This entry looks back over the previous reflections to consider what themes seem to recur in my thinking about teaching in EDF4113 and why; what’s missing from my reflections; and some thoughts about my ongoing professional learning as a teacher educator. The idea of a meta-reflection is that it is a way of recognising patterns in thinking as a teacher and from that, how future growth might be informed.
My journal began as a way of thinking-aloud in EDF4113 about the teaching, learning and science experienced in the unit. I wanted to share my thinking about how I teach, student responses and my own responses to sessions and how my thinking about these different aspects informs my teaching.
It is clear to me through the journal entries that knowing how students experience my teaching matters a great deal to me. This is a value that I hold that has been borne out through the experience of the unit. I have tried a variety of different ways of getting feedback in this unit - this blog, informal conversations with students, feedback sheets at the end of the unit, replying to student emails with open ended questions about how they are going, making a space on the ‘Blackboard’ site for discussion and trying to engage with students who do offer feedback through the Blackboard site. I have tried to present myself as a person who cares to know about learners and to be responsive where I can be. This has been both successful and unsuccessful as I have been able to make contact with a range of learners, but not all by any means. I have also tried to promote discussion in classes as a way of sharing and hearing experiences of others.(It is interesting that Mezz picked this up as typifying my approach.)
Why is knowing about learners' experiences so important to me? I feel strongly that the relationship in teaching promotes learning. Making connections with, being with and relating to others is likely to lead to deeper engagement compared with handing out information. This meaning of teaching then means, knowing about and trying to respond to the needs of different learners so that they might feel valued and willing to take a risk, to try new ways of working, be honest about their progress and share these experiences with others (rather than defending or rationalising behaviour.)I hope that these practices might influence how new teachers might work with their students.
I have noted something very interesting in my blog entries about this theme of valuing relationship. The way in which I seek feedback is similar each time – always open ended questions (e.g., “Session 1 – “I am very interested to know about your thoughts about your experiences of the unit… how did the time feel for you today? Were you feeling like the time went quickly, or not? Session 3 - did it make sense? was it relevant?” Session 5 – “As always, am keen to hear your thoughts about this or any other aspects of the session....”Session 11” What feedback do you want to say about the session?”). And, only a small number of students took up my invitations to comment. This reminds me of camp this year , when I was concerned there was limited feedback from the whole group about their experiences of planning. I learnt from that experience that I needed to structure the task differently to get the kind of feedback I wished to encourage. Here too might be the same thing – How might I structure this blog differently, then? Perhaps a person/small group could be nominated each week on behalf of the class to ‘write back’ – that becomes one of their journal entries?
However, how do I know that what students say in their feedback is not just what I want to hear? How do I know what they are really experiencing? Brookfield (1995) says, “The main difficulty in trying to see ourselves through our students’ eyes is that students are understandably reluctant to be too honest with us…Even under the cloak of anonymity it feels risky to point out the oppressive aspects of a teacher’s practice.” (p.34). As a teacher, the best that I can do is continually work towards finding out how students’ think and in ways that enable students to feel as though they can speak honestly. I hope that through raising this issue here that some students might be prompted to consider how they work with their own students to encourage open dialogue. The tricky part is that once you have opened up an avenue for communication, then you must take responsibility for knowing what to act on and how to act on it. For example, in this unit, I have tried to act on feedback related to assessment by clarifying tasks and criteria with students and lecturers.
To be continued....
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Session 12 Reflection
This week I will focus on 2 aspects that I experienced as significant: (i) the idea of PCK and (ii) being a learner in teacher education.
PCK
First up I was quite apprehensive about how the idea of PCK might be received. It is a challenging theoretical notion that might not be seen to have much (at least immediate) relevance to students. However, at the same time, I also want to promote the idea that learning about teaching means learning about something important - that teaching consists of more than resources and teaching ideas - a 'something bigger' that binds this together and makes teachers professional know-ers. In this way, teachers can take more control of their profession (not 'victims' of externally imposed ideas from people who do not know teaching) and also know more purposefully do what they do in the classroom to promote good science learning. (Bit of soap-box there!)
So ,there was a bit of front end loading to begin with - in the form of a lecture. I have come around to the idea of lectures a bit more now, compared with my previous position of not thinking that too much learning of quality can occur in them. I guess how you do the lecture matters and that you do not only lecture. (This is like the discussion we had in the tute about chalk and talk. It's not 'bad' to do chalk and talk. It's an approach that you might choose for a certain purpose at a certain time. It's not good to do it all of the time, and it's not good to do it because you think kids will learn successfully that way. They won't. But, as part of the mix of how you understand teaching then it is useful.). As the slides went through i was starting to think there was too much text to deal with and too many ideas to process at once. the chance to stop and talk is important and the kinds of responses that people gave helped me understand how at least a few people were thinking about the ideas.
