Confessions and Observations

I’ve had a number of thoughts / feelings swimming within me lately. Some of them concern my work at the CTE, some from teaching (which I don’t consider work), and some from my home life. I’ve been tempted, even compelled at times to write about them … but I, too, remain very anxious about this medium as this is my first real attempt to integrate it into my teaching (and learning) as well. I am the kind of person that speaks from the heart and that can get you in trouble. I have authored a couple of posts recently late at night or early in the morning and decided not to actually post them because I am literally afraid of how they might be interpreted, misconstrued, miss-communicated, or miss-represented. In fact, it has taken me more than an hour to write this paragraph (a few days for the post)!

Confessions aside, one of the themes that’s been running through my work and this class is the idea of scholarly teaching (or evidence-based teaching). If you recall, this was the theme of the 2010 Lilly Conference on Teaching and Learning. The issue of how we can make informed decisions regarding our teaching and course design in order to improve student learning came up a couple of times (both in class discussions and in the learning journals) –So how can we trust the science on how people learn since it is inherently “squishy?” It would be nice if the social sciences were as predictable as the natural sciences. Perhaps we could have a periodic table of teaching methods on the wall of each classroom! The fact is, one needs to be a critically reflective practitioner to be able to explore, innovate, and discover what works best for you and your students, with your discipline/subject matter, in the classroom that you were assigned, at your institution, at a particular time of day, and with the appropriate use of instructional technology. You can either wing it…relying heavily on what feels right for you. Or you can ground everything you do in what has been demonstrated by others through either a scholarly process or legitimate research on teaching and learning. For both my own welfare, and yours, I want to take a stab at distinguishing between scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning

Scholarly Teaching

Many of us will come to the realization at some point in our teaching that there is a persistent problem (challenge) that just doesn’t go away. Or, you catch a glimpse of something that seems powerful or compelling in terms of how your students are learning and you want to explore how to (1) eliminate or reduce the challenge or (2) bottle the magic!  So you go to your colleagues and / or the teaching and leaning literature. Richlin (2001) states that the practice of scholarly teaching includes the following steps:

• Identifying a teaching/learning problem or opportunity
• Documenting baseline activity
• Studying what others have done with the problem / opportunity
• Selecting the best pedagogical method to help
• Applying the new method
• Documenting the outcomes
• Analyzing the outcomes
• Reflecting on the process

By employing a scholarly process in your teaching / course design, you are by no means guaranteeing anything. However, you are making data-driven decisions, which is what scholars do! Ideally, you will become more pedagogically savvy, which when coupled with your content expertise, provides you with the pedagogical content knowledge that is likely to increase your effectiveness as an educator.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The term scholarship of teaching (also known as the scholarship of teaching and learning or SoTL) comes from the work of Ernest Boyer (1990), in his monograph entitled Scholarship Reconsidered. The fact is, many faculty have questions (challenges / opportunities) that have not yet been explored—at least not well. This motivates some faculty to conduct research on their own teaching (or student learning) in order to contribute to the T & L knowledge-base. The primary differences between scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning is the level of scientific rigor and the way in which it is made public. For SoTL, the scientific process and methodology must be more sound and rigorous for both the IRB review (Internal Review Board who oversees all research on humans and animals) and the peer review board for publication. Assuming the “science” passes through each review, then the research and findings become public via a reputable journal or publishing outlet. Scholarly teaching approximates the scientific process and often remains somewhat private. When faculty do share their scholarly teaching efforts it is often through informal conversation or more formal presentations in the form of workshops or conferences, etc.. So in a sentence, scholarly teaching uses evidence to inform a scholarly process whereas SoTL generates this evidence and makes it public.

References

Boyer, E. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: Princeton University Press.

Richlin, L. (2001). Scholarly Teaching and the Scholarship of Teaching. In C. Kreber (Ed.), The scholarship of teaching: New directions for teaching and learning, No. 86 (pp. 57-68). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The Art of Teaching and Learning

My first cut would be to distinguish between the Affective Domain and the Affective Field.

The Affective Domain pertains to those human faculties that relate to:

• Motivations
• Moods
• Feelings / emotions
• Attitudes
• Deeply held beliefs / values

There was a time when only student motivation was the focus. Since then it has become a bit more nuanced and complicated. Nonetheless, there are a number of things that we can do as faculty to engender the kind of affect that is conducive to learning (as well as minimize the kinds of affect that retard or inhibit learning. For instance, we know that extrinsic motivation often gets students to participate (like points or grades) but intrinsic motivation helps sustain their learning over time. “Bad moods” make it hard to pay attention whereas “good moods” improve attention. Student who fear math, or fear failure, will have a harder time engaging in an exercise than someone who loves it (or at least doesn’t mind it).

So, here are a few things to consider for engendering the most effective affective qualities in your students–especially the top three on the list (motivations, moods, and emotions).

