me. Or as Hooks puts it, students are taught “that all they will need to do is consume information and regurgitate it at appropriate moments.” The asking of difficult questions or any deviation from this model of memorize & regurgitate will get you disciplined–sometimes embarrassed in front of the group–or dismissed from the class entirely. (Which did happen to me on occasion as I spent a year locked in a battle of wits with my 9th grade Mississippi history teacher who preferred to discuss JR Varsity baseball over the course material. This was not a unique experience, I had several teachers like Coach who didn’t see me except as a source of dissent in their ranks.)
[I am apparently not the only one with this experience. Debjit Gupta discusses a similar experience in his post this week Whose Fault is it Anyway?]
I have mixed feelings when I reflect on these past experiences. On one hand, I count myself as lucky and fortunate to have been born into a society that values education and so I was actually able to attend a decent public school. At home, I had the comfort and security that comes from having two working parents, food in my belly, and a roof over my head. I can’t claim that I didn’t have it good. On the other hand, I am sad that for the parts of my education and experience that contributed to the self-doubt, the extreme self-consciousness, and the anxiety that I developed and carry with me in adulthood. It is quite the opposite of the critical thinking outcome we would wish on our students.
I want to be the best teacher I can be. School should be exciting and fun because real learning is going on. I want to give my students a meaningful and empowering experience. It’s a disservice to my students (and to mankind) to not hold myself accountable and to not think through what kind of a person I am going to be in the classroom and what kind of impact will be felt years from now as a result of my pedagogical philosophies. While these are the ideas and questions I have at the beginning of my journey, Kathryn Culbertson shares some insight from her experience and comments on universal truths in her post this week #IAmACuriousBeing that are definitely worth reading.
So this week has been extremely powerful and has had a real impact on the way I think about education. When I read the final paragraph of the excerpt I cited from Hooks, my heart leaped and I thought “YES! This is what I will do, this is who I will be.” And so that powerful paragraph goes like this:
“The most exciting aspect of critical thinking in the classroom is that it calls for initiative from everyone, actively inviting all students to think passionately and to share ideas in a passionate, open manner. When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. In such a community of learning there is no failure. Everyone is participating and sharing whatever resource is needed at a given moment in time to ensure that we leave the classroom knowing that critical thinking empowers us.”
This concept of a learning community is so inspiring to me. Students must understand that we are all learning–that there is no shame in speaking up and asking questions or participating in the conversation.
The main part of my blog post this week was on Bell Hook’s writing, but I wanted to mention the other part of this week’s assignments. I never heard Paulo Freire speak before this week, but since I discovered this interview, I realize I have been missing out. I watched the Literacy.org interview with Paulo Friere over and over. He touches on so many interesting subjects–on ethics, critical thinking, education, literacy, language, and power.
Curiosity is a process that leads to learning. Learning is the active part of an education. To fight back against injustice, education is absolutely necessary–just as important as the language necessary to communicate. In a world that seems so divided, we must remember that there are core values that unify us all. Simply put, we all want to live the good life. So as Freire speaks on tolerance, another learning moment resonates within me:
“It is through the exercise of tolerance that I discover the rich possibility of doing things and learning different things with different people. Being tolerant is not a question of being naive. On the contrary, it is a duty to be tolerant–an ethical duty, an historical duty, a political duty but it does not demand that I lose my personality.” -Paulo Freire
“A duty to be tolerant–an ethical duty, [a] historical duty, a political duty but it does not demand that I lose my personality.” This will be my argument against those who fear and fight against openness and diversity. You’d think we’d be well past these issues, but I agree with Bell Hook’s reference to John Dewey in “Democratic Education:” “‘democracy has to be born anew in each generation, and education is its midwife.'”
Amen to that, Freire, Hook, & Dewey! And that’s why we’re all here: to gain the tools necessary to go out into the world to educate (and be educated). We are life-long learners, we’re here to help birth a generation of thinkers. As future educators and thinkers in general, we are all working to propel society forward towards truth and understanding.
Reference:
Hooks, B. (2010) “Critical Thinking.” Teaching Critical Thinking. Routledge.
Hooks, B. (2010) “Democratic Education.” Teaching Critical Thinking. Routledge.
