Month: March 2016

We have different history textbooks

I was sent to the National Taiwan University in the summer of 2012 as a visiting student for six weeks. I did some cool research on micro fluids in NTU, met some nice friends and had a good time. All in all, I love Taiwan and the time there.

One thing I had wanted to do and did do with my friends there was to go to a book store and check out the history textbooks — sounds crazy and dumb? No. For those who don’t know, here is the thing: there were two Parties in China during and shortly after the Second World War: the Communist Party and Kuomintang. They cooperated with each other during WW2 but started a civil war immediately after the WW2 victory. Then Kuomintang was defeated by the Communist Party and moved to Taiwan. “Legitimacy belongs to the victor”. So in the history textbook in mainland China, the Communist Party is the major force in the war of resistance against Japan. But, I had been hearing the rumor that the history textbook in Taiwan, of which the content is determined by Kuomintang, is different from ours, and said that Kuomintang is actually the leading power to defeat Japan (which, to be honest, I believe is the truth). So, we were curious and went to a bookstore to find out — and it is true! The description tongue and the “facts” written are very different from ours.

Just one simple example in my life of how curriculum is related to power. A more generalized and extreme example can be found in 1984, George O’well’s famous novel. And that’s ONE reason why we need critical pedagogy.

Power to the students

What caught my attention most in the work of Paulo Freire is “respect for what students know”—that is, taking advantage of students’ prior knowledge to learn more than is possible when a supposedly all-knowing professor dictates. I really love this perspective, given my disillusionment with academia and the ivory tower and my pro-blue collar/trade school/indigenous knowledge mindset (Did I mention I want to teach community college? Or just be one of those food critics that gets paid to eat a bunch of food? That’s a thing, right?). Although I have not yet been responsible for teaching a semester-long course, I have led several lectures and labs. I always make an effort to access this existing student knowledge by asking questions in a conversational manner during the lecture (e.g. “Have you ever noticed that…”). Similarly, I like to know where the students are from to tie in examples of natural features near their corresponding homes (e.g. “Who here is from the Piedmont? You’ve probably seen how…”). Note: following the microaggression theme from my last blog post, I ask this of pretty much everyone because I find it interesting; most of the time I actually hope you will be from somewhere different, because the hydrology might be distinct there. I copied this technique from some of my favorite professors because it made the subject matter more approachable and familiar to the students. I always felt a sense of ownership or authority on a given topic that related to me in some way, as if I already knew more than I thought I did. This tactic can be successful in all fields, but I find it especially easy to incorporate in hydrology. Water is all around us, unless maybe you are from a desert (which I would find out by asking where you are from), so we can tap into those subconscious observations to discover that most of us probably know a good deal about hydrology.

Respect for students’ prior knowledge is also critical from a multi/interdisciplinary standpoint. For example, a hydrology or geomorphology course would be essential for a wildlife biologist studying salamanders, but I would also be curious about the hydrological processes these students observe in their line of work (perhaps salamanders congregating near zones of cooler water upwelling in the summer, and where those areas might be?). Or, I would be interested to learn more about water rights from a political science or pre-law student. However, in order to capitalize on what students know, we must first know something about the students. As I mentioned, asking where students are from is one good question, but inquiring about fields of study and extracurricular interests also provides opportunities to connect with the course content and make the material relevant to each individual.

Maybe this is understood or assumed in the work of Freire, but I would add the modification to his model of informed problem-posing rather than simply problem-posing. I am still scarred from a few discussion-based graduate seminars that I guess attempted to get at this problem-posing format. For these seminars, we would read a few peer-reviewed articles, which were always really complicated and archaic and often written by renowned researchers. The professors wanted the students to entirely take charge of the discussion and talk about what was wrong with the paper, what we would do differently, etc. These are great questions and, theoretically, a fine set-up for a graduate-level class. Small problem: despite careful reading, we often did not understand the papers well enough to have this sort of discussion (like, “I think they do something with a sediment sample at some point”). I should clarify, I do believe that being able to work through complex articles that may not be in our area of expertise is an essential skill for graduate students to develop. However, the end result that I witnessed in these purely student-led classes was random babbling and tangents, and I did not feel like I came away with any more knowledge. Incidentally, I have taken really great graduate seminars that also involved reading and discussing articles. The professors in these classes still encouraged student-based discussion but created some structure by providing necessary background on the subject or interjecting with their own questions. At least in my experience, this model was more successful. While I like the problem-posing technique that draws on pre-existing student knowledge, professors should not completely step back, but rather teach concepts and suggest tools that can help solve these problems. I think that students do not normally use their prior knowledge in the classroom because they develop tunnel vision (“I always have to use this equation to get this answer”) and do not necessarily know they are allowed to do anything else. I feel that small prompts and reminders that students should use all of their intellectual resources to tackle a problem, as opposed to just the ones presented in class, can go a long way.