For instance (paraphrased - hope i get these right) - PCK gives me something to aim for beyond this year of teacher education; how do you get PCK if we haven't got it yet?; how do you know about how the middle band of kids is understanding something compared with the much more obvious 'ends' of the class?; How come you held out til now to tell us about PCK? Wouldn't it have been more helpful BEFORE the teaching prac?
I planned to introduce the idea through the lecture then give you time to play around with it in the tutes. I am not harboring any illusion that simply because i told you about it, you 'got it'. (As a teacher though, it is always tempting to believe this).I used the level of talk and your comments/questions as indicators of my progress, as well as watching body language that suggested engagement or not. Mostly though, this latter one is an unhelpful indicator because people know how to look as though they are at least semi-engaged.
How was the lecture for you?
What engaged you? What turned you off?
In the tute we talked quite a bit about what does it mean to try something out with a class and have it not go well. As a teacher responsible for others' learning, to what extent can you take in new ways of working and see them 'not working' before you decide that you need to abandon the approach? They are of course great questions with no one answer. The answers depend on many variables - and the difficult part about teaching is that you will not always see the effects of your actions. BUT talking with students, developing good relationships where they feel as though they can be honest with you AND have a go to trust you when you introduce new ways of working; that is very effective as an indicator.
i felt very pleased to see how much students seemed to engage with the framework task in the tute. Again ,the commetns made and the things written were indicators to me of how you were getting it. It is very true that it is hard to fill in 'why do kids need to know this?' beyond - because it's on the test - but if you can answer it, then you will have a much stronger sense of purpose in teaching. We had a great example from teaching about nuclear radiation in out tute.
Being a learner.
Everything you do in this unit (course) is an opportunity for you to learn about learning. How experiences affect you personally will be helpful guides to think about how you work with learners in the future. Do you feel as though you can be heard? That you are dealt with fairly? How do you accept responsiblity as a learner? Do you expect things that don't go your way to be changed? Why? Are you tough on yourself? (Will that mean you are tough on your students too?). This does not mean that all your learners will be like you - in fact, very few of them will be - but if the teacher can see that how learners feel influences their ability to engage, more progress will be made than if everything is around the teacher's way. So how does this relate to EDF4113?
Changing the tutors around this week was supposed to be a prompt to help you think more about this issue of yourself as a learner. For me, changing classes, i was surprised and pleased - I felt as though the class I went to had such a good dynamic of working together to discuss ideas, that i could slip in and be a part of it, rather than taking on a more 'controlling' role.
PCK
First up I was quite apprehensive about how the idea of PCK might be received. It is a challenging theoretical notion that might not be seen to have much (at least immediate) relevance to students. However, at the same time, I also want to promote the idea that learning about teaching means learning about something important - that teaching consists of more than resources and teaching ideas - a 'something bigger' that binds this together and makes teachers professional know-ers. In this way, teachers can take more control of their profession (not 'victims' of externally imposed ideas from people who do not know teaching) and also know more purposefully do what they do in the classroom to promote good science learning. (Bit of soap-box there!)
So ,there was a bit of front end loading to begin with - in the form of a lecture. I have come around to the idea of lectures a bit more now, compared with my previous position of not thinking that too much learning of quality can occur in them. I guess how you do the lecture matters and that you do not only lecture. (This is like the discussion we had in the tute about chalk and talk. It's not 'bad' to do chalk and talk. It's an approach that you might choose for a certain purpose at a certain time. It's not good to do it all of the time, and it's not good to do it because you think kids will learn successfully that way. They won't. But, as part of the mix of how you understand teaching then it is useful.). As the slides went through i was starting to think there was too much text to deal with and too many ideas to process at once. the chance to stop and talk is important and the kinds of responses that people gave helped me understand how at least a few people were thinking about the ideas.
For instance (paraphrased - hope i get these right) - PCK gives me something to aim for beyond this year of teacher education; how do you get PCK if we haven't got it yet?; how do you know about how the middle band of kids is understanding something compared with the much more obvious 'ends' of the class?; How come you held out til now to tell us about PCK? Wouldn't it have been more helpful BEFORE the teaching prac?
I planned to introduce the idea through the lecture then give you time to play around with it in the tutes. I am not harboring any illusion that simply because i told you about it, you 'got it'. (As a teacher though, it is always tempting to believe this).I used the level of talk and your comments/questions as indicators of my progress, as well as watching body language that suggested engagement or not. Mostly though, this latter one is an unhelpful indicator because people know how to look as though they are at least semi-engaged.
How was the lecture for you?
What engaged you? What turned you off?
