Tag Archives: pedagogy

Moving Forward …

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This week marks the end of my ETEC 533 journey. I went into the course hoping I would find alternatives and resources for teaching math and science to upper elementary students that would improve my practice. Technology makes a regular appearance in my class and by and large I know my students are exposed to  more than most, but I also know there are probably better ways of carrying this out. Actually, there are times when I knew there had to be, especially in the areas of math and science.

Although intense and daunting at times, I have relished the activities and readings I`ve been exposed to in the last three months. This course made me think. It made me analyze, no I think scrutinize would be a better descriptor, my own practice like I never have before. There have been great resources along the way that I have collected and will share with students, but the greatest growth and learning has come from the pedagogical approaches that I have been introduced to and my investigation around how these currently fit with my practice and how they can be interwoven into my future teaching.

I came looking for resources and activities. I am leaving with a stronger sense of pedagogy and who I want to be as a teacher. It’s the latter that will affect the most change and afford more opportunities to use technology, be it new or established resources, to create more authentic and engaging learning opportunities.

From a student’s perspective, I want each of them to be able to:

  • be engaged in their learning
  • develop useful knowledge they can access in future contexts
  • experience authenticity within a learning environment
  • have opportunities to make their thinking visible and see the thinking of others as well
  • socially construct knowledge and build collective understanding
  • share and learn from different perspectives
  • participate in generative rather than passive activities
  • aggregate data and information to see the strength in collective and collaborative learning
  • revise, modify, and apply feedback to continue to refine their understanding and conceptualization

As a teacher, I am more aware of how I can make all of the above happen and how to use technology to enhance the learning experience, demonstrate phenomena that students do not have access to, and carve new paths for understanding concepts individually and collectively. Through this course I have learned the value of:

  • abductive reasoning
  • mental models
  • information visualization
  • embracing coupling: informatic participation through technology overlapping in the same space  normal as traditional classroom participation
  • pedagogically developed social practices to enrich virtual and ‘real’ learning communities
  • networked communities and networked learning
  • inquiry-based learning through the T-GEM and Learning for Use frameworks and how this fits into my practice
  • How People Learn and how the principles of a knowledge, learner, assessment, and community-centered classroom can become cornerstones in the development and sustainability of a culture of learning in my classroom.

Creating the learning environment I want for my students starts with the pedagogical foundation I choose to lay. Pedagogy is never too far from most teachers’ thoughts. But until now, I didn’t fully realize I wasn’t tapping into my own theotetical base as much as I needed to. It’s one thing to understand and contemplate pedagogy in general. It’s another to understand and contemplate it as it applies to your personal practice. This requires a depth of reflection and analysis that prompts you to assess if your ideology matches your actions. Hopefully, they are one in the same. If not, like me, you have some work to do.

For a more detailed synthesis of my learning in ETEC 533, please visit the e-Folio Analysis page.

image: “The real problem is not adding technology to the current organization of the classroom, but changing the culture of teaching and learning” by langwitches released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike license

The Tortoise & the Hare in Education

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Does slow and steady always win the race? The Tortoise would have us believe so, and backing this claim is our steadfast understanding that calm steady perseverance is a hallmark of success. The Hare’s hasty decision making tactics and assuredness are seen as a liability evidenced by the fact that he had not sufficiently calculated the risk in taking a nap during the race. In education we have encountered tortoises and hares, and even rocks that prove immovable, but we’ve yet to effectively harness the risk-taking qualities of the hare and the mindfulness of the tortoise in recognition of the entrepreneurial (philosophically, not monetarily) outlook needed to transform pedagogy and our notions of learning contexts.