In this post, I wanted to make a brief comment on diversity in general, discuss diversity in higher education, and then I have a few thoughts on diversity in professional offices. I’ll conclude by talking about inclusive pedagogy. It goes hand-in-hand with creating a community environment and appreciating the opportunity for innovative thinking.
I am a proponent of diversity. I believe it broadens our horizons and aids us in our personal development.
Katherine Phillips in “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter” makes some interesting and thought provoking statements on diversity and how it enriches our thinking environments and fosters creativity. Based on decades of social science research, Phillips distills the idea of diversity down into this concept: “The key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity. When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions and perspectives.”
Building on the idea of informational diversity, it makes sense to reason our best classrooms, labs, and studio environments will develop through having a diverse group of students in our academic programs. So why is it that some programs seem to struggle with diversity? It’s not that they aren’t diverse because they don’t want to be, but I believe for reasons relating to outreach, recruitment, access, and privilege. These reasons could be thought of as barriers to diversity and are born out of different contexts.
Outreach is the first barrier to diversity in higher education. One of the major tenants of land grant universities is to serve the people of the state/area that it calls home. We in higher education talk a big game about outreach and connecting with the community, and in most cases, this would be warranted because an impact is being made. But I bring outreach up as a barrier because I believe that we could be trying harder to connect with the communities we serve and sharing our knowledge with them. It’s hard because it takes effort, but we should be trying harder to integrate with area schools and not just feel satisfied if we have a “successful” program for just one or two years. We must be relentless in our outreach–especially to the youth–for they are the key to our future and we need to spark the imaginations of children so that they might grow up and respond to the complex problems our world is facing.
I participated in a water conservation conference (fair) targeted at primary school students when I was a little girl. There were probably hundreds of children there exploring the booths, learning about water, and getting a taste of what applied science looks like. I didn’t know then that this would be such a momentous occasion for me, but it always stuck with me. I’ve always cared about conserving natural resources and environmental issues and this educational event was just one of many that contributed to my research and philosophy today. Had the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Mississippi State University Extension and other sponsors not put on the fair, I wonder if I would have developed my passion for protecting the environment?
Recruitment is a barrier to diversity for both the institution as well as potential students. If students out there don’t know that they could go on to higher education, they end up getting missed entirely. For universities to attract quality students, they need prospective students to be aware of the opportunities in front of them. Waiting until students are in their final years of secondary school is almost too late to start. Sure, institutions of higher learning could get lucky and attract top students who are planning to go to college. Conversely, had they targeted younger students sooner, they could have sparked the curiosity of a young student and set them on a path they wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. It comes down to more than just outreach from the university–individual programs would benefit from spending time outside the silo–or inviting prospective students in–so that they can learn about what their options might be for programs of study.
Think about how you found your profession. Was your track slated for you? Did you discover your discipline early in life? Did you experience a crisis and fall into what you’re doing because a career counselor had experience interpreting Myers-Briggs Personality Tests** and Career Aptitude Tests for wayward students?
**this link leads to a version I found online and I can’t be sure of the accuracy of the instrument…but I’d be willing to guess that it’s accurate enough to be fun!
For some, like myself, I didn’t really know what a landscape architect (LA) did let alone what the entire discipline was about when I stepped foot in their courtyard at Mississippi State University so many years ago. In retrospect, the choice made sense, because my father is in construction and excavation and my mother is a Master Gardener, but I never thought of it as an option for myself because I didn’t really understand what LA’s actually did! From experience, I see where a gap in my learning early on (not understanding the profession) meant that it took me much longer to discover my calling because I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to describe what was missing for me. Could the LA Department have found me sooner? Would that have made a difference in my trajectory? It’s hard to say, but I do know that it was an opportunity nearly missed and I am grateful that I started down this path. Had I not asked “what if?” I would likely still be serving Jager-Bombs, draft pints, and pizza in Starkville, MS’s most beloved and iconic establishment Dave’s Dark Horse Tavern.
But I digress.
If I hadn’t been recruited into both my Master’s program at MSU and again for my attendance here at Virginia Tech, I imagine I would be living a very different life than I am right now. I count myself lucky to have been both in the right place at the right time AND to have been fortunate enough to get noticed!
Access is a barrier to diversity for obvious reasons. It is well accepted that there are certain groups in the population that have less fundamental access to education, let alone higher education. Perhaps the barriers manifest due to financial constraints, (error in) standardized testing, or just not having the support at home so that a student doesn’t feel like they can dream big and pursue interesting careers.
