Still Struggling

... to imagine fundamental ways to restructure what goes in my department's very fine English classes.

At present, the ideal many of us strive for involves the students and the teacher seated in a large rectangle, with everyone facing in. The core activity, particularly in the IB English classes, is the teacher leading a close analysis of a text. Lots of laughter. Lots of great ideas. Kids sharing their thoughts. Teacher making new discoveries along with the students. Lots of links to kids' lives, current events, pop culture. Procative questions. Intellectual engagement. Lots of modelling of authentic practice. Plenty of close reading of text. Lots of collaboration in seeky meaning. An alive, alert teacher, surfing the text with the kids, the majority of whom are engaged - and if someone drifts away, the teacher is able to pull them back in again. Yes, there are other activities, but this is the core, the one we keep returning to.

I see the community of inquiry model at work here, as well as knowledge building, authentic inquiry, and deep learning. Weaker students might not be able to sustain this, but the higher achieving student we have in the IB stream seem to relish it (confirmed, also, by end of year surveys).

The earlier idea about moving through clusters of texts based on key questions certainly makes sense of what we are doing. And I can see how we can do a better job of drawing on online resources, and using the web to foster collaboration and peer coaching around the writing assignments (itself a big shift and a welcome change from the traditional model of "student writes/teacher comments and grades).

But am I missing something else? Should I be thinking of more of a paradigm shift?

Transformative Learning

One of the really interesting aspects of this particular learning experience – two weeks of immersion in Calgary – is how quickly ideas that were entirely new to me not long ago suddenly seem commonplace. It’s actually pretty alarming and disorienting. At this stage in the program I’m having a hard time figuring out what I knew before; what I know now; what I should have known before but didn’t; and what I knew before and was already acting on but had failed to articulate. Some of my biggest discoveries seem suddenly foundational to my thinking, and I’m afraid that when I return to my home institution the discoveries that rocked my world in Calgary will seem commonsense to me and everyone around me and I’ll get some funny looks.

I can see that happening already around the program, StageStruck, mentioned in class yesterday by Dr. Friesen. Developed in Australia, the program puts into practice the theoretical work we have been learning about concerning authentic, collaborative learning environments and deep learning. In the little bit I have been able to glean from some Internet searches, I see that the program allows users to create their own productions online, and link to a forum at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney (thus creating that lovely, authentic connection to real life practitioners). I was planning on writing my two papers for both courses around both sides of such a program, not knowing that it already existed.

In the paper for “Inquiry and Technology”, I was thinking of returning to my largely untapped body of MA research on how the wireless generation responds to live theatre, draw out some of those voices, and consider their position as learners with regard to Scardamalia’s ideas about the knowledge building community.  

In the paper for “Innovations in Teaching and Learning”, I was considering a program redesign for that English class, rethinking how theatre is presented and taught and suggesting that the use of the methods and philosophies we have been discussing could lead students to feel themselves part of Canada’s theatre knowledge-building community as audience members, thinkers, creators and innovators.

The two papers would be flip sides to the same coin; one could actually be an appendix to the other.

The program StageStruck, new to me yesterday, suddenly seems highly apropos, as does another Oxford University Press program mentioned by Pat, in which students can log in to immerse themselves in the dramatic possibilities of theatre. Not using these sorts of programs as an English/drama teacher suddenly seems inconceivable; I feel like I’ve known about them for years; I see how long they’ve been around and I’m amazed, and more than a little embarrassed.

I guess that’s the experience of transformative learning. Wow.

Mid-Point Summary

Today I applied to be part of The Globe and Mail's reader advisory panel on education because I read the paper daily and would love to be part of their internal conversation about the state of Canadian education. My online submission provided me with a good opportunity to reflect upon where I am as a teacher, parent and learner at this mid-point of the Ed D two-week program. It's remarkable how quickly my views have evolved, and I'm grateful to my professors and colleagues for helping me come to grips with some important issues. Here is the submission:

"As a father I continue to see the role that education plays in the lives of young people, its strengths and weaknesses, and the pressures under which it operates. As an English/drama teacher in an independent school I see what teachers and administration working together away from the restraints of the public education system can achieve, but also how even in those circumstances a ministry curriculum and certain teaching mindsets shape and even limit what we do. As a teacher in the both the ministry program and the IB program, I have a good sense of what works in two quite different programs, and the tensions that exist between them. As a student in the Ed. D. (educational technology) program at the University of Calgary, I have been exposed to the ideals of what deep learning should look like, and how technology, which in my experience to date has played only a peripheral role in the lives of my sons and my students, should be put to far better use in allowing our students to collaborate and learn beyond the classroom walls. I would like to be part of the panel so that I can share and discuss ideas with other "Globe" readers and journalists on the evolving state of Canadian education. My experience studying in one province and working in another gives me an interesting perspective on how different jurisdictions tackle the same issues, and sometimes leaves me baffled that there is not more of a cross-country conversation on the best practices that are so clearly within reach for all.