And in honor of my last blog post…

From the journal of a “miserable child”

Last Fall, while I was talking to my parents on the phone, describing my experiences as a student at Virginia Tech, I asked my mother if she had ever imagined I would pursue a doctoral degree. She said (and I kid you not), “Nope, you were such a miserable child in grade school, I never would have thought you would be interested in higher education!”

She was 100 percent correct because in “grade school” I really was a “miserable child”. I was not a miserable child by nature, it just happened in grade school. While reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed where Paulo Freire describes the “banking education” model, I chuckled because it took me back to grade school. I can say I have lived through each one of those bullet points Paulo Freire stated – hence the misery. My parents were always be surprised that I got fantastic grades in any subject that had a “practical” attached to it (basically part of the course during which I had to do a hands-on application of the knowledge gained in the theory class) versus a purely theoretical subject. I absolutely loved the subjects with a practical component because they helped me apply what I had learned in class to solve the problem at hand. The curiosity of how something I read in a book would translate into a real life scenario was inspiring to me. It was the ‘active’ that I was drawn to instead of the ‘passive’ as we read about in the Pedagogy of Freedom article.

Drawing just a little more on my experience of teachers growing up, whenever I saw a grade school teacher outside the context of the classroom, they seemed so nice…they even smiled! In the classroom however, they were these magnanimous personalities that I never formed a connection with. In contrast, I have known and connected with some educators over the years (mainly during my graduate schools) who I respect and admire not just due to the fact that they facilitated my education and helped me learn, but also because they cared about my learning…not their teaching but my learning. They made me aware of things I needed to know but did not expect me to repeat verbatim what they had said. They were patient with me and that just made all the difference. These educators, as I would like to address them, helped me realize that learning was not cramming and regurgitating, learning was organic if the conditions surrounding the attempt to learn were conducive.

How can I apply this to myself when I am standing in the shoes of an educator?! I really liked the video in which Paulo Freire says “…the virtue of tolerance, 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 naïve…it does not demand from me to lose my personality.” Thus, as an educator, I would have to develop the ability of being patient, learn how to teach in a fashion that is conducive to the learning of the individuals in my class, of wanting to learn with them and for them and in the process not forgetting who I am as an educator and what I bring to the table to facilitate and create that learning environment.

 


Paulo Freire evaluating my Syllabus!

It was really interesting to me to have a look at Paulo Freire’s point of view about how education should be like or what is called “The critical pedagogical practice”. Unfortunately, throughout my learning experience both in school and in college, I’ve never taken a class that truly applied Freire’s ideas and recommendations. I remember that we students were all passive receptors receiving knowledge from the “Oracle” or what we call the “teacher” without the ability to express ourselves and think critically. The result is just we “store” whatever knowledge is thrown on us from the teacher to spit it out in the exam and that’s it. The disaster is that most of us now after 10 years or so doesn’t remember what these classes were about! This is not the true goal of education and we as educators should avoid this “passive” approach of teaching. For me as a future educator, I don’t want to fall into the trap that most of my teachers fell into when I was student. For this reason, I will try now to evaluate my Syllabus draft from the previous week in the light of Freire’s approach about “Critical Pedagogy”.

My course is a project/activity based course that teaches junior level computer science students the fundamentals of commonly used data structures and algorithms in the field. This course is programming intensive, accordingly, most of the focus should be on giving the students hands on practical experience. For this reason, 60% of the grade is dedicated to programming projects that allows the student to experience how to write programs for real. I see that this part of the syllabus is linked directly to Freire’s point about “empowering students to be critically engaged and active participants in society” as they are writing their own programs that can help organizations and businesses in managing and manipulating the tremendous amounts of data they generate daily. I believe this to be a direct connection between the student and the society in which students are actively engaged in developing solutions for the welfare of the society.

