On the importance of writing…

Writing is a big part of my life.   At work I write feedback on student work, reports about student learning, reports about  probationary teacher performance, letters to parents, articles for newsletters, curriculum and the list goes on.  This is added to the writing I have to do for my Masters course, this blog, weekly moodle posts, assignments and all the notes I make as I complete the readings.    Despite this heavy load of ‘required’ writing I still choose to write in my ‘free’ time.   I write lists of all the things I have to do.   I write in a journal and I write emails, messages and letters to friends.    It is as if the writing somehow clarifies my thoughts and ideas, it organises me.   By putting pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard I have to sort out priorities,  and think carefully about what is important to me.

Writing is a skill which goes beyond communication with others, it is also a process which helps one think, formulate ideas, clarify and organise thoughts.   While writing for audience and purpose are important, students also need to be given the opportunity to use writing as a reflective and organisational tool.  McCarthey and Zheng’s paper, ‘Principles for Writing Practices with English Language Learners’ made me think about the importance of reflective writing to all learning experiences.  By providing an opportunity for reflective writing, teachers can help learners to develop conceptual and analytical understandings.   Reflective writing then becomes a valuable tool for developing student metacognition and its processes enables learners to build a critical awareness of their own thinking and  learning.

If writing has such strong links to the way that we organize and order our thoughts, then what challenges does it present to those who are writing in their second language?

Not only do these students have to struggle with understanding a new language,  but they also need to learn a whole new cultural way of structuring their written work.   McCarthey points out the differences between Chinese and English narrative structures and forms, the same is true for other texts and other languages.  Language provides us with a framework for thinking and writing provides a vehicle for recording and and organising those thoughts.   So, learning to write in a new language demands mastering the technical aspects as well as the expected cultural conventions of structure.   It highlights the fact that all teachers need to design learning experiences that draw on, value and build on the linguistic and cultural diversity of the students that they teach.

If writing is such an important skill for thinking it is then crucial that we  provide students with enough opportunities to practice and gain confidence in their writing through meaningful reflective writing experiences.  Alongside this we must  remember the unique cultural and linguistic variants that our students bring to their learning and ensure that this diversity is provided for.

Video games and learning

I am late with my blog this week because of the video game Bejeweled.   I’d just kicked the habit on my iphone when I found it on facebook.    I felt this powerful compulsion to beat my previous score and then to beat the scores of other people.    The fact is, I have a problem.   I get addicted to video games and I lose hours in a void that involves trying to beat the highest score or get to the end of the game.   This week’s topic has unleashed my compulsive behavior again.   I buy games for my kids and then I end up finishing them first.  Games like Ratchet and Clank, Jax & Daxter, Rayman, Croc, Pharoah, Sim City and The Sims, have all at various times had a powerful hold over my attention.    In fact I have deliberately avoided buying more games because I know how bad I am.

So what is it that makes them so addictive?

According to James Gee’s , ‘Why Video Games are Good for your Soul‘, I am addicted to the buzz I get from the pleasure of learning.   Perhaps he is right, I love the feeling I get when I solve a puzzle, I love mastering the moves needed to progress a level, to make my simulation thrive, or to beat the monsters into submission. Most of all, I love finding out the resolution of a game’s narrative, especially after spending several weeks trying to get there!

This is a kind of learning that you don’t realize is taking place, one that presents you with incremental challenges, progressively rewards you for achievements and provides regular and specific feedback on your mastery (the death of a character is very memorable feedback!).   When we look more closely at this learning, we can see that it supports the development of literacy, through semantic understanding gained through situated cognition.    (I just had to throw those terms in!)   In other words, video games provide their players with a learning experience, in which they have agency in constructing an understanding of the game through repeated practice.   In many games this takes the form of sophisticated problem solving, a kind of learning that if not presented well, can have the capacity to switch students off in the school environment.

There is a lot that educators can learn from video games.  The narrative structure of the games, incremental increases in difficulty, demand for active participation, and development of the players’ problem solving approaches all contributes to their wide appeal and capacity to engage and motivate players.   While I don’t necessarily advocate video games as a pedagogical tool, I think that teachers can be more strategic about designing learning experiences that utilize some of the features found in these games.