• Give them some choice in the course (choice in subject matter, assessments, classroom participation, etc.). They often feel better about the experience when they are exercising some control over their learning
• Make the activities / example as relevant / significant to them as possible. Hearing someone talk about their experience with HIV is more powerful than reading about it in a textbook.
• Show your enthusiasm for the subject matter and our profession. Enthusiasm and emotion is contagious!
• Priming is a great social psychological technique that obviously works in marketing and the advertising business. Unless you are an exceptional lecturer, lecturing isn’t the best way to engage people. Lecturing is effective once they are engaged. Start with a guiding question, or an image / picture, or a song / musical genre.
• Humor works well for lowering peoples defenses—but it must be genuine! Be willing to laugh at yourself or with your students—it makes you human!
• Tell stories about yourself / your family where appropriate.
• These are just a handful of suggestions; the point is to get their positive energy up but not too much. Too little arousal and you will be talking to crickets, too much and you will be talking to a bunch of basket-cases. Check out Yerkes / Dodson law for more info.

If you want to try and have a more dramatic impact on their affect, try to integrate teaching methods that attempt to mirror what we might call holistic learning (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor). These include service learning, problem-based learning, undergraduate research, internships/externships and study abroad opportunities.

The Affective Field pertains to the space that is both around us and between us. The former includes lighting, architecture, color, furnishings, etc. The later relates to safety, trust, respect, and community—these are the things that we have the most control over. These are the conditions that can have a serious impact on our success or not. These are difficult to establish and maintain. However, once present, it can be magic. On the other hand, once compromised, it is almost impossible to repair or rebuild. Things to consider here include

• How you communicate with students (verbally and non-verbally)
• Small group work can help them think through complicated or emotionally charged issues before speaking to the whole class
• Suspending judgment on erroneous thinking
• Feedback should be directed at behavior / thinking not the person
• Make the case, both in action and word that virtually everything you do in the class is for their benefit. They know it when you are doing something to make your work easier (for instance: Using clickers just to take and police attendance vs. using clickers to promote critical thinking and/or deeper learning

The Bottom line

Knowing the science of how people learn is necessary, but not sufficient. The science can help you design your course and lesson plans (reflecting on teaching) but you will need to be both creative and flexible  during class  if you want to be as successful as possible (reflecting in teaching).

thoughts?

My metaphor for teaching and learning

Hi Folks,

Zach here.

My Background

I have been here at VCU since 1983. I came here from Charlottesville in 1983 to go to VCU. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up (still don’t) so I earned my Bachelors in Psychology (1987) thinking that whatever I did,  I would be working with other people so figuring out what makes people tick seemed useful. In my senior year I took a course in Social Psychology (in Sociology) and it changed my life. It was the best class I ever took in college and it really changed my mind about higher education and learning. So after a year off, I went back to school to get my Master’s in sociology. It was during this phase of my education when I was asked to “teach” a little bit in small, break out sections from the large lecture in soc 101. I quickly fell in love with teaching, and teaching sociology in particular as I saw  it then (and continue to see it now) as an exercise in consciousness raising. However, I quickly realized that not everyone wants their consciousness challenged, much less raised, so I found myself struggling between my own lofty expectations for the course with my students’ expectations. I quickly came to the conclusion that I can’t teach anyone…perhaps the best I could do is to create the conditions that are conducive for learning. Coming to this realization has helped be think about my role as a “teacher” and has helped me to refine my teaching philosophy.

My metaphor for teaching  and learning is Gardening!

My wife and I have been gardening since we have been married (about 13 years now). We have both vegetable and flower gardens..and it is a love/hate relationship! We spend a lot of time “preparing” the garden for our next “crop”…we carefully till and nourish our soil. We plant things according to the calendar as well as their soil / light / watering preferences. We do our best to “assess” how things are growing (or not), and then we intervene accordingly. What we find is that many thing s die despite  our best efforts and many things will grow regardless of whether we intervene or not. Sound familiar?  This being said, I find a lot of parallels between gardening and teaching.

1. Both are grounded in science. The more you know about the science of horticulture and the science of how people learn, the better results you will get…although no guarantees that’s for sure!
2. I see my role as “creating the conditions that are conducive to “growth” in both areas…although again, no guarantees.
3. I pre-assess the conditions and do my best to manipulate them in such a way as to enhance the “fertility” of the ground / class / classroom
4. I sometimes create scaffolding to help things grow in directions that I know will be most productive
5. I sometimes have to trim and prune the growth that is counterproductive
6. I sometimes have to add and/or subtract things from the “conditions” based on assessments that I engage in throughout the growth cycle.
7. However, we also recognize that there are a lot of variable that influence the health and growth of (plants and humans) that are well beyond our control (weather, bugs, animals, and diseases. So we do our best to focus on that we we do have control over.
8. Each year I try to incorporate what I learned from the last cycle into the next cycle
9. The ultimate test is when other people consume our food (or acquire our flowers). This reminds me another good metaphor… When the cook tastes the dish, that is formative assessment–s/he will often make changes to the flavor / consistency based on what s/he tastes. Summative assessment (or evaluation) occurs when your guests eat the dish you prepared.
10. Finally, it takes years and a lot of humility to become a master gardener (or a master teacher)

In sum, both gardening and teaching require a considerable knowledge of the science that pertains to each endeavor, as well as an Art — resulting from self-expression, creativity, and ultimately human affect!

Hello world!

Well, here goes nothing!