 "One thing that I would change is the role of technology in schools. Provinces - and independent schools - have spent millions on technology without addressing teaching itself. Seen as add-ons in traditional, teacher-centred classrooms, Smartboards are often just glorified projection screens and laptops are over-priced typewriters. When teaching becomes focussed on authentic, collaborative, inquiry-based activities, however, the role of technology changes. Engaged students use the technology to work together, to contact outside experts, to create innovative solutions to real, meaningful problems. I marvel at how my son in grade 7 in a well-run Ottawa Catholic public school, still spends much of his time with pen and paper, listening to the teacher. He's a very, very bright boy, with a caring a committed teacher, but the model they are both laboring under belongs to the 19th century. As a consequence, this pure learner, this model of ambition and curiosity, often comes home bored. The conservatism in education, this reluctance to embrace the possibilities of the world we live in and the tools we have at our disposal, in defiance of learning sciences and classroom research, is the one thing I would change."

Life in the Sandbox: Opportunities ... and a Question

In the chapter “Learning in Activity”, Green writes about how “situative analyses” of the learning environment focus on “activity systems: complex social organizations containing learners, teachers, curriculum materials, software tools, and the physical environment” (p. 79). Referring to Blumenfeld, Kemplar and Krajcik from later in the volume, he goes on to explain that when “learning environments do not support personal identity, learners will not be deeply engaged, even if they manage to maintain focus long enough to complete a classroom activity” (p. 89).

Building our class around this idea of “learning in activity”, the class had a wonderful time exploring a range of technological innovations to build that learner engagement. I was struck by how I would be able to use a variety of these in my own “classroom sandbox” in the fall:

1.      The use of short videos, or perhaps the program “Show Me” to explain key concepts such as how to present a title page or write a thesis statement would allow a key feature of the “flipped classroom” to emerge – allowing time in class to focus on tasks and discussion rather than instruction.

2.      Glogster – what fun! Has potential as a more visual, multi-modal means of presenting information.

3.      Twitter: as my students work through the list of texts we are obliged to study over the course of the year (15 texts between the two years of the IB diploma program), we could follow related Twitter feeds and discuss what we discover in class. During the long Shakespeare study in the fall, for example, student engagement could be heightened with the understanding that the bard continues to spur profound interest and engagement from tweeting scholars. Political issues surrounding other plays could also be shown to be alive through Twitter contact with experts.

4.      Software that allows for questions to be posted and responded to using Smartphones would add an interactive, all-inclusive element to class discussions.

5.      Video-conferencing could be used to great effect to achieve virtual debates with students in other countries.

6.      Class Wikis would allow for easier interaction with and between students.

7.      Use of Twitter, even email, could lead to a requirement that every student at some point in the year, for some text or some assignment, contact and receive advice from an expert in the field.

All of this leads to a bit of a paradigm shift in my classroom, which involves recognizing how the use of technology can make my classes more engaging and relevant to students. Two challenges come to mind. I’ll write about one here, and the second in a subsequent post.

The first challenge is that in the case of IB English, with its list of 15 titles over two years and final, standardized exam, is: how do I create authentic, problem-based generative topics for my students for all those texts so that the technology can be used to accomplish the kind of collaborative learning we have been discussing? Often, we barely have time to get at a text’s main features before it is time to move onto the next one.

In the past, there has been a tendency to say, “Next we will study …” when moving on to the next text. Recognizing that this is about the worst way to introduce a text, I have at least been able to shift my teaching toward the use of “hooks” for each text. This involves identifying a central issue for each text that is of interest to teens. For example, the hook for “A Doll’s House” is “Are men the new ball and chain?” The hook for “King Lear” has been “Why is this play so dark that for many years the ending of the play was never performed?” or “What happens to a king when he gets old and gives up power?” Creative writing and discussion prior to starting each text gets the juices flowing and, I hope, makes students interested in exploring the text in order to get at the issue or question we have introduced. Because I try to choose hooks that might pique the curiosity of teens, the activity goes some way to supporting and building the “personal identity” mentioned in the text. It links the text to the student’s own experiences. It’s a neat moment in the classroom when I can say, “So this is what you think about this issue … now let’s see what the author has to say about it.”

But this is still some distance away from the authentic tasks and problem-based learning. Is this approach best suited to other subjects? How can it be applied to higher level secondary English studies, with its rather daunting list of challenging texts?

Learner Trajectories

Linn’s article, “The Knowledge Integration Perspective on Learning and Instruction” features many very interesting and useful ideas for the education researcher and classroom teacher. One of them concerns the categorization of students into learners who follow four trajectories:

1.       Students who follow the conceptualizing trajectory start with many ideas, move onto abstract ideas readily, and “quickly embrace general principles” (p. 244), sometimes even leading the teacher to believe the class has learned the principle when many are actually still struggling. Linn: “Conceptualizers focus on abstract, normative ideas” (p. 246)

2.       Students on the experimenting path tend to try lots of different ideas and concepts, both normative and non-normative, “frequently generalizing ideas from one context to explain an observation in another context” (p. 246). Linn: “Experimenters pay attention to intriguing contexts” (p. 246)

3.       Those on the strategizing trajectory seek to game the system. They refuse to see a connection between what they learn in class and life outside, preferring to figure out how to achieve maximum results for minimum effort. Linn: “Strategizers learn the textbook ideas” (p. 246).