After reading the TELE articles this past week, I have been both encouraged and discouraged by the models and instructional design presented in them. Encouraged because with each innovative learning environment, I can’t help but envision how these new approaches can be implemented in my classroom, but at the same time discouraged because these same approaches are not new to education at all, so why am I learning about them for the first time?  Even though traditional approaches to learning are often criticized as leading to “inert knowledge that cannot be called upon when it is useful” (Whitehead in Edelson, 2001) due to its reliance on memorization and recall of facts, adopting new models of instruction that promote conceptual understanding progresses at glacial speed.   After learning from Edelson (2001) that inquiry based pedagogy was first introduced during curriculum reforms of the 1950s and 1960s within the learning cycle framework, and the situated learning emphasized in the anchored-instruction model embedded within the  Jasper Series was developed in the late 1980’s and 1990’s (Pellegrino, & Brophy, 2008), I can’t help but ask: What have we been doing in education? Either of these models would be a pedagogical improvement in many classrooms today, yet they remain predominantly untapped despite their decades of existence. Our dedication to what’s comfortable rather than what’s effective can be unnerving. As educators, we need to be cognizant of what can be learned from the tortoise and the hare and realize that true sustainable progress lies not in the presence of either extreme, but somewhere in the middle where sound pedagogy and reflective practice support risk-taking on the road to reform.

image: the tortoise and the hare by Jehsuk released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works license

References

Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 38(3), 355-385.

Pellegrino, J.W. & Brophy, S. (2008). From cognitive theory to instructional practice: Technology and the evolution of anchored instruction. In Ifenthaler, Pirney-Dunner, & J.M. Spector (Eds.) Understanding models for learning and instruction, New York: Springer Science + Business Media, pp. 277-303.

Implementing WISE

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Throughout my exploration of WISE, I entertained thoughts about how it could be integrated into the classroom. The animations and simulations embedded within the projects definitely have the potential to the enrich learning environment for students, but its promise of helping educators “create sustainable classroom inquiry instruction across the varied contexts learning takes place” (Linn, M., Clark, D. & Slotta, J., 2003) was not substantive based on the activities I had the chance to explore; however, I’m not ruling out that I have yet to tap into existing projects whose pedagogy would in fact impress me. I believe WISE has the potential to motivate students and facilitate knowledge integration, but as a constructivist portal for inquiry-based instruction, this platform leaves too much room for educators to copy and revise projects without staying committed to the pedagogy that WISE developers set out to promote with its design. Discovering examples such as this has made me skeptic of its universal benefits in classrooms and its potential role in developing inquiry skills if educators are not guided and scaffolded themselves in learning how to create and refine inquiry-based pedagogy. As Edelson (2001) points out that “the constructivist theories of learning apply to teachers and designers as well … [so] if they are to learn to use it successfully, they must go through a learning process themselves.” The effectiveness of technology integration is always determined by the hands who wield it. If WISE had more influence on teachers’ professional development to better ensure it was used in accordance with robust inquiry principles, it could do more to reform science education.

As it stands, I think WISE is best integrated with other means of instruction with or without  additional technology, face to face interactions in classrooms or within a distributed learning context. From my observations, I question the strength of the Scaffolded Knowledge Integration framework tenet, “helping students learn from each other” within the WISE context. Facilitating social opportunities that promote collaboration, peer feedback, and perspective taking are noticeably minimal in the projects I perused – another reason to  integrate it within a larger body of instruction so students can take advantage of the social nature of learning. WISE, as I see it, should not be implemented by educators  as a stand-alone unit. It must be supplemented in the best interests of learning.

image: IMG_4950 by bionic released under a CC Attribuition – Noncommecial license

 References

Linn, M. Clark, D. & Slotta, J. (2003). WISE design for Knowledge Integration. Science Education, 87(4), 517-538.

Nicaise, M., Gibney, T. & Crane, M. (2000). Toward an understanding of authentic learning: student perception of an authentic classroom. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 9(1), 79-94, doi: 10.1023/A:1009477008671

 

The Technology-Enhanced Landscape

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Ideal Pedagogical Design

Ideally, a technology-enhanced learning experience in math and/or science will emphasize learning as a process of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing within an environment authentically designed to stimulate inquiry, collaboration, metacognition, and communication.

In response to Kozma’s (2003) recommendation that “designers should provide students with environments that restructure the discourse of … classrooms around collaborative knowledge building and the social construction of meaning”, and the following questions:

  • What do you think designers of learning experiences should do?
  • How would you design a technology-enhanced learning experience?

image: A Mindset, Not a Skillset by superkimbo released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike license