Barb, I was laughing when I read your confession of your falling into the social reform category. I'm not surprised! And I have to confess that I also showed the strongest tendence towards this category followed by the developmental category. This leads to my response to your question - whether we just come from one perspective or we integrate aspects of more than one view and make decision accordingly - no doubt we integrate and we mix and match. We may show a central tendency at the philosophical level, but when it comes to the methodological level, I think we have to be flexible and agile, and apply different designs and techniques for different people and contexts. Make sense?
Cindy Xin
Posts made by Cindy Xin
Sylvia, it's great that you brought up Pratt and Collins's work on teaching perspectives. I actually attended a presentation followed by a workshop given by the two authors at a conference several years ago. It was a very valuable learning experience. I think in order to build a successful relationship with the person whom you are to work with, it is critical to understand from which perspective that person is from. This way you are likely to talk with your partner in the same language. You work from there and gradually introduce new vocabularies if you want to guide the person to see other different perspectives. One the other hand, always be prepared and open to be guided by your partner too.
I'd like to quote Pratt and Collins and give gists of what the five different teaching perspectives are about -
Transmission: Effective teaching requires a substantial commitment to the content or subject matter. Good teachers have mastery of the subject matter or content.
Apprenticeship: Effective teaching is a process of enculturating students into a set of social norms and ways of working. Good teachers are highly skilled at what they teach.
Developmental: Effective teaching must be planned and conducted ?from the learner?s point of view?. Good teachers must understand how their learners think and reason about the content.
Nurturing: Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, as well as the head. People are motivated and productive learners when they are working on issues or problems without fear of failure.
Social Reform: Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways. From this point of view, the object of teaching is the collective rather than the individual. Good teachers awaken students to the values and ideologies that are embedded in texts and common practices within their discipline. Good teachers challenge the status quo and encourage students to consider the how learners are positioned and constructed in particular discourses and practices.
You can read more in detail about these five perspectives by accessing http://teachingperspectives.com/PDF/summaries.pdf
As you can see, each perspective has its own strengths and weaknesses. It's not a matter of right or wrong, or better or worse, but rather knowing where you and others stand and try to expand your own horizon and those of others whom you work with.
It's a good exercise to go through the Teaching Perspective Inventory test and find out your own perspective(s). If you can encourage your partner(s) to take the test too, that's even better. Whether to take the test or not, it is valuable to understand these different perspectives. And for that matter, other perspectives not included above but you think are valid.
Sarah, it is a fine example of integrating assessment with learning. I'm a fan of low-stake assessment aiming at learning. By low-stake assessment I mean non-graded and specifically targeted (at a learning goal or objective) kind of assessment that often done by individual students on their own or through their peers. This kind of assessments are agile that can be relatively easily and yet thoughtfully designed. They can be used in the process of teaching of learning for self-monitoring and peer-review, and ultimately fostering self-reflection and critical evaluation.
I have an activity I used in online discussion in the sense described above. The idea is to have a small group of students (e.g., 3-4 members) working together and individually at the same time. The group is signed to work on a central topic of discussion. Each individual member of the group is responsible for a subtopic by building a discussion around it through engaging other members from the group. They are instructed to contribute to and critique each other's subtopic. The interesting thing is that the students quickly figure out that in order to build an intriguing case for their own subtopic, they all have to critically contribute to each other's discussion area while at the same time posting and responding within their own areas. It's a kind of borrowing the "prisoner's dilemma" concept - the best chance of succeeding individually (to "escape") is to actually help out each other and work collaboratively. After a period of discussion, say one or two-weeks, each member of the group writes a summary of issues being critically evaluated in his/her subtopic area and the conclusions (sometimes tentative) reached. The second stage of the activity is to have the group work together to build a case or report on the central topic by linking and integrating the subtopics.
In the above example the individual summaries and the final group report can be graded; however, the discussion process is not - the quality control is done by individual members through peer-review and self-reflection.