Privilege. Ok this one is a little bit difficult/uncomfortable for me to talk about and so I am going to address the topic gently. First, if you aren’t sure what privilege is, I have linked a short video below that is a good introduction on the topic.
Merriam-Webster gives two definitions for privilege: “:a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor :prerogative; especially:such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office.”
Talking about privilege is uncomfortable for me because I do enjoy certain privileges–and for a long time, I really had no concept of this, and for that I am more than just a little embarrassed. I think of myself as a caring, empathetic person; yet, how can I be if I am/remain completely clueless about the issues and challenges facing my fellow humans? Don’t get me wrong. I follow world news and am aware of conflicts around the world and the unfortunate plight of man in different places where there might be one or more factors (climate, resource limitation, social network, governance, systemic racism, etc.) beyond a person’s control that work against the success of that person. Peggy McIntosh’s piece “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” identified several conditions of life that resonated with me–some that I did enjoy and others that I didn’t.
For me to be able to talk about and comment on privilege means I have to unpack my own so that I can bring a heightened level of awareness to the front of my attention. I can’t be thoughtful about the issue in general if I don’t spend a little time trying to identify, for myself, what privilege has meant in my own life. In a nod to Shankar Vedantam’s theories in his book & podcast “The Hidden Brain,” I have to take back control of my brain and suspend the autopilot function. I day this because it has been extremely easy to not address my own implicit bias and think about how privilege manifests in my own life.
The difficulty I struggle with when talking about privilege is not unlike what Arao & Clemens describe in their (2013) article “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces” where people participating in this discussion feel uncomfortable as they are pushed to think through the issue and come to terms with their own privilege. I don’t feel unsafe, but what I do feel is a twinge of guilt for being ignorant in the past. I feel frustration for others who are dealing with obstacles in their lives every day. I understand the implicit imbalance in our society and that there are some people who are deeply wounded by their circumstance. I can’t apologize for being born into the life I am blessed to have, but I can honestly say that I am sorry that “the deck” (of life) was stacked for some and not others.
Privilege is an ugly and uncomfortable part of our (global) culture. By law and in the eyes of God, we are all equal; but by birth and circumstance, we are not. So what does that mean for learners, prospective students, and the university?
Well, if we accept that different people inherently expose us to new ideas, cultural norms, and ways of thinking that promote creativity, than it means that we need to be reaching out to those underrepresented students who do not enjoy the same level of privilege as those in the majority/power/white males. I’m not saying that white males should not be recruited or encouraged to attend college–what I’m saying is that we should try doubly hard to reach the Latino/a, African-American, Native American, female, working-class/poor/rural students who likely experience hardships with respect to access, outreach, and recruitment into higher education and would undoubtedly benefit from the environment and also bring their own diverse experiences to it. When people with less privilege have their needs met and a pathway to success, there can be no limit on their potential achievement.
Research says that students do better when they see people like them as their instructors and as practitioners in their profession. Claude Steele discusses these ideas **2 articles in the reference section** and concludes that students do better when they are 1) not worried about not doing well because of being stereotyped and 2) when in groups that contain people of similar background.
So between outreach, recruitment, access, and understanding privilege, the university (and academic programs in general) can work to increase the informational diversity of academia by inviting eligible students from diverse backgrounds to come study. I firmly believe that we need more underrepresented people–people of color, women, etc. in higher education and working as professionals in their discipline in the work force. Humanity is diverse and we should promote an environment of active inclusion and once we get the students through the door, show them that they matter through inclusive pedagogy in the classroom.
Inclusive pedagogy is the final and most important piece. We, as academics and rising educators, must be sensitive to the humanity present in our classrooms and that each individual has their own story, their own set of goals, and motivators–ideas that will define their individuality as well as their homogeneity with the rest of the group. We may be a diverse population, but first and foremost we are human beings. Successful instructors facilitate active learning through setting up an environment that allows every student to feel like they belong, like they are appreciated, and like they have something to contribute.
C.L. Bohannon leads freshman in a sketching course outside Burruss Hall. In this critique, everyone’s work is reviewed and everyone participates in the discussion.
References:
Arao, B. & Clemens, K. (2013). “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces.” The Art of Effective Facilitation.