Active problem solving, self paced learning with the opportunity to practise, receive feedback and have agency in constructing understanding and mastery of the learning, seem to be key principles in the success of video games.   Perhaps, transferred into the classroom the same principles can help educators to design learning experiences in which motivate, challenge and engage their students.   Perhaps, we could even make them ‘addicted’ to learning!

It takes patience to create cultural change.

Stigler and Herbert’s book ‘The Teaching Gap’ presents a fascinating account of teaching in three different countries. The lessons drawn from their study of teaching Mathematics in Japan, Germany and the United States are clearly presented and made me think of the work that we have been doing in the Lanyon Cluster of Schools.

I agree with Stigler and Herbert’s definition of teaching as a cultural activity, one which is acquired through the repeated cycle of schooling that our society engages in. Changing such a firmly embedded set of beliefs and practices is a long and arduous journey. It cannot ever be a quick fix, but requires sustained effort, strong leadership and succession planning. This kind of change is gradual and requires a long-term commitment and a great deal of patience.

This is led me to think about the work that the Lanyon Cluster of schools has been engaged in. For nearly seven years, we have been gradually sculpting an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on improving teacher practice through the use of Kalantzis and Cope’s Learning By Design pedagogical framework. This framework is used to plan, implement and evaluate pedagogical practice. Thanks to the leadership of our pedagogical mentor, Rita Van Haren, it is now used across the cluster of schools in which she works. The framework has strong parallels with Japanese teaching, in that conceptual and analytical understanding are used as key processes in learning. It also creates a focus on learner diversity and the way that it enriches learning, just as we saw in Japanese approaches to teaching. (Stigler & Herbert, 1999 p.94).

By aiming to change teacher practice in schools from Kindergarten through to Year 10, the Lanyon Cluster has begun the difficult process of changing the cultural activity of teaching. As a result of this gradual journey, in the upper secondary end of the system we see evidence of a shift in student expectation of the way that their lessons should look and feel. The students expect to encounter lessons in which they have agency, integration of diversity, scaffolded learning and conceptual and analytical understanding. Unfortunately, this sometimes results in a backlash against teachers who are either new to Learning By Design, or reluctant to change their practice. This could probably account for a large number of the ‘discussions’ I have with students about their behaviour. However, for the teachers who use the framework well, behavioural issues seem to be minimal; the students are engaged and actively interested in their learning.

Further evidence of the cumulative efforts to change the culture of teaching and learning can be seen in the students who are new to our school. Many of them seem to require a period of ‘acculturation’ in order to adjust to the way learning happens at the school. Some of these students have difficulty adjusting to the collaborative, positive relationships that exist with teachers. Some struggle to adjust with the way learning is structured in the classroom and having to ‘think for themselves’. Eventually the critical mass of other students tends to win and our new students settle in well to their new classroom environments.

Steigler and Herbert’s findings about the ‘sanctity’ of a Japanese lesson highlighted another important indicator of cultural attitudes towards teaching and learning. This is an area our school needs to improve on, while we have many different programs and extra-curricular activities running in the school, a vast number of them impinge on the integrity of individual lessons and teaching programs. Last week, various students missed my classes (or parts of my classes) for excursions, sport, drama practice, academic competitions and appointments with the welfare office. My lessons were interrupted by the runner, messengers to take students out of class, other teachers requiring assistance with challenging behaviours, students coming late to class from other activities and PA announcements. Although students missing classes for other programs are meant to catch up on the work, a strong cultural message about the importance of learning is being conveyed by these interruptions. Class is ‘missable’, and the learning that takes place in class can be easily substituted by a catch-up sheet. Of course, what we know about diversity and conceptual and analytical learning tells us that this is not the case. A catch up worksheet outside the classroom cannot replace the richness of group discussion or problem solving and it cannot effectively build on a teacher’s understanding of a learner’s approach to the learning. The Japanese approach to the ‘sanctity’ a lesson is one, which our school would certainly benefit from adopting.

