It’s a Way of Thinking

Picasso

I remember my Maths lessons, thinking what was the point of learning factoring and vectors and quadratics. I didn’t use it in real life, I had no intentions of talking about these kind of equations, so they weren’t even good for conversation.

Why did we spend all those hours going over essay plans for History? Introduction: Pose a question and then answer it broadly. First Paragraph: Begin with an argument and then back it up with evidence, and ensure to evaluate and give reasons considering the other side of the argument…

I could type out a whole hand sheet and give it to an A-Level student and they would say it’s all wrong because I can’t remember it properly. Which makes me think, why did we spend all those hours doing them when I can’t even remember it now? It’s only been three years, I wasn’t a bad student, nothing catastrophic has happened and wiped my memory clean. Time was wasted.

Or was it?

I’ve come to learn that subjects are a way of thinking, not just a body of facts.

Sure, there are dates and places and monarchies and battles and armadas, and rebellions and religions and hangings and empires… all to remember. That’s the knowledge, the content of the subject, and with enough effort a student can learn it.

What essay planning teaches us is how to synthesise all of these facts, to pick out what is thematically relevant, to understand what affects what, the causes and the effects…

Writing an essay requires students to use appropriate reasoning for the subject as it practises and develops the way of thinking the subject needs. You’re not just learning to plan an essay, you’re learning to evaluate and analyse, each high-order skills (from Bloom’s taxonomy) that stretch a student in their abilities.

These are our real tools: the ability to analyse, the ability to synthesise, the ability to evaluate; doing these essays developed these skills, skills that elevate us into better understanders and better learners. 

We study physics not just to learn complex particles and forces, but so that we also know intuitively that the bounce of the ball will diminish by half after the first bounce so that when we are running down the line we can judge the flight of the ball and control it accurately and are then able to execute a perfect cross into the box for Van Persie to score a diving header into the top righthand corner.

That was me applying physics to football. Poorly. 

Novice Teachers

Lucien Freud

It is almost always noticeable when a teacher is a novice. It’s a fear I hold myself. Being found out. Caught in the open with no foliage to hide me. Foliage being books and theory. A ropey moment in the classroom and everything freezes and the student’s faces turn lopsided in wonder and pity. They’d know, then everything would be lost.

I suppose this is why we arm ourselves with tools fashioned from the foliage. Stripped-down, sharpened theories to spear encroaching humiliation, and hardened lesson planning act as shelter from wandering time-wasters.

It is not a surprise to find out then, that novice teachers often set too difficult tasks. We don’t want the group to know we’re fresh puplings with our eyes barely open, their teeth and tongues ready to gnash in conversation over our quiet whimpers. So, we give the students something really hard. Of course. 

Motivation

Rothko, I like this one a lot. 

Motivation is something students battle nearly every day, and it’s not only students, it’s  people in general. In my own experience, I have known some who have grinded to a halt and then went to rust. A person’s mental fortitude to keep on going forward is a natural phenomenon in my eyes. Thus, a teacher’s ability to keep their tired, distracted, dormant students motivated in their work is essential, and amazing.

It’s been interesting looking over the factors of good motivation, considering what is necessary and how it should be applied. I can see now how vital positive reinforcement is at every level, and from my own life I can see where an initial failure has led to consequential failures. At a younger age I tried to learn an instrument, yet through poor reinforcement and little encouragement I stopped ever thinking I could learn. Thankfully, I want to try again as you don’t need to learn an instrument at a young age, you can do it at any age. It will be bass guitar.

Many students say they like a certain subject best because of their teacher, and now this makes sense. If your teacher is encouraging and positive about your work, the student would want to do well for that teacher because they know they would receive praise. Success breeds success. The student has to want to learn, and doing it not only for themselves, but to gain appreciation from their teacher too, is a strong motivator.

Teacher Talk and Why We Need 1-on-1 Learning

Modigliani

Reading into teacher talk has brought up some things which I find interesting.

1. Most people talk at about 100 to 200 words per minute. A one-hour lecture could contain 12,000 words. That’s a short book.

2. The concentration span of a student is less than 5 minutes. For an undergraduate, it’s perhaps 15 to 20 minutes.

If an undergraduate can really only concentrate for 20 minutes tops on teacher talk, why is some of the most expensive kind of education, degree and masters, mainly taught in the worst way possible?

A quote of a quote from Geoff Petty’s book, Teaching Today:

‘A lecture is an event where information passes from the notes of the lecturer into the notes of the student, without passing through the brains of either.’

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I have to understand, and I do, even though I do not see it, that tutors and lecturers are busy. Busy marking, writing their own material, studying themselves, publishing their books, speaking in places of importance, teaching us empty heads at lectures with wise words developed through experience and knowledge. All important stuff.

We know lectures are the worst way to learn.

This is most likely why our tutors have made us write blogs, it engages us in a more immersive way. We gather our opinions, of stuff we’ve read independently, we’ve evaluated and analysed what we’ve taken in and then reflect on it here. This blogging technology has been a great breakthrough for learning techniques.

It’s great for independent learning but learning also requires teaching support. Classrooms dilute student-teacher interaction because the teacher is handling a class, an individual student can become lost.

At degree level there’s little rapport between students. There are friends, but they are pockets within a blanket of faces who don‘t know each other. A spiral of silence can occur. If, to the individual, the masses look like they understand, then they don’t say anything because no one else is, for fear of losing face and esteem. Where a lecture is the only other avenue of learning whole swathes of individual students can go unchecked.