McIntosh, P. (n.d.) “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
Mindful learning. It’s such a powerful concept. As one of the last blog posts going up this week, I had the pleasure of reading the reflections of so many of my classmates before I composed this post. I have to say that was probably the best thing for me as I have been struggling with what mindful learning should/could look like for an educator in the design field. I enjoyed reading my classmate’s stories because I realized that we all have a shared experience of classrooms/learning environments that are not actually designed for student learning. Each story I read was different, some students shared stories of triumph over the obstacles that stood between them and accomplishment; others were sadder: reflections on surviving in an educational system that wasn’t designed to educate but to test.
In the end, I realized it’s not what you teach, but how you teach. Dissecting “how you teach” for me became another series of questions I’m asking myself: what will my lessons be like if I’m going to encourage mindful learning? How do I create a culture and environment in the classroom that can facilitate the learning outcomes I want for my students? What small changes can I begin to incorporate so that I can systematically overhaul my teaching style to reflect the kind of educator I want to be for my students? What can I do to make sure that every student leaves my class feeling like they gained something beneficial?
For any readers that are new to this concept, here is the link to the TED talk given by Sir Ken Robinson “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.” It’s a 19 minutes well-spent.
So here’s the honest truth: there’s a learner in each of us. It’s human nature to be able to grow as learners. To suggest that some people are just incapable or don’t want to–well, to me, that’s just preposterous. To give up on a difficult student is a failure of the educator and the system that the student is in. Sir Robinson is right: “Teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system.”
Coming up, I could tell the difference from day 1 in the classroom whether or not the class was going to be fun, exciting, and something to look forward to or if it was going to be difficult in the sense that I was going to have to force myself to survive it until the term was over. Even today, I can generally tell on the first day of class what my experience is probably going to be like over the upcoming semester. And despite there being all of these awesome resources out there-seminars, TED talks, workshops, and the like–we still seem to have a large population of our educators who either don’t know or just don’t get it. I’m a class right now that I find super-fascinating and I’m excited to be learning the topic–but the lectures—well, they’re fast, full of jargon, and truth be told, after the hour and a half is up, I find myself thinking “what in the hell just happened?” Because I don’t remember a bit of what he just said. Thankfully, I’ve learned to develop an independent reading list from the sources that get cited on the PowerPoint or else I would be completely lost. I’m determined to make it through the course, but it’s proving to be a rough ride. So then I think about it in the context of this course, and I wonder: why isn’t it fun for me? What can I do as the student to make this more fun? I don’t have an answer to those questions yet.
But learning IS fun and exciting (I wouldn’t have chosen to spend my life learning new things if it wasn’t!) And learning IS an adventure (Thank you Dr. Nelson!) So why, if these ideas about changing the way we approach teaching and learning are we still running into educators (and administrators) who don’t appreciate that there is a difference and there is room for they themselves to grow?
Again, I don’t have an answer to this question, but I’m working on a philosophy. In the meantime, I am working hard to change how I choose to think, act, and react in the classroom (and out of it). Bringing mindfulness to every aspect of my life has been a real challenge–I’m having to step outside of myself and learn to view the world with a new perspective. I’m fighting falling into the trap of automatic behavior, thinking, and responses. Just because we were trained in our formative years to be good little students doesn’t mean that we were actually being trained to be good learners and thinkers.
For me, the real challenge is learning how to see the difference and then changing my approach so that I can be a facilitator instead of a road-block in my own classroom and learning environments. I’m grateful for this experience in Contemporary Pedagogy–every week, there are new seeds planted and I am eager to support this personal growth.
I’m late writing my blog this week because we had a family emergency over the weekend. I have a 9-month old who has been very ill the last few weeks. Friday night was pretty difficult. She spiked a fever, so we returned to the doctor Saturday morning and we ended up spending the night in the Pediatric wing at Carilion in Radford for her to undergo some testing and receive IV fluids. Lucky for all of us, she had a positive response to the new medication they placed her on and we were able to return home Sunday to continue her care. After a sleepless weekend I am finally starting to catch up with my academic life (as I put everything on the back burner for a couple of days), but I’m still feeling pretty scatter-brained from the mental and physical exhaustion. The lessons on mindfulness were extremely helpful in coping with the ups and downs of the last few days. Interesting how that works.