I also devoted 20% of the course grade to participation. I want to listen to the students and make them active within the class. This satisfies Freire’s point “The importance of dialogic exchange between teachers and students, where both learn, both question, both reflect and both participate in meaning-making“. This way, the student will find the tribune from which he can share his ideas with his classmates and the teacher and become an influential part of the knowledge creation process. This also satisfies Freire’s point “To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge“. Part of the participation grade is for creating activities for the students to do in class. This gives the student the opportunity to be more creative and to be an effective agent in the knowledge design process as he is the one who creates the activities for the class.

The final part of the grade is dedicated to assignments. The main purpose of these assignments is just to ensure that the student has Grasped the required conceptual fundamentals so that he will be able to do the projects and the activities. These are True/False, Fill in the blanks, simple programming, and MCQ. They are designed to test the student understanding of a particular concept not his ability to memorize the concept. Since the course has no exams so I believe there will be no need for students to memorize, but they learn the concepts to apply them in the projects and activities. This aligns with Ferier’s point “Intellectuals who memorize everything, reading for hours on end . . .fearful of taking a risk, speaking as if they were reciting from memory, fail to make any concrete connections between what they have read and what is happening in the world, the country, or the local community.  They repeat what has been read with precision but rarely teach anything of personal value“. The course is carefully designed to avoid any means of memorization and focus mainly on practical hands on application.

Finally, I believe that the syllabus will do a good job in applying Ferier’s approach of critical pedagogy as it satisfies some of the points that Ferier stressed on.

Peer-taught Classrooms: A Recipe for Creating Learner-centered Bonanzas

The syllabus workshop we did in class was pretty fun. Some of the feedback I got was that my syllabus may have been a little too learner-centered and lacked enough structure to guide more apprehensive students. So I made some revisions. I’ll share the syllabus below and highlight some its aspects that may be useful to other instructors.

First, don’t pretend that teaching and learning can be separated. Be explicit that you do not have perfect knowledge and fully expect to learn something while working with your students. My syllabus starts with a short teaching philosophy that says as much.

The structure of the class is also very adaptable to scale and course content. The gist of the idea is to let the students teach themselves. In my syllabus, they may teach anything so long as the rest of the class agrees. Topics can obviously be narrowed by the instructor for more targeted lessons. Anyway, here it is. Critiques are appreciated. And reading recommendations for the course.

 

Virginia Tech

PHIL 2984: Self-Directed Learning Techniques & Strategies

Spring, 2016

 

Instructor:                  Andrew Schultz                                                           Office: HOLDEN 126

Email:                           andrew2@vt.edu                                           Office Hours: By appointment

 

Any student with special needs or circumstances should feel free to contact me to arrange
appropriate accommodations.

 

Teaching Philosophy

 

I think of myself as more of a veteran student than a teacher.  We’ll be exploring some interesting problem spaces in this course and I probably have more experience with the areas instead of some inherently better means to navigate them.  I should be thought of as a guide.  I can show you around, point out interesting landmarks and questions, but I am perfectly happy to help you start exploring something new and outside of my direct expertise.

 

Educational Objectives

 

Having successfully completed this course, the student will be able to:

 

  1. Identify their personal reasons for learning and the value of their education.

 

  1. Research reliable information and techniques for learning.

 

  1. Plan and implement strategies to acquire specific knowledge.

 

  1. Clearly and effectively communicate ideas, propose questions, flexibly frame problems, suggest solutions, and justify conclusions.

 

Course Description

 

This is a course about learning: the process of questioning truth more often than finding it.  What is your definition of learning?  Why do we do it?  What’s worth knowing?  When?  How can we learn? Which ways are best?  Who should do it?  Does that change with the content of the learning? Why?  What can we learn from asking the same questions about teachers and teaching?

 

Learning is (a) gaining the ability to identify questions that are personally, socially, scientifically, economically, etc. interesting and novel, (b) discovering and/or inventing reliable means to gather information, (c) evaluating and prioritizing the importance of and need for specific information, (d) developing the capacity to verify information and its source’s validity via routine, rigorous skepticism, (e) efficiently recalling past experiences by (f) making creative associations within and between areas of information, (g) building ready access to dense webs of knowledge that allows for adaptive critical thinking and creative problem solving, and (h) becoming proficient at sharing valuable information in ways that facilitate understanding – in a word, teaching.  This class is about developing your own philosophy of learning and gaining new strategies to better control and direct your education.