We still have a long way to go in our journey towards changing the cultural practice of teaching at Lanyon High School. In addition to developing an attitude about the ‘sanctity’ of class time, we also have to deal with a high staff turnover (due to departmental compulsory mobility policies). This means that we are constantly redeveloping teacher familiarity with using the Learning By Design Framework. It is easy to fall from the pathway we are on, funding cuts, mandatory testing, new government initiatives, programs, reforms and models are constantly being thrown at schools and it is tempting to reinvent the school plan in order to meet these external pressures. This is where vision, commitment and strong leadership become crucial to establishing cultural change, without this we would easily stray from the journey we are on. We have to accept that cultural change is a slow process and we have to persevere with patience.

Reflexive Pedagogy

 

 Reflexivity-moving between different ways of knowing, with learners as active makers-of-knowledge in consciously designed learning environment.

As I pause to take breath at the end of our third course in the Masters program, I cast my thoughts to what I have learnt during the past eight months.     The course has made me re-evaluate my thoughts about education and knowledge.    I have been able to look critically at my own professional practice and apply a theory that explains why some things work and why some things don’t.   I have used language and concepts gained from the ‘New Learning’ course in my work as a mentor to beginning teachers.   It has helped me to explain the way that pedagogy connects with learning and the way that teacher practice is so crucial to the success of learners.    When I think about it, the course itself has adopted a reflexive pedagogy, and my journey as learner has involved using the framework of ‘New Learning’ to connect all my disparate ideas about education into a coherent scheme and idea of what teaching and learning should look like.  

This past week we have looked at reflexivity.   I thought about the changes that new technologies have brought to our society, and how they will impact on the kind of education that we are providing to our youth.   Technology has opened up new channels of communication; it gives ordinary people unprecedented access to a media  in which they have  a voice that can be heard by the world.   Technology has enabled the formation of specialised communities with specific interests and aims from across the globe.   Technology has evolved from being a source of expert information into tool which allows information to be discussed and tested through blogs, twitter, wikis, social networking pages and probably a dozen other media that I have not yet encountered.   Surely this approach to information will bring a change to the way in which knowledge is treated and viewed in a wider social context?   No wonder a didactic, ‘back to basics’ educational approach is less than appealing to the new generation.   It seems inevitable, then, that despite conservative resistance, this will lead to a change in educational practice.  

 This year I have been experimenting with a class Wiki.   New technology has provided me with a reflexive pedagogical tool that enables my students to contribute to a community of knowledge making and sharing.  I have found it fascinating to watch how my students have created this online body of knowledge.   At the moment we are studying Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  We used the wiki to explore responses to the central themes of Hamlet, to analyse speeches and this week, to analyse the depiction of women in the play.     The students can discuss issues and texts online, access previous lesson notes, online resources or even watch clips of the play on the wiki.   It is a ubiquitous tool that they have worked to construct together.    

We used the wiki to discuss the central themes in Hamlet, to analyse soliloquies and discuss characters.  There is  a huge body of information on the wiki, far too much to reproduce here.   To give you an idea of  the content I have pasted some of their comments below:

On Revenge:

Peter wrote:  

when it comes to revenge and vigilante i do believe it is wrong, but there a defiantly reasons why people resort to it. I personally have been in situations where i have dished out what has been served, although i realise it makes me as bad as the others it does not change the fact that everyone should pay consequences for there actions. So for example your brother gets beaten up by two minors, he is in hospital in a coma, the law can not prosecute the perpetrators as they are minors. therefore the same two teenagers are on the streets free to do the same thing again, as a brother you realise how much their actions effect your family and friends. Is taking revenge “giving the some of there own medicine” such a bad thing? Or will they benefit from it?
i believe it is wrong but in some cases is it really that bad?