I have a past that I once considered dark. I was embarrassed to admit to any new friends I made that I had once been a hardcore gamer. For about 3 years during my undergraduate years (a decade ago), mostly summers and over holiday breaks when I wasn’t working, I spent my time plugged into World of Warcraft (WoW)… not casually playing–grinding for resources, completing quests, raiding, and participating in team PvP combat. It was never dull! I had multiple top-level characters-my favorites were a human warlock and a Draenai priest, that I played with friends in real life and with friends I had met online. I was embarrassed to talk about my gaming past because of the reactions I would get from people. If I wasn’t getting a blank, yet horrified stare, the person I was talking to might be laughing or snickering at me for my juvenile, time-wasting hobby.
But I never saw it as a waste of time. I learned a lot in those games about social interaction, team work, planning, communication, and problem solving that I don’t think I would have had an equivalent opportunity to experience in real life. Especially in an age where communication and learning is increasingly happening online and in the digital realm, I believe it is increasingly important that we all practice our skills so that we are ready to engage with other people/learners whom we might not be working with face-to-face.
Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown in “A New Culture of Learning” talk about how gaming is a highly social activity that can bring together and engage multiple generations while also allowing the players to direct themselves in the play. I think this is an insightful way to look at WoW and other games like it. It is a simulation of a fantasy world, sure–but that doesn’t make the learning outcomes any less real or valuable.
Jumping into a “traditional” classroom, we think of a teacher in front of a class full of students and what are they doing? Well, they might be doing something out-of-the-box that’s fun and engaging, but more than likely, they’re doing the same thing we teachers have always been doing–they’re lecturing their class to death and they’re wondering “what is it about the students these days?”
News flash: it’s not the students. It’s you. It’s me. It’s us. It’s educators who have been so focused on career development/their own learning/whatever, you name it–that they’ve forgotten what it was like to be a student having to struggle through another exhausting lecture-based class.
Just last week, I had to give a presentation to a class that I’m the Research Assistant for and since I was in a relative hurry and the information wasn’t exactly “interesting” per se, I created a basic PowerPoint to deliver the information and at first, was satisfied with my work/preparation. During the 20 minute presentation, though, I discovered quickly that I had made a mistake. I was the only one that talked. No one really asked any questions. I was trying hard not to read the slides, but found myself stumbling through the information. I was probably 4 minutes into it when I noticed I “lost” my first student, and I was only half way through before one of the professors on record walked out because what I was doing/delivering was clearly a waste of his time. In retrospect, especially after the readings this week, I realize that I would have done them a better service to send the class an email with links to the websites where I pulled the information from and then spent that same 20 minutes discussing the case studies rather than boring everyone to death with policy discussion.
The big question I’ve been asking myself since then is: “How am I going to do it better next time?” and “What am I going to do differently?” From Jean Lacoste’s Teaching Innovation Statement, I pulled this quote because it really resonated with me: “I want to reach every single student in the class. I want each student to feel important, and I want each to know I care about his or her education.” And it’s true. I really do care about each and every one of my students. I want them to get the most out of our time together, yet when given the opportunity to really help them, I feel like I set myself up for failure by following the same model for classroom interactions every week. (But that’s why I’m in this course now–so that I can learn to be better. One of my personal mantras is “Know Better, Do Better” and pedagogy is no exception. I decided to go into education because I LOVE learning, yet I realize that I don’t know all that much about teaching, yet.
I am going to wrap this blog post with an excerpt from the Robert Talbert reading:
“Notice also that I do not count whether a lecture is inspiring or not. No doubt many lectures are inspiring, but being inspired and being taught are not the same thing, and just having one’s thoughts provoked doesn’t mean that one has interacted with the lecturer in any real way.”
As I look to the future and imagine opportunities where I will be able to make a difference to my students, I will start by not “teaching” with the same stale lecture and exhausting PowerPoint that I have elected to use in the past. These methods are outdated by contemporary standards, and we owe it to our students to do a better job at meeting their educational, social, and creative needs. There are so many different innovative, exciting, and engaging examples of how educators are out there today, providing a completely new and inspiring educational experience.
So how will I be different in the future? Well, I’m going to start by slowing down a little bit. I’m going to slow down and start paying closer attention to the things that inspire me and capture my attention–and then I’m going to study those methods. I’m going to be mindful about my own learning experiences and see if there are things from my past that I can draw on in order to grow into a better version of myself (who is actually an amazing educator!) I will be thoughtful and thorough when it comes to my course material because I owe it to my students to provide them the best education that I possibly can–and that if they’re going to show up ready to be taught, then I am certainly going to meet them on their terms.