 

Teaching and learning can’t be separated; therefore, teaching will play an important role in this course.  It is more than merely transmitting information.  Teaching well means doing one’s best to inspire the students’ interest and imaginations, nurturing their confidence and enthusiasm to explore independently, anticipating students’ frustrations, misunderstandings, shortfalls, reservations and resistances – this requires you to simulate disparate ways to formulate problems and generate solutions – teaching is about manufacturing rewarding challenges, pointing out opportunities, and illuminating ways in which students can attach meaning to their learning.  Basically, if you can learn how to effectively teach others a topic of mutual interest, you will be empowered to better direct your education through teaching yourself.  In this class you will be teaching your peers.  Your first task will be convincing them that you have information worth learning.

 

 

Course Reference Materials

 

Heinrichs, Jay. Thank you for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson can Teach us About the Art of Persuasion.  Published by Random House, Inc., New York. 2007.  

 

Class Structure and Proposed Procedure

 

(for letter grade and Pass/Fail; No Audits)

 

“The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.” – Bertrand Russel

 

“Truth springs from argument among friends.” – David Hume

 

Whatever we decide to learn this semester, my hope is that we will question and argue about it – Is it relevant? Why do we care?  Is it important?  How much? Is it accurate?  To what limits and in what situations? Et cetera…  The class will be based mostly on student-lead discussion under the instructor’s moderation.  Participation and engagement are critical in this class.  One of two required reading for the course is Thank you for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs.  As the course description explains, the ability to learn relies on one’s knowledge of and skill at teaching; further, teaching begins with persuading students to engage the material.  Heinrich’s book is a fun introduction to rhetoric: the tools, techniques, and strategies of influence.  It’s actually not even required if you feel confident in your persuasive abilities, but it’s a great read and even better reference for this class.  The best way to resist the influence of others is the ability to reciprocate targeted influence in them.  The second “mandatory” piece of reading is an excerpt from Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders.  The excerpt contains arguments I like for the efficacy of books as self-directed learning tools and the significance of reading as the most important habit for continuing one’s education.  I hope it justifies the course structure proposed below.  The rest of the course material and structure is up for debate between the instructor and students.  Here is a suggested format:

 

First, identify individual and collective learning interests, brainstorm questions related to those interests, and systemically design plans to investigate as many topics as possible.  Teams of 3-4 students could produce a presentation that introduces the rest of the class to an important idea (perhaps the thesis of a book) pertaining to one of our predetermined subjects of interest (something like a TED talk).  Their goal could be persuading their peers to investigate the concept or topic further for themselves.  Each person would do this 3-4 times throughout the semester; teams may (are encouraged to) change between presentations.  This ensures that each person will experience responsibility for researching and teaching their peers while gaining familiarity with multiple team dynamics.  Say, for instance, each presentation is primarily a kind of book report – an attempt to persuade the audience to read the book(s) upon which the presentation was based.  Alternatively, a group could refute the main theses presented in a book, convince the audience it’s not worth reading, and propose another option.  Students can also write short summaries of their books to share with the class.  Conducting class this way and assuming groups only present 1 book at a time, individuals need only read 4 books while we collectively receive the benefit of reading 20-30 books worth of customized education over 13 weeks – pretty impressive!  Ideally, the presentations will inspire and convince individuals to read more than the minimum 4 books and groups’ presentations will tie the ideas and conclusions from multiple books together.  Students are challenged to read 10 or more books this semester.  Imagine if a class of 20 did this and summarized each book for their peers.  That would be 200 books in 13 weeks – damn impressive!  Let’s shoot for somewhere in the middle: collectively averaging 6-8 books per person this semester.