Naomi wrote:

It sounds odd, but i have always remembered a quote by ghandi:
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”
This quote can be applied to so many different situations, although i believe that revenge is by far the most obvious.
I personally think that revenge is wrong, if each person on the planet got vengeful towards anybody or anything that did them wrong, we would be in ararchy.
Although i dare say that in some cases, in some people, the satisfaction and opportunity of revenge is a hard thing to say no to. Although I think that revenge is wrong, i also think that it is a characteristic that every living creature posesses

On ‘To Be or Not to Be?’ Penelope wrote:

I think the whole of Hamlet’s monologue was refering to suicide and whether it was worth it to endure life, or just get it over with and dont suffer anymore. Its a very interesting piece of writing that explores the ups and downs of death, and what could happen in the afterlife.
I think he’s both, neither right or wrong. Sure its not the best thing to do (to kill yourself), and like he said, no one has ever come back from death, so no one can know what its like. That is the interesting side of death, do you just stop being? Do you go to heaven or hell? Do you become something else? Or do you lie there and dream, like you’re asleep? That is what impressed me most in his solioquy, and also the part where he wonders if its worth it to suffer and endure or just get it over with, with a dagger.

On Misogyny Katrina wrote:

I agree that misogyny is a theme in the play, an unfair theme at that. I think in the whole play Ophelia is a big victim, and is unfairly dominated by all the men in her life (Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes). In the process of Hamlet pretending to be mad he takes the anger he has developed for his mother all out on Ophelia. I think he still loved Ophelia, he shows true emotion at her funeral, “I loved Ophelia forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum”. But in the “nunnery” scene he is rude and mean to her because he thinks that she has allied with Polonious against him in letting Polonius use her to suss out Hamlet. He may also have been misogynistic because what his mother did made him have distaste for all women.   Ophelia is a very vulnerable woman who (as Kayla said) just wants human affection and love and thinks she can do that by obeying what everyone says.

I feel really proud of their work.   More importantly,  they feel proud of their work.   Their pride is because they did it.   They had agency, they constructed the knowledge.   They connected it to their understanding of the world and each other.   While the wiki is just a small part of their learning experience, it does show us the power of learner agency and technolgy’s potential  as a reflexive pedagogical tool.

Knowledge repertoires:The Four Resources Model

This week I hoped to post a cutting edge example of educational practice which encompassed knowledge repertoires.  However, as I embarked upon my search, I kept thinking about the good old Four Resources Model.    Despite being around since the early 1990’s the model has maintained its currency and relevance, especially when related to the growing emergence of digital and media literacies.  The model, developed by Allan Luke and Peter Freebody is based on repertoires of practice.   The repertoires are defined in four distinct roles, which together contribute to the skills of a successful reader.    The flexibility of the model is evident in the way that it recognises a range of techniques for teaching literacy as well as the social and cultural diversity which impacts on practices of learners.  It balances different methods to approach understanding a text and promotes a stance of critical thinking, including the questioning of sources of knowledge.   By using the model to unlock texts students are able to become knowledge makers which they can demonstrate through their ability to read, understand and construct multimodal texts. 

 

Four Roles/Resources of the Successful Reader

Roles/Resources	What successful readers know and do
Code breaker decoding the codes and conventions of written, spoken and visual text	Understand the relationship between spoken sounds and written symbols the grammar of texts the structural conventions of texts
Text user understanding the purposes of different written, spoken and visual texts for different cultural and social functions	Know that different types of texts have different purposes these purposes shape the way texts are structured and formed Apply this knowledge in using (e.g. comprehending, creating, transforming) text
Text participant comprehending written, spoken and visual texts	Make meaning by drawing on own experiences and prior knowledge knowledge of similar texts
Text analyst understanding how texts position readers, viewers and listeners	Is aware and can identify how texts are not ideologically natural or neutral but are crafted to represent the views and interests of the writer information, ideas and language in texts influence reader perceptions texts empower or disempower certain groups

From:    http://www.myread.org/what.htm

The Four Resources Model has had a significant influence on my teaching practice.    When teaching with cooperative reading strategies, I explicitly teach each reading ‘role’.   The students use specific strategies  to decode the linguistic structures of the text, comprehend inferred meaning, identify and understand purpose in a social context  as well as considering  the way in which the texts positions them as a reader.   In small groups, they set reading goals and allocate roles to guide their discussions.   During the course of a novel study each individual will use each reading role to contribute to small group discussions several times.  The roles provide the students with repertoires which they can use to guide their discussions, construct knowledge, gain deeper understanding of the text and critically analyse its content and purpose.   The students at my school complete at least two novel studies using these strategies each year.  This has a cumulative effect, with most students becoming confident, independent users of the roles and transferring their ability seek deep understandings to other kinds of textual analysis.  I suppose you could say that they become habitual critical thinkers.  