Inspired by people and enabled by technology. I believe we’re looking at a revolution in academic information sharing.
A good research topic might be to trace the history of the Blog and describe its evolution as a platform for discourse. I had my first blog in 2002, when I was a high school student and the cool thing to do was create a space to talk about ourselves and life in general.
Fast forward 15 years and blogging is making waves as a cutting edge tool for learning and engagement in the classroom. This year alone, I have had blogging requirements in 3 courses I have taken and a class blog is being developed in the course I am a research assistant for. There are so many different applications for blogs: hobbyists, artists, and poets need a place to share as much as any academic driven by their research. Maybe blogging’s most important benefit is that it provides a space for people to be able to share, collaborate, and discuss the things in their lives that they are most passionate about, as Tim Hitchcock, academic humanist, writes in his article about new technologies like blogs and Twitter benefit the academia. Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin gives a compelling argument in under two minutes in this interview with Tom Peters: there is no better time to be writing than right now. We could all use the practice at communicating ourselves. With a little bit of time and effort, anyone can develop a rich and detailed website.
But it’s more than that, there are droves of experts who have made their life’s work communications and how to utilize them effectively in these modern times.
One of my biggest blogging challenges is myself. I get in my own way, second-guessing and attempting to perfect every piece of writing before publishing. I often spend so much time worrying over how I am trying to make a point, that I waste valuable working minutes (hours) staring at a computer screen and a pile of hand-written notes. I would be better off to just get the words and ideas out–no matter how rough they are–and then take time afterwards to refine. It’s easier to edit if you have something TO edit.
While reading Doug Belshaw’s Working openly on the web: a manifesto I was thinking about my own challenges to blogging and I was surprised because this manifesto was so simplistic. In 3 short points, Belshaw sets up a recipe for effective writing online: 1 control your own digital capital, 2 work openly, 3 create content that both humans and machines can read. Here I am worrying about style, and there are experts who are advising for writers to consider robots who mine the internet for content. And then this got me thinking: what does a robot look for, anyways?
The first day of class was an amazing experience. I am beginning to think of teaching in new ways and we haven’t even dug deep into the course content yet! I see the trend in academia emphasizing blogs more and more–as well as other technologies–instead of solely relying on peer-reviewed published works, I see academics using these platforms as a way to jump right to the point, sharing ideas as they happen in near-real time. There are new, innovative ways to share information and study that are hitting the market every day. Take for instance, Hypothes.is a tool designed to annotate the web! With this program, collaborators can take and share notes and ideas right on a webpage! This is the real beauty of Networked Learning, where technology allows students, faculty, and learners alike to all come together in the same sphere to read, comment, write, and share ideas-digitally.
As promised, I’m posting an assortment of “gems” from the draft syllabi we workshopped in Grad 5114 a few weeks ago. This collection is suggestive rather than exhaustive, and I’ve removed names unless you specifically indicated that it was ok to include them. Lots of inspiration here! Course Descriptions / Introductions: “Whether or not you …
Working with the Open Learning cMOOC (#OpenLearning17) has given me the opportunity to re-connect with one of the most inspirational and talented educators I know. During her long tenure at Virginia Tech Dr. Shelli Fowler developed and taught a graduate course called “Pedagogical Practices in Contemporary Contexts.” A jewel in the crown of certificate programs in Transformative Graduate Education and Training the Future Professoriate, Contemporary Pedagogy brings together graduate students from across the university in a seminar devoted to developing a distinct teaching praxis. Shelli designed the course, which is known across campus as “GEDI” (the Graduate Education Development Institute) to help graduate students acquire the diverse and flexible skill sets they need to succeed and lead as teacher/scholar/professionals in the changing landscape of higher education. It works at multiple levels — as a professional development forum for early-career teachers, as an interdisciplinary discussion of the challenges and commonalities of engaging undergraduates at a Research I university, and as a site of critical engagement over the connections between the philosophical underpinnings and practical application of pedagogy (praxis).