 

Proposed Course Schedule

 

Week In-Class Readings
1 Intros, Team Formation, Curriculum Brainstorming Love is the Killer App (excerpt)

Thank You for Arguing
2 Discussion Book 1
3 Discussion Book 1
4 Presentations Book 1
5 Discussion Book 2
6 Discussion Book 2
7 Presentations Book 2
8 Discussion Book 3
9 Discussion Book 3
10 Presentations Book 3
11 Discussion Book 4
12 Discussion Book 4
13 Presentations Book 4

 

Grades and Expectations

 

You are responsible for directing your learning through the selection of course content and design of your presentations.  You have the freedom to teach the class however and about anything your group agrees to so long as you do so with civility, foster an inclusive environment, demonstrate intellectual integrity and remember…

 

Evaluations (assuming the suggested format is agreed to) will be done utilizing in-group peer-reviews, audience reviews, and instructor reviews.  For instance, in-group reviews will evaluate individuals’ contributions to preparing the presentations; the audience and instructor will review the engagement value, relevance, clarity, accuracy, and persuasiveness of the presentations.  Class participation will be based on your contributions to developing the course’s content and engagement in the weekly discussions.  A good rule of thumb would be to have at least 5 comments and questions ready for each session.  Students are expected to propose materials and justify their relevance to the rest of the class.  Involvement in designing assessments and providing meaningful feedback for peers is also expected.  The instructor has veto power in creating and modifying rubrics for assignments but student input is welcome and encouraged.  The details of each rubric should be mutually created and agreed to by the students and instructor.

 

HONOR CODE STANDARDS APPLY TO ALL ASSIGNMENTS

The tenets of the Virginia Tech Graduate Honor Code will be enforced in this course, and all assignments are subject to the stipulations of the Honor Code.

 

Class participation:  (25%)

 

Presentations (75%)

 

Peer review – 30%

Audience Review – 25%

Instructor Review – 20%

 

*Notice that students control more grading power (55%) than the instructor (45%).

Recommended Readings

 

 

  1. The Tao of Pooh – Ben Hoff

 

  1. Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism – Richard Wolff

 

  1. The Spiritual Emerson – Ralph Waldo Emerson; Ed. Jacob Needleman

 

  1. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg

 

  1. Natural Capitalism: The Next-Industrial Revolution – Paul Hawken and Amory & Hunter Lovins

 

  1. Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahnemann

 

  1. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

 

  1. Love is the Killer App – Tim Sanders

 

  1. Your Money or Your Life – Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez

 

  1. How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

 

  1. Thank you For Arguing – Jay Heinrichs

 

  1. Moon-Walking with Einstein – Joshua Foer

 

  1. Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer

 

  1. Ishmael – Daniel Quinn

 

  1. Empire of Illusion – Chris Hedges

 

  1. The Omnivores Dilemma – Michael Pollan

 

  1. The Heart and The First – Eric Grietens

 

  1. The Glass-Bead Game – Hermann Hesse

 

  1. The Ecology of Commerce – Paul Hawken

 

  1. The Science of Discworld – Terry Pratchett & Ian Stewart

 

  1. Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps – Allan & Barbara Pease

 

  1. The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan

 

  1. The Power of Myth – Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers

 

  1. Ecological Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

 

  1. The Hidden Brain – Shankar Vedantam

 

  1. Republic – Plato

 

  1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari

 

  1. How to Train A Wild Elephant – Jan Chozen Bays

 

  1. Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond

 

  1. A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn

 

  1. Walden – Henry David Thoreau

 

  1. Verbal Judo ­– George Thompson

 

  1. Think Like a Freak – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

 

  1. Freakonomics – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

 

  1. Outliers – Malcom Gladwell

 

  1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey

 

  1. Who Moved My Cheese? – Spencer Johnson

 

  1. I Moved your Cheese – Deepak Malhotra

 

  1. Our Iceberg is Melting – John Kotter

 

  1. The Art of Asking – Amanda Palmer

 

  1. America: Imagine a World without Her – Dinesh D’Souza

 

  1. What Does it Mean to be Well-Educated – Alfie Kohn

 

  1. The Gift of Fear – Gavin de Baker

 

  1. The Social Contract – Jean Jacque Roseau

 

  1. A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

 

  1. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

 

  1. Cradle-to-Cradle – Michael Braungart & William McDonough

 

  1. The Outsiders – William Thorndike

 

  1. Player Piano – Kurt Vonnegut

 

  1. Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire

 

  1. Pedagogy of Freedom – Paulo Freire

 

 

Critical Pedagogy – Week 9 Guidelines

Leave a comment

Next week we will continue to explore inclusive pedagogy with a focus on the tenets of critical pedagogy and work of Paulo Freire. Before seminar, please read the Kincheloe article and go through Dr. Fowler’s PowerPoint slides (on Scholar) to familiarize yourself with Paulo Freire’s pedagogy. Many of you are likely familiar with the often-anthologized chapter two from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but please read or review that chapter as well as the selections from Pedagogy of Freedom, and come to class ready to talk about them – perhaps armed with a good nugget (or two). If at all possible, please also have a look at Freire’s video on curiosity and June Jordon’s Report from the Bahamas.