In the tute we talked quite a bit about what does it mean to try something out with a class and have it not go well. As a teacher responsible for others' learning, to what extent can you take in new ways of working and see them 'not working' before you decide that you need to abandon the approach? They are of course great questions with no one answer. The answers depend on many variables - and the difficult part about teaching is that you will not always see the effects of your actions. BUT talking with students, developing good relationships where they feel as though they can be honest with you AND have a go to trust you when you introduce new ways of working; that is very effective as an indicator.
i felt very pleased to see how much students seemed to engage with the framework task in the tute. Again ,the commetns made and the things written were indicators to me of how you were getting it. It is very true that it is hard to fill in 'why do kids need to know this?' beyond - because it's on the test - but if you can answer it, then you will have a much stronger sense of purpose in teaching. We had a great example from teaching about nuclear radiation in out tute.
Being a learner.
Everything you do in this unit (course) is an opportunity for you to learn about learning. How experiences affect you personally will be helpful guides to think about how you work with learners in the future. Do you feel as though you can be heard? That you are dealt with fairly? How do you accept responsiblity as a learner? Do you expect things that don't go your way to be changed? Why? Are you tough on yourself? (Will that mean you are tough on your students too?). This does not mean that all your learners will be like you - in fact, very few of them will be - but if the teacher can see that how learners feel influences their ability to engage, more progress will be made than if everything is around the teacher's way. So how does this relate to EDF4113?
Changing the tutors around this week was supposed to be a prompt to help you think more about this issue of yourself as a learner. For me, changing classes, i was surprised and pleased - I felt as though the class I went to had such a good dynamic of working together to discuss ideas, that i could slip in and be a part of it, rather than taking on a more 'controlling' role.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Session 11 Reflection
After returning from practicum, the idea for this session was to give you a chance to discuss in small groups your experiences and to provide an opportunity for clarifying goals for future (short term) development. I am mindful that running a Thursday session means that students will probably already have had a chance to 'de-brief' in other units, and also informally. Finding a way in to making the talk meaningful and helpful is a challenge - there has already been quite a bit of talk and how do you move beyond recalling experience to learning from experience?
The kinds of issues that were raised in my four groups for aspects that students wanted to better understand/develop included these:
Simplifying concepts - how do you transform a complex biology (science) concept for a particular learner group so they can understand it?
Developing authentic assessments for senior classes - what would an example of this be? For whom would it be authentic? (e.g., teacher? students - which students?)
Managing Time flexibly - how do you be both mindful of getting through the curriculum and responding to the needs of different learner groups? What happens if one class seem to get through the work faster than another?
Transitions and Being responsive within in a class - how do you pick and then act on the 'right time' to move from one activity to the next?
Being perceptive - how do you read 'cues' from students to get a sense of their progress. How can 'marker' students be helpful?
Learning how to build productive relationships - what do student teachers do to build quickly?
Engaging students and 'hooking them in to learning' - how do you get kids engaged from the start? What happens when there is already a deeply engrained culture of not working, or a particular style of working that the students trust (e.g., chalk and talk)?
How do you close a lesson with learning? In other words, help students to recognise what they have learnt as well as what they need to know to make progress with their learning?
How do you figure out what level to pitch a lesson at?
Recognising differences between managing learning and controlling learning.
These are all fantastic questions/issues. It would be interesting to know whether any of you might have predicted in advance that these are the kinds of issues that you expected to encounter? Could you/we have prepared in advance for any of them? If so, how?
Now, afterwards, what can we/you do in order to help you move forward? To me, more experience is not the answer - not just yet anyway - more experience with ...what? A way of making sense of experience so that you can start to answer these questions for yourself in more detail?
My challenge to the group is this:
Part 1 - Look for these aspects that you want to learn about NOW as you engage with your uni learning. Is there engagement? Relationship building? How are transitions made? Are sessions pitched at your appropriate level? etc. etc.
Part 2 - ASK your lecturers explicitly: How did you work out what level of complexity to present this to us? Did you consider making it more or less difficult? I noticed you stopped this activity at a certain point - Why did you do that? What were you looking for? Why did you start the session today the way you did? etc. etc.
I'd like to say there is a prize for the first 10 people to report doing this (include my classes please!!!), but well, there isn't - except the prize will be advancing your own learning and what better prize could that be? You might even begin a great conversation about teaching and learning in your session.
Something that was interesting to me as i went to visit students in schools was the difficulty many were having in getting the kind of feedback they wanted from supervisors.Some people used a variety of strategies to help educate their supervisor to get more of what they wanted, others found that even when they did that the supervisor was still too busy, etc. That is disappointing but a reality. Part of me wonders whether, because teachers are often very busy DOING teaching that they don't spend much time TALKING teaching, so it may be difficult for them to know what to say or how to say it (apart from management type or organisational type things - eg. keep board writing neat, keep an eye on Corey, etc.). The more you can learn to use a language of teaching and learning - talking about the teaching approaches, the learning styles, the ways of recognising learner progress, the better you may be at helping yourself and others make progress in understanding teaching and learning. Does that make sense?