When Shelli moved to VCU in the fall of 2015, she asked me to continue offering the class for the graduate school. I was delighted to help, because the course, its creator, and its constituency had terrific reputations. I also welcome any and all opportunities to work with students outside my main area of expertise. As I’ve learned to teach GEDI over the last few terms I have been inspired by the passion students bring to the linked endeavors of professional development, interdisciplinary dialogue, and critical engagement with pedagogy. I have been invigorated by their talent and willingness to grow and learn from each other. And above all, I have been mightily impressed with the form and substance of Shelli’s curriculum. I have tweaked the corners of the reading list, updating a few things here and there. But the only major change I made to was to shift more of the interaction and content creation into the open and into connected spaces. The arc and substance remain Shelli’s.
*Pronounced like “Jedi” – as in “GEDI’s use the Force to Cultivate Curiosity.” The current course website is here: https://amynelson.net/gedis19/ Find us on Twitter @GEDIVT and #gediVT.
AN: Tell me about the Genesis of GEDI: Where (and when) did you start, and how did you move from concept to implementation? What was your main goal for the course?
SF: GEDI began in the spring of 2003 as a pilot graduate seminar with around 18 students. I was a new addition to the Learning Technologies division (new TLOS) at Virginia Tech. The VP of my unit, Dr. Anne Moore met with the new Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Karen DePauw, to explore how her unit might collaborate with and support the new Dean’s Transformative Graduate Education (TGE) initiative. The idea of a professional development experience focused on teaching and learning for the 21st century, one that supplemented and moved beyond mentoring at the departmental and college levels, was born. Because of my work in faculty development and critical pedagogy, I was tapped to create GEDI. The first couple of semesters it was a small graduate seminar and I worked with the graduate student participants to discover what they knew about teaching and learning, what they wanted to know, and how we could co-create a semester-long seminar experience that provided opportunities to move beyond the still over-utilized ‘stand and deliver’ content-delivery approach that informed their disciplines, both in the experiences as learners and, for those who had done some teaching, in the ways they were expected to teach. The main goal for GEDI was to create a dynamic, active co-learning environment that continually challenges us to reexamine traditional teaching strategies and explore active, connected, critically engaged co-learning across the disciplines and in a wide range of learning environments–small and large, face-to-face, blended, fully digital. As such, I really intended from the very beginning to ‘gently disrupt’–a favorite descriptive phrase of mine, the status quo of teaching and learning practices that students suggested were based on ‘we’ve always done it this’ or ‘it’s efficient and easy to assess,’ or ‘just follow the teaching tips on the handout provided.’ Interestingly, the emphasis on (and some might argue epidemic overvaluing of) assessment as the driver for curricular and pedagogical praxis very often leads to over-simplified student learning outcomes and an attempt to standardize assessment in ways that indicate the teaching (and coverage) of material occurred but that fails to gauge student agency and engagement with, or ability to apply and build upon, curricular knowledge. What was unexpected was how quickly the course grew. By the third semester, the course had gone through the university-wide approval process and became a three-credit, graded, semester-long graduate seminar, GRAD 5114, and a core requirement of the “Preparing the Future Professoriate” nine-credit graduate certificate. This is not a GTA workshop or a college teaching: tips and tricks one-credit course that are common at many institutions. GEDI is a dynamic graduate seminar taught each semester. Until I left Virginia Tech in May 2015, I worked with approximately 90-100 graduate students each year in the course. Doing paradigm-busting with GEDI Knights (as they began to call themselves) has been a great experience for me as both a teacher and a learner. While I love the challenges and opportunities of my new gig at VCU, I miss–and will always miss–the unique TGE program at VT, all of the remarkable GEDIs and the opportunity to work with and learn from our future faculty in that arena.
AN: The syllabus presents a lovely balance between the practical and the theoretical. We start by talking about the mechanics of connecting online via the website, which makes for an easy segue into the concepts of connected learning and active co-learning, which makes it easy to problematize and interrogate some pretty important and often unexamined assumptions about the significance of what we as faculty “do” in our classes, what traditional assessment modalities do (and don’t do), and even what we mean by “learning.” These meta-level issues become concrete in discussions about authentic and sideways learning, and by examining how different teaching modalities work on the ground. Then students have the opportunity to integrate all of this into a learner-centered syllabus. How did this particular configuration of topics come into being and how did you determine how best to integrate the theoretical and applied components of the course?