As usual you may post about whatever resonates with you.

Questions to keep in mind as you read and prepare for class next week:

  • What does Freire’s approach to teaching and learning emphasize and why?
  • How does Freire define dialogic engagement?
  • What would a critical pedagogical praxis look like in your discipline?
  • What is the difference, for Freire, between being an “authority” vs. being “authoritarian”?
  • In what ways does June Jordan’s essay, “Report from the Bahamas,” broaden and complicate traditional assumptions about race, class, and gender? In what specific ways (and why) does she focus on bridging differences?

Image: Scott Robinson, “Freedom“

Preparing for future learning

As I reflect back on my blog posts to see my stance regarding pedagogy, I realize a common theme underlying those. I will use those ideas to chalk out a vision of a classroom syllabus. Since I am interested in integrated Computer Science in middle school STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) classrooms, I will discuss my points considering a hypothetical middle school science classroom.

Middle school would be the age when children start questioning and exploring their identity, and starting to formulate a strong idea about themselves and the society they live in. Hence, I feel, it becomes imperative that we enable this identity exploration process through a well-formulated syllabus and a well-designed learning environment. Taking the backward design approach, I would like to help my students to prepare themselves for future learning as they start to form their identity around the constantly changing aspects of the society.

There are three facets in my above stated goals that I would individually like to discuss:

  1. Form their identity:
    It is important that students are free to explore and form ideas and beliefs on their own. Much of what we learn arises from our drive to exploration and experiences. Students should have the freedom to seek differing experiences and be able to take charge of certain situations.
    In a classroom, this translates to giving students some control over their learning experiences. At the basic level,  I would let students to develop and implement classroom activities. This could mean planning trips to a nearby science museum, classroom activity that the student(s) choose or develop, and letting students set the policies for classrooms (break times, phone/computer usage, etc.). Not only would this promote autonomy but would also help students to imbibe the idea that they are in-charge of their learning experience.
    Taking this idea further, I would also negotiate learning goals and assessment expectations with the students. Each student is at a different learning levels and would have different goals and as an educator we need to meet each student at the place they are, and thereupon, help them grow further. This class would be project-based wherein students would negotiate and decide the project they want to work on. It would be certainly taxing for each teacher to negotiate but I believe we can design methods (and conduct professional development) to make the negotiation process more efficient and scalable.
  2. Constantly changing aspect of the society:
    The society is constantly changing. Things that were considered extraordinary in the past are commonplace now and may become obsolete in the future. Change is the only thing that remains constant. Within this changing environment, I would like to help my students be able to negotiate and handle such change. Social aspects of learning particularly collaborative and cooperative learning would be a significant focus. Project-based work would involve dealing with “real world” objects  and would be proceeded by related problem-solving activities. Problem-solving activities would help them value the work and their learning experience. The real world project would help in promoting their sense of agency and their potential impact on the world outside. Furthermore, this approach of both problem-solving activity before a project work would also help imbibe the idea of the need to learn and adapt as they progress in their work.
    Assessments would also be formative rather than summative where I would encourage self-assessment and revision. Self-assessments would help students monitor their progress and also would provide intrinsic encouragement to work for further learning. Revision helps in fostering a growth mindset – that one can alway improve and progress further. To support revision, at the basic level, students will be able to re-submit or redo assignments/projects. This would encourage students to focus on learning rather than performance. Furthermore, formative assessment would also help me plan my teaching and design scaffolds according to each students needs.
  3. Future learning
    We cannot possible teach student everything and so, we need to make them become knowledge seekers. For this, students have to be curious and have an intrinsic motivation to learn. By setting classrooms which have problem-solving activities combined with project-based learning environment would help in fostering curiosity in the students. Furthermore, allowing students to negotiate learning goals, set assessment expectation, and self-assess their work would help them decide what and how they want to learn in the future. Formative assessments would also be useful in providing students feedbacks and opportunities to further progress and learn deeper. Making students familiar with the changing trends in the field especially using computers as a literacy tool would also be my priority. All these would help students be better prepared for future learning.