Can you think of anything a supervisor said or did that was particularly helpful?
One great example I heard....
*When students are working in small groups, this is a time for relationship building. Go around and talk to them, find out how they're going with the work, make contact, not just checking if they're on task.
Final point:
I was happy to hear discussion of the ideas of the assignment in the final part of the tute yesterday. Great connections between what people had learned from reading and what they had learned from talking with interviewees. This is valuable since it informs you as a teacher about some of the likely challenges you will face as a teacher in teaching particular topics. I didn't plan it to happen but i was very happy when it did, as well as the ways in which people picked up on the ideas and linked it with their own experiences.
What feedback do you want to say about the session? Was it helpful? Not helpful? What would you have changed about yesterday's (whole) session, if you were teaching it? What did it make you think about?
Bye
Welcome back.
Mandi
The kinds of issues that were raised in my four groups for aspects that students wanted to better understand/develop included these:
Simplifying concepts - how do you transform a complex biology (science) concept for a particular learner group so they can understand it?
Developing authentic assessments for senior classes - what would an example of this be? For whom would it be authentic? (e.g., teacher? students - which students?)
Managing Time flexibly - how do you be both mindful of getting through the curriculum and responding to the needs of different learner groups? What happens if one class seem to get through the work faster than another?
Transitions and Being responsive within in a class - how do you pick and then act on the 'right time' to move from one activity to the next?
Being perceptive - how do you read 'cues' from students to get a sense of their progress. How can 'marker' students be helpful?
Learning how to build productive relationships - what do student teachers do to build quickly?
Engaging students and 'hooking them in to learning' - how do you get kids engaged from the start? What happens when there is already a deeply engrained culture of not working, or a particular style of working that the students trust (e.g., chalk and talk)?
How do you close a lesson with learning? In other words, help students to recognise what they have learnt as well as what they need to know to make progress with their learning?
How do you figure out what level to pitch a lesson at?
Recognising differences between managing learning and controlling learning.
These are all fantastic questions/issues. It would be interesting to know whether any of you might have predicted in advance that these are the kinds of issues that you expected to encounter? Could you/we have prepared in advance for any of them? If so, how?
Now, afterwards, what can we/you do in order to help you move forward? To me, more experience is not the answer - not just yet anyway - more experience with ...what? A way of making sense of experience so that you can start to answer these questions for yourself in more detail?
My challenge to the group is this:
Part 1 - Look for these aspects that you want to learn about NOW as you engage with your uni learning. Is there engagement? Relationship building? How are transitions made? Are sessions pitched at your appropriate level? etc. etc.
Part 2 - ASK your lecturers explicitly: How did you work out what level of complexity to present this to us? Did you consider making it more or less difficult? I noticed you stopped this activity at a certain point - Why did you do that? What were you looking for? Why did you start the session today the way you did? etc. etc.
I'd like to say there is a prize for the first 10 people to report doing this (include my classes please!!!), but well, there isn't - except the prize will be advancing your own learning and what better prize could that be? You might even begin a great conversation about teaching and learning in your session.
Something that was interesting to me as i went to visit students in schools was the difficulty many were having in getting the kind of feedback they wanted from supervisors.Some people used a variety of strategies to help educate their supervisor to get more of what they wanted, others found that even when they did that the supervisor was still too busy, etc. That is disappointing but a reality. Part of me wonders whether, because teachers are often very busy DOING teaching that they don't spend much time TALKING teaching, so it may be difficult for them to know what to say or how to say it (apart from management type or organisational type things - eg. keep board writing neat, keep an eye on Corey, etc.). The more you can learn to use a language of teaching and learning - talking about the teaching approaches, the learning styles, the ways of recognising learner progress, the better you may be at helping yourself and others make progress in understanding teaching and learning. Does that make sense?
Can you think of anything a supervisor said or did that was particularly helpful?
One great example I heard....
*When students are working in small groups, this is a time for relationship building. Go around and talk to them, find out how they're going with the work, make contact, not just checking if they're on task.
Final point:
I was happy to hear discussion of the ideas of the assignment in the final part of the tute yesterday. Great connections between what people had learned from reading and what they had learned from talking with interviewees. This is valuable since it informs you as a teacher about some of the likely challenges you will face as a teacher in teaching particular topics. I didn't plan it to happen but i was very happy when it did, as well as the ways in which people picked up on the ideas and linked it with their own experiences.
What feedback do you want to say about the session? Was it helpful? Not helpful? What would you have changed about yesterday's (whole) session, if you were teaching it? What did it make you think about?
Bye
Welcome back.
Mandi
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