Teachers and learners
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•675 views
Basic slides, no audio/notes
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Teachers and learners
Similar to Teachers and learners (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Teachers and learners
- 1. Learning About Teaching Unit 1 Teachers & Learners| Fall 2016
- 3. Why this book? Brookfield’s experience Focus on adults Consummate readability of his books Thoughtfulness Brookfield: http://www.stephenbrookfield.com/ UAA Title III Robust Online Learning Grant
- 4. #1: Skillful teaching is whatever helps students learn Not all students have same needs; we also can’t dive into a sea of relativism We are a bundle of habits, attitudes, insecurities, etc and that really has an impact on the teaching and learning experience Example: Insecurity Example: Habit Example: Attitude
- 5. #2: Skillful teachers adopt a critically reflective stance toward their practice Key point! Contextually informed - the assumptions we operate under actually fit our context. See above about discussion and the problems it can create. Checks we can use to help with our assumptions and context Students' eyes: checking in with students. (This why I do the pulse-taking surveys with students in online courses.) Colleagues' perceptions (debriefing, teaching and learning) Literature Autobiography
- 6. #2: Skillful teachers adopt a critically reflective stance toward their practice Why? Informed action Modeling critical thinking Example: Consider that I stopped this class in the middle of the semester for a whole week to change things around - a lot harder to do in an online course where a lot of the planning and packaging of content is done well in advance. Re-energize our teaching Example: Using videos from people who know more than I do about the heavy- duty epistemology and psychological learning theory seemed wise. However, I find it necessary now to step back… our energy is lagging, and we need to renew our learning experience Fall 2016 NS A640
- 7. #3: Teachers need a constant awareness of how students are experiencing their learning and perceiving teachers' actions Challenging to do in an honest way Anonymous survey techniques - safe environment Eliminate possible bias on our parts
- 8. #4: College students are adults. Period. Not such an issue in CPE That is what STUDENTS want - consider that if you teach undergraduates Appearance of disinterest is not always disinterest Transformation is often incremental Collaborative learning
- 10. Learning Environment vs Classroom Note difference in title from Brookfield The learning environment is broader than just a classroom CPE – in a very practical way, the learning environment can be a classroom, webinar, online course, apprenticeship, or any of a variety of things Move away from thinking about a room and more about the features of the learning space, no matter what it looks like See M,C, & B Chapter 2 for a discussion of various learning environments or settings (p. 29-42) UAA FA16 NS A640
- 11. Learning Environments Formal (organized, structured system) Nonformal (organized learning outside an educational system) Examples - Community-based learning Indigenous learning Informal (spontaneous, unstructured learning of daily life) Online Fall 2016 NS A640
- 12. Brookfield's techniques for understanding the classroom One-minute paper (p. 28) - sort of a written pop quiz The muddiest point - identifying points of confusion (28-29) Best-known and quite useful - Critical Incident Questionnaire (p. 34) Learning audit (29) Clickers (30) Social media feedback TodaysMeet - anonymous twitter, instant and delayed feedback (31) Texting as clicker (31-32) Word clouds (31-32) Fall 2016 NS A640
- 13. More about the learning environment It's important to be acutely aware of the learning environment Factors might manifest different in virtual and face to face environments, so be prepared to adjust Physical Comfort/too comfortable Distractions People Virtual Easy to ignore Distractions Frustration with design, technology, people People Fall 2016 NS A640
- 15. Who are the Adult Learners This is where the Merriam book shows its age – all the adult learner info is out of date Better info here at NCES about who adult learners are and their characteristics Fall 2016 NS A640
- 16. Motivations of Adult Learners Boshier’s Education Participation Scale (EPS) for motivations of adult learners. Not by any means definitive, but helpful in looking at the landscape Communication improvement Social contact Educational preparation Professional advancement Family togetherness Social stimulation Cognitive interest Fall 2016 NS A640
Editor's Notes
- Up to now, a lot of what we’ve been doing is laying groundwork for thinking about teaching and learning, trying to wrap our minds around the basics of epistemology, traditional psychological and adult learning theories. In so doing, it has been my hope to prepare you ultimately to think about teaching in a comprehensive fashion. That is, I want you to think about your teaching from what you think of as knowledge- and how one gains knowledge – clear through the experience of being a teacher in a professional context, aligning your perspectives, goals, theories, techniques, and so on to come away with the most effective teaching or learning experiences possible.