I can sense that this is going to be very exhausting to a teacher especially in large classrooms (that are typical of a middle school). However, I believe that with proper technological interventions and teaching methods, we can solve this problem.

 

References:
This is a mashup of several learning sciences theories and transferred to a practical classroom implementation. The primary ideas and their corresponding sources are :
1. Problem-based activities before project and formative assessments: Barron, Brigid JS, et al. “Doing with understanding: Lessons from research on problem-and project-based learning.” Journal of the Learning Sciences7.3-4 (1998): 271-311.
2. The importance of autonomy and self-determination: Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. “Self-determination theory.”Handbook of theories of social psychology 1 (2011): 416-433.
3. Future learning: Schwartz, Daniel L., and Taylor Martin. “Inventing to prepare for future learning: The hidden efficiency of encouraging original student production in statistics instruction.” Cognition and Instruction 22.2 (2004): 129-184.

The post Preparing for future learning appeared first on Aakash.

I have no class!

So this is my spring break week. No longer are they filled with thoughts of a beautiful holiday somewhere tropical or somewhere snowy where I have lots of fun, rest, and make amazing memories with friends. Now they are filled with thoughts of “sweet! I don’t have class this week so I can get caught up on all my assignments!” and I still have assignments.

Oh my assignments! An assignment reviewing an appraisal instrument, open coding for my research class, mid-term evaluations to complete for my supervisees, a sample syllabus for my pedagogy class :), and lots of reading. Plus, there are things to catch up on at home too. Laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, gift shopping for an upcoming wedding and baby showers. Then general daily chores like cooking, endless cycle of picking up dog/cat toys, and feeding pets and partners.  Meanwhile, the emails continue for responsibilities and I have some other projects (both school and home related) which need my attention.

I am hoping to juggle in a quick visit home to visit with my family and some friends. I am also hoping for a little more quality time with my medical student spouse (but he’s still in classes, so that is questionable!). My other replenishment joy will come with the additional time with my “fur babies”.

So this week, I have no class. But responsibilities still continue…such is the glamorous life of a doctoral student!


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Oh my Jailer, set me free for one day

I don’t know why I wake up after midnight to write this blog post. We are not required to write a blog post soon, and probably no one will check this post. However, our discussion at the end of the lecture make me think about people with disabilities. I wrote my regular blog post this week about some inclusion guidelines that teachers should take care of in their classrooms. I mentioned “gender”, “religion”, and “sexual orientation”. I though that disability is well taken care of by special offices in every university. However, Homero commented that I need to add “disability” to my list and he will talk about this in the lecture.

I was shocked to hear in the lecture that those who are supposed to facilitate everything for disabled people, are those who push them to give up any interest in attending a university. If those put themselves in disabled people shoes, they would not act like this.

I can imagine the disability as a jailer which puts someone in a prison without a real sin. He did not choose to be disabled as everyone will not chose to be. Disability always prevent you from doing something normally, as if you are in a prison. If a disabled person had a wish to come true, he would chose to be set free even for one day. Even a small thing as one day will really differ for him.

When a disabled person decides to attend a university and get a college degree, we should tip our hats to him. He knows it will not be easy and he will probably have a lot of difficulties but he has a strong will to try. So please, every teacher, student, and officer do not make it harder for disabled people. Do not force them to give up. Help them to the extreme. Facilitate every thing for them. Teachers can give special tests to those people to examine them without forcing them to take the regular test that could be impossible for them. Students also can help their disabled colleagues and try to be more social with them in order not to feel loneliness in classrooms. University officers, it is mainly your role to help them, please take care of what you say or do with them, it is very enough what they feel or suffer.

Diversity: the last unfinished business

The first step towards winning the fight with diversity is to acknowledge that we are still not in accord that diversity is still an issue in society.

One way to remedy that problem is to encourage the burgeoning of diverse groups on campuses and just having students feel included somewhere. It makes all the difference in the world.

Dr. Marilyn Sanders says it best in her TEDx talk.

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