I have an activity I used in online discussion in the sense described above. The idea is to have a small group of students (e.g., 3-4 members) working together and individually at the same time. The group is signed to work on a central topic of discussion. Each individual member of the group is responsible for a subtopic by building a discussion around it through engaging other members from the group. They are instructed to contribute to and critique each other's subtopic. The interesting thing is that the students quickly figure out that in order to build an intriguing case for their own subtopic, they all have to critically contribute to each other's discussion area while at the same time posting and responding within their own areas. It's a kind of borrowing the "prisoner's dilemma" concept - the best chance of succeeding individually (to "escape") is to actually help out each other and work collaboratively. After a period of discussion, say one or two-weeks, each member of the group writes a summary of issues being critically evaluated in his/her subtopic area and the conclusions (sometimes tentative) reached. The second stage of the activity is to have the group work together to build a case or report on the central topic by linking and integrating the subtopics.
In the above example the individual summaries and the final group report can be graded; however, the discussion process is not - the quality control is done by individual members through peer-review and self-reflection.
Sarah, thank you for sharing your paper.
However, one of my findings was that instructors who explicitly taught learners how to collaborate online to construct meaning/understanding/knowledge were successful.
Good point. It agrees with my own study. Pedagogy really counts. If instructors are involved and they actively demonstrate the kind of participation they'd like to see happening, students will likely follow and engage.
I recently learned a study by Heather Kanuka, a Canadian Research Chair in distance learning at Athabasca University. The title of her study is The Influence of Instructional Methods on the Quality of Online Discussion. In this study, she compared five different instructional methods used in online discussion with a sample size of 1014 messages. These methods include
She also stated that her finding confirms studies had been done in the past. However, I feel such unfortunate results do not have to repeated. My past experience of participating online discussion at the Global Educators Network showed that when moderator took the leadership role and using proper moderating techniques, a discussion could be very engaging. Also the nature of the participants themselves also counts. When there is a group of motivated learners, good things will likely to happen. But even motivated learners need to be maintained in a good spirit through the dedication and intentional cultivation of an intellectual environment from the teachers.
However, one of my findings was that instructors who explicitly taught learners how to collaborate online to construct meaning/understanding/knowledge were successful.
Good point. It agrees with my own study. Pedagogy really counts. If instructors are involved and they actively demonstrate the kind of participation they'd like to see happening, students will likely follow and engage.
I recently learned a study by Heather Kanuka, a Canadian Research Chair in distance learning at Athabasca University. The title of her study is The Influence of Instructional Methods on the Quality of Online Discussion. In this study, she compared five different instructional methods used in online discussion with a sample size of 1014 messages. These methods include
- Nominal Group Technique
- Debate
- Invited Expert
- WebQuest
- Reflective Deliberation
She also stated that her finding confirms studies had been done in the past. However, I feel such unfortunate results do not have to repeated. My past experience of participating online discussion at the Global Educators Network showed that when moderator took the leadership role and using proper moderating techniques, a discussion could be very engaging. Also the nature of the participants themselves also counts. When there is a group of motivated learners, good things will likely to happen. But even motivated learners need to be maintained in a good spirit through the dedication and intentional cultivation of an intellectual environment from the teachers.
Hello, I'm Cindy Xin, a colleague of Vivian and Barbara here at SFU. We can shout to each other from our offices and be heard. And we do sometimes.
I'm excited to see that on the first day of this seminar we've already gathered quite a crowd from various parts of the world. It is very encouraging and it's great to meet new people this way.
Now, let me turn to the topic of evaluation of learning outcomes started by Robbie. In reply to Robbie's message, Vivian talked about student evaluations of a course. I just want to clarify which one are we talking about, assessing of what student have learned and to what extent they have achieved the learning objectives of a course, or student's satisfaction of a course and the instruction they received? Obviously these two areas are related and each deserves to be discussed separately or they can be discussed together.
I'm excited to see that on the first day of this seminar we've already gathered quite a crowd from various parts of the world. It is very encouraging and it's great to meet new people this way.
Now, let me turn to the topic of evaluation of learning outcomes started by Robbie. In reply to Robbie's message, Vivian talked about student evaluations of a course. I just want to clarify which one are we talking about, assessing of what student have learned and to what extent they have achieved the learning objectives of a course, or student's satisfaction of a course and the instruction they received? Obviously these two areas are related and each deserves to be discussed separately or they can be discussed together.