4.       Students on the conceptualizing route tend to see phenomena in silos. They find it difficult to draw connections between concepts. Linn: “Conceptualizers view each concept as unique”.

Perhaps one of the applications of educational technology is to allow teachers to build bridges between wherever the learner is positioned on their trajectory, to a position of deeper understanding.  Technology, for example, could be used to help build those collaborative, problem-based units that we have been discussing in class. Well-designed, the unit would allow:

… conceptualizers to reach for the big ideas while also seeing how tangible ideas contribute to a concept, and how the concept governs real actions

… experimenters to play with different options before reaching a conclusion and seeing that interesting events can actually lead to the creation of an over-arching concept

…  strategizers to be foiled in their attempts to focus only on what is required because they will be led to think creatively and independently in order to achieve the mark they desire

… conceptualizers to break down the silos and see that there are connections between seemingly disconnected phenomena

Perhaps one of the goals of a good education is to cause people to be adaptable and to be able to change trajectories as the situation requires. There are times when one needs to be a strategizer, but then in the next moment one might be called upon to reach for a big idea. Such adaptability is admired when it is seen amongst our leaders. Perhaps recognizing the trajectory a student is on in order to disrupt it should be one of the goals of the teacher.

Changing Minds

I wasn’t aware of the history of concept change research until reading diSessa’s article, A History of Conceptual Change Research: Threads and Fault Lines, and the idea certainly seems to get at one of the root occurrences in learning: educating not relatively unproblematic skills and facts but for the big ideas, the “concepts” that underpin knowledge. The “fault line” running through this scholarly tradition divides two opposing views. Student’s naïve ideas are either “1) coherent and strongly integrated, or 2) fragmented so as to allow disassembling, refining and reassembling” (diSessa, p. 267).

Some of the compelling threads that run through the history of conceptual change research include:

1.       Piaget’s notion of constructivism, that new ideas given way to old ones.

2.       Hume’s empiricist view that knowledge occurs through dispassionate observation.

3.       Descarte’s rationalist notion that knowledge is the product of thought.

4.       Susan Carey’s view that children’s views of science reflect the very history of science.

5.       The “theory theory” that claims that children have complete theories to explain the world like scientists to.

6.       The rational model that says that people hold onto misconceptions until they are convinced to replace them with another idea.

Another way of looking at the idea of concepts and how they might be replaced or evolved is to see the role of misconceptions in the broader culture instead of the individual child. Our culture is saturated with misconceptions. The misconception that celebrities’ views or actions are noteworthy, for example, crowds out the important issues. The misconception that consumer society is environmentally sustainable leads us all toward the cliff. One could even argue that there is a misconception that North Americans live in democracies, when the reality of corporate power actually muddies the democratic waters to such an extent that the word has lost much of its meanings.

How are cultural misconceptions eroded and replaced? How do the old false ideas that have sustained us through generations but that now threaten our survival get replaced? Perhaps the answer returns to the topic of the diSessa’s chapter … through the education of the individual.

Knowledge Building

Much of our second class was spend discussing the article "Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy and Technology" by Scardamalia and Bereiter. This chapter suggests that the dominant form of pedagogy in the past was instructionism, in which the teacher transmits information to the students. This was replaced in the twentieth century by "action learning", in which students are led to explore topics of their own choosing in order to generate understandings. Now, they argue, a second massive shift is taking place. The rapid growth of knowledge in our ever-changing society requires that schools position students as "knowledge creators" or "knowledge builders".

One of the key ideas supporting the notion of "knowledge builders" is the distinction the authors make between knowledge about a topic, and knowledge of a topic. A student who knows a lot about bears, for example, has a knowledge of them. He or she would probably do well on a test, and may have spent a lot of time with a textbook. A student with knowledge "of" bears has probably been led to that understanding through a problem-based approach. They understand that there is more to discover, and they are able to apply their understanding to an authentic problem, such as how humankind might mitigate the effect of urban growth on bear habitats.

This led me to consider my own small corner of the teaching world as an IB English teacher. Am I leading students to have "knowledge of" English, or "knowledge about"? Our classes spend very little time on information about texts. There is just enough to allow us to place the text within an historical context. Most of the time is spent working on the interpretation of texts, and here the teacher is placed with the students as a co-discoverer of meaning. Students and teacher all understand that they are creating knowledge of that text together, and that different classes with different students will achieve different outcomes. Students who finish the program are generally quite well positioned to participate in knowledge building around literature. I think that we are in the "of" category.

But is this activity merely cultural transmission? There is an element of that to be sure. The 14 or 15 texts in the two year program are selected from countries around the world, from a variety of languages and from different genres, including, just recently, new literacies such as the graphic novel and even fan fiction. Does studying the texts lead to any measurable benefit? It does lead to more accomplished written and oral expression - we test for that. And it does equip students with the ability to interpret texts and, hopefully, because this is not tested, enjoy and appreciate them in the future. Stepping out of the program to question its validity is a challenge, however, since the people asking the questions are teachers themselves, and they enjoy nothing more than a quiet afternoon with a good novel.