1-on-1 tutorials are perfect. They provide intimate and personal help for the student. They create a rapport between student and tutor, allowing great positive reinforcement. It can help confidence too, in the student’s own work, and in contribution to class if the teacher encourages well.

So much good can come from 1-on-1 learning, and I don’t understand why tutors can’t have a permanent schedule of tutorials with students, so the student know they WILL see their tutors, rather than maybe, if they’re not busy. 

Micro-teaching, Reflection

Richard Avedon portrait of Alfred Hitchcock, master of detail

During the last session we did our micro-teaching where I taught the class of five the formatting of screenplays.

Immediately I must acknowledge that I failed to check the classroom beforehand, I was expecting to be in a classroom with a computer which unfortunately was not the case. I had prepared a powerpoint presentation which held the structure and reinforcement of what I was saying of the lesson, and so without it I was flagging a little. I do have a tablet device which I managed to show the students the slides, however it was wholly impractical and didn't have the same kind of effect.

In the last blog post I was worrying over the timings of the session and as I predicted I did run over my time, however I think this might partially be down to that I was first and nervous, but that I was also thrown by not having my presentation to back me up.

The successful part of the session I think was the questions section at the end as it got to show what I knew of formatting and was more natural at answering these questions. Rather than the talking going one way, I think I may consider in the future creating more of a dialogue between myself and students as that's where I perform best.

There were elements of how I was teaching that could have been improved, I stood awkwardly and to one side, it'd have been better if I stood centrally and considered the whole room, in hand with moving between groups to provoke discussion. Group discussion was difficult with the numbers of students and so I had to participate a lot more than I initially planned. This also included some heavy prompting as a few students had very little exposure to scripts beforehand and so when I challenged them to point out what was wrong with the poor example script, they found nothing wrong because they didn't have an idea of what was right. Hopefully, after the session they may know a little bit more than they did.

Micro-Teaching Planning

William Klein

I've been thinking about our planning for micro teaching. Teaching a subject in ten minutes is a difficult task, an introduction alone can take ten minutes so it calls for quite a rigid lesson plan and strong will to progress through the required steps I've considered appropriate to learn what I'm teaching.

I am concerned about the dryness of my subject matter, the formatting of script, as it demands conveying a set of rules and instructions, something notoriously dull.

For the first two minutes, I am going to try and engage the students immediately in the introduction by asking what makes a script a script, this will get groups thinking and allows participation and discourse between myself and the students. The only cause for concern would be the possibility of overrunning, so I will have to be on top of the time and direct the discourse quickly and efficiently.

After this an example page of script will be handed out to groups of three or two and I will ask the students to spot what they think is wrong with the formatting, what is done right and what needs changing. This kind of activity, lasting four minutes, will engage the students in working with the scripts and letting them produce ideas of what they think is correct and what isn't, hopefully this will provoke good discussion.

Following the discussions in groups, for the final four minutes, I will then do a presentation defining the specificities of the formatting and highlight what the example script got right and got wrong and validate the students and their ideas.

My worry is timings but I will aim to be forcible in pushing the lesson forward and keep discussion moving. I look forward to seeing how I alter discussion and keep in control without getting derailed.

--ST

Student Writing In Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Approach

Jeremy Fish

This journal focuses on the idea that the standard of student 'literacy' is falling, but it is not fit to try and solve individual problems, rather to look at the wider institutional approach towards the complex writing practises that occur at degree level.

The Approach Models of Student Writing:

Study Skills - Student writing as technical and instrumental skill.

Focus on 'fixing' 'surface' features, grammar and spelling. However, that is to assume literacy is these surface features, and it is not the case.

Academic Socialisation - Student writing as transparent medium of representation.

Orientates students to interpret learning tasks through 'deep', 'surface' and 'strategic' lenses. This makes the assumption though that once these practises are learnt, they are a one size-fits-all approach for the entire institution.

Academic Literacies - Student writing as meaning-making and contested.

A series of social practices, the student switches between practices deploying the appropriate repertoire of linguistics to the requirement of the writing. Problems in student writing might be attributed to the gulf between academic staff expectations and student interpretation of what is involved.

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This journal essentially covers the process of how a student approaches academic writing and the difference between teacher expectations and a student's interpretation, and I do feel there is a gap.

The journal explains that academics and tutors are restricted by their own academic frameworks and if some writing does not make sense to their installed frameworks then they reach for familiar descriptive categories like 'structure and argument', 'clarity' and 'analysis' in order to give feedback. In reality students are limited by their own individual perspective and these categories are less meaningful.

Students enter academic writing having to learn the different constructs of each subject, each with disparate requirements. They can not apply one structure for all, 'one-size-fits-all' and so get poorly marked with poor feedback because the tutors have not expressed clearly how the student should approach the essay. Furthermore, the essay that would have been submitted would not fit within the tutors academic framework so the feedback would not clarify anything further because of the familiar descriptive categories which mean nothing.

Comment 

I have personally felt this gap in my time as a student learning how to write well-written academic writing, in the first year especially the approach was very difficult to transition to from the A Level way of writing, in hand with poor instruction of how to write in the precise right way did not help. The phrase I heard most was 'you'll get used to it', which virtually left me as a student to 'figure' it out by myself. This might mean, as I have 'self-taught' myself, any inherent problems that have been left unrefined in my writing is now installed unchecked with no tutor correcting but simply putting 'lack of clarity' or 'need of analysis'.


The top image reflects my recent visit to the American Museum in Bath last week. It was good.