- This section is mostly straight from Brookfield’s The Skillful Teacher, with a dollop of experience thrown in for good measure.
- At one point I talked over my research with Stephen Brookfield at the Adult Education Research Conference. That was some15 years ago, mind you, but he made an impression then as being very much a pragmatist – he researches, thinks, writes, is creative, but he always comes back to where the rubber meets the road, and that is teaching.
- The need to be sensitvie to all our students without driving ourselves insane is a recurring topic in adult education. Brookfield answers this by saying, essentially, that we should have a game plan and then be willing to adapt on the fly by being aware of our environments and aware of ourselves, then applying some critical thinking skills to try to navigate the scenario. Example: I'm acutely conscious that this is a class about teaching and learning. Every time I'm late with something, something doesn't make sense, or students think that what I've offered is "meh", I die a little death. Insecure - what in the world were they thinking hiring me to teach this?? Example: In graduate school education, there is a lot of discussion. In adult education, as brookfield notes, we have a lot of discussion. In online learning, guess what… there’s a lot of discussion. But even with all winds blowing in one direction, discussion doesn't always work well and isn't necessarily the best option. Example: fostering self-directedness. In adult ed, we have a tendency to try to do this. Sometimes it works… sometimes not so much. Barriers include work, home life, inexperience, or taking a structured course BECAUSE you don't have the time/energy to be self-directed. Many of these things are magnified in online learning.
- This idea of being contextually informed is important – we make assumptions and they are necessary; we just need to make sure that they are the correct ones for the context. Here there are some common ways that we can take different perspectives on our practice and context – checking in with students is a big one; checking in with colleagues; rifling through our experience, and then going to the library to see what we can find.
- When we teach we are navigating a scenario to try to achieve specific goals – there are many variables in any given scenario. By taking informed action, rather than just taking action, we can improve the possibilities of achieving our goals. Also… if you take a critically reflective stance on practice, it liberates us to take a step back and change things if we need to without feeling shamed or failure
- This has to do with informed action vs action. Stay in touch with the students in such a way that they can give you honest feedback safely and help make a better class
- This assumption is a little less relevant to our class than some others, excpet that some of us are college professors. In my classes full of adults, I have a tendency to treat my adult students as peers with different areas of expertise. I’m not sure I could do that with undergraduates, but I can treat them as adults. In either case, very little will alienate your students faster than condescension.
- One of my goals here this semester is to get you to determine what IS- and look at why. Then think about what could be, or what could be better – and ask your self why it is not that. And if possible, is that an area for improvement? I’m going to differ from brookfield a little here, suggesting that we should be looking at the learning environment or learning space, no matter what form it takes.
- Their settings are a little odd, as they are closer to a typology except for the online learning piece. Online learning is not a reasonable part of this typology, as any of these types of learning could happen online. I like this typology because it lets us take several lenses to the learning opportunities that we see in our professional context. We have a tendency to think of using a single strategy when we approach learning, and that may not be in our best interest
- Here are several of Brookfield’s techniques for understanding the classroom. I’ll employ one or two of these over the next several weeks so we can see them in action.
- We’ve talked at length of the learning environment and the need to be aware of it, so I won’t belabor that further.
- This section provides a quick update to some of our textbook content on characteristics of adult learners, and then a brief conversation about motivations of adult learners.
- I’ve highlighted the one most likely to apply in our context – although it is not necessarily advancement that we see. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is about prevention of stagnation, as you all have noted