SF: The exploration and development of one’s own teaching praxis is a central focus of GEDI. A critically engaged Freirean approach requires us to embrace the ways in which our theory must inform our praxis, but also reminds us that our teaching experiences in different contexts must also inform our the theoretical approaches. The specific sequencing of topics on the GEDI syllabus evolved with input from the graduate students. The focus on disrupting unexamined status quo practice is a constant current, no matter what activities and co-created deliverables. That requires reflection, of course. A critically self-reflexive awareness of who one is as a teacher, of how one’s ‘teaching self’ is read and misread, and empowered and/or disempowered, is an important part of the process, too. That work begins in week one of the seminar and informs the work we do together in the readings and the creation of curricular materials that students do relevant to their current or future teaching.
AN: I’m also struck by how the intensity of the course builds through the first seven weeks (and the syllabus project). The topics from these weeks lay the foundation for heart of the matter — Inclusive Pedagogy and Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy. Why are these two topics so important and how do they inform your own teaching praxis?
SF: While an inclusive praxis informs all we do in GEDI, I discovered from the GEDIs that the most honest, deep-dive, open and vulnerable engagement with the topic of diversity, social justice, equity, inclusive excellence occurred after the community of co-learners had been challenging themselves and each other of less fraught topics. We become better listeners, more attentive to the cultural differences among us, when we’ve been doing some collective ‘paradigm-busting’ as a learning community. Rather than begin week one right out of the gate with Freire and inclusive pedagogy–a focus that might unintentionally be (mis)perceived as a prescriptive methodology when a Freirean praxis is intentionally non-prescriptive and essentially an anti-methods pedagogy–GEDIs begin by exploring the broader category of teaching and learning in contemporary U.S. higher education (or K-16 +). They begin to reflect and interact and support and challenge as they discover or articulate what they think and why in their blogging and as they begin to challenge unexamined assumptions about what teaching should be or what constitutes learning. In my work, adapting a Freirean pedagogical praxis is essential, regardless of disciplinary field(s) or course content. The very difficult work for all of us is to invent and (re)invent our praxis so that it is dynamic, rather than static, and stays attentive to equity and access and social justice, domestically and globally. In the GEDI seminar, we begin that process and intend for it to shift and evolve not just throughout the remainder of our seminar but over the span of our teaching.
AN: After the heavy-hitting weeks devoted to inclusivity and Freire, the momentum again shifts in more practical directions. Once again the “deliverables” (a teaching philosophy statement and Problem-Based-Learning / Case study assignment) find powerful undergirding from meta-level framing at the same time they are shaped by very practical “how to” thought-pieces and flowcharts. How did you develop this part of the course in ways that speak to future faculty in all fields — the engineers and other STEM specialists as well as those of us working in the humanities and social sciences?
SF: One of the things that occurs with the move back to what the GEDIs affectionately refer to as ‘tangibles,’ (items such as those you name above that they will use as they construct, or reenvision, their teaching praxis), is a rethinking of the ways their assignments reify traditional power structures in our learning environments. In GEDI, the meta-level framing encourages participants to foster collaborative and inclusive learning environments not just via their syllabus redesign, but in their PBL/case study assignments, for example, with the integration of ethical dilemmas that require students to navigate the complexities of systemic inequities as they learn and apply content to become problem-solvers and problem-posers, including in the STEM fields. I have found that GEDIs in engineering, the sciences, and vet med to be some of the most think-outside-the-box innovators when provided the opportunity to do PBL/case study/ethics curricular design.
AN: The last thing I want to comment on and commend is the way the final module (on ethics in the 21st-Century academy) bring the student back to the notion that we are all in this together. As faculty we face the same challenges and imperatives as our students. We need to commit to learning from and with each other, and to identifying the best ways to make our educational system more humane, ethically oriented, and responsive to a rapidly changing world. Would you like to speak to this?
SF: We are facing similar challenges and imperatives, you’re right. The final curricular segment in GEDI uses a Parker Palmer article, “A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited,” to spark awareness that we as faculty need to foster learning environments that encourage learners’ sense of agency and their understanding that their actions as (future) professionals always have ethical repercussions to which they should attend. And that is the same for those of us in academe, too. It is increasingly important in this current moment–how do we best leverage the power of networked co-learners to build and to shape more humane, ethical, equitable, and responsive educational opportunities and non-institution-like institutions of higher ed? One of my takeaways from working with GEDIs is that it is possible to do this if we value working with and learning from our students.