Upon deeper reflection, I thought about the way in which the repertoires of the Four Resources Model reach into other aspects of what and how I teach.   Its repertoires can be found embedded in many aspects of our Learning Elements.     Experiential learning draws on the expertise of the text participant, conceptual learning borrows from the roles of text user and code breaker, while of course, and analytical learning draws on the skills of a text analyst.   These roles are drawn together in applied learning.   The model has added an immense amount to the way in which I design learning elements; it trains our students in ways of thinking that form the basis of a learning element.   It builds student familiarity with problematic learning, analytical thinking and critical processes, and it provides them with a repertoire of practice.

My Learning Element… completed?

Well, I stayed up until midnight last night in an attempt to get the documentation for this learning element finished.   All the activities have been typed in,  and I have taught the unit, but I still quite finished documenting the assessment and objectives.  As I have gone on to teach and write other learning elements, it was really hard to return to this one and tie off all the loose ends.     

So armed with a big bowl of chocolates and a hot coffee, I finally forced myself to get it done last night.    As I popped chocolate after chocolate into my mouth, I thought about what I had taught, the sequence I had designed, the modes of learning used and the way in which activities linked to assessment.    I added Rita Van Haren’s  suggestions (thanks Rita), and I expanded on the comments published on the teacher side, in an effort to improve the learning element  and make it better for the next time that it gets taught.   

During this process I noticed two things:

1. It would of been really useful to use the CG learner web interface to record assessment, modes of learning and objectives during the planning phase.   While I consider overall assessment when planning a learning element, I don’t always explicitly link smaller assessment tasks and assessment for learning to the activities listed in the learning element.    The modes of learning also made me think about the way that we must consciously plan for different learning styles, and keep variety in the sequence activities.   Variety keeps things fresh, it keeps students interested and of course it makes them think in different ways.   So next time I write up a learning element placemat, I will do the assessment section at the same time!
2. The work from the University of Illinois course has lead me to think much more critically about my teaching and the way in which I design learning for my students.    It has led me to incorporate new technologies (such as a wiki and Scootle learning objects) into my classes and it has made me think about different styles of learners and the way that I can differentiate for their needs.   I also think more consciously about bigger issues relating to our world and our society when I am planning my learning elements.  

The whole process has made me think much more deeply about the way that I teach my students.   In the learning elements I have worked on recently, I have looked for connectedness, learner agency, intellectual quality and challenging expectations.   The addition of these dimensions makes a huge difference to learner outcomes, and makes the time spent designing and reviewing our teaching really worth it.     In a profession as time poor as teaching sometimes it is easy for these things to get lost or overlooked.   Reflection takes time and practice, and can easily be pushed to the back of an overflowing list of things to do.   The requirements of my Masters course have forced me to make the time to reflect on a learning element I have taught.   In doing so, I have realised that this stage of the process is just as important as the design.      

This leads back to my not quite completed learning element.   I have put all the bits in.   I have added, adjusted and rewritten activities and explanations.   I could still do more.   I wanted to add PDF worksheets, PowerPoint examples and scaffold tool, but technology didn’t work my way.   I wanted to review the assessment and objectives more carefully, but I ran out of time.    There will always be a myriad of ways to improve and build on learning elements.   That is their nature – living, growing documents.   

Finally… I now reveal my almost complete learning element:   Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

ramblings of a postmodern girl

When I told my husband that this week’s assignment examined relativism and postmodernism, he laughed. His chuckle was in reference to the fact that at one time he claimed that when he married me, he married postmodernism itself. As jokes often do, his claim reflects some elements of truth.

During my undergraduate degree in English and History, I was influenced by the writings of many great relativist critical thinkers. They taught me how to re-evaluate the Anglo-centred, male-oriented, heterosexual view of the world which I had experienced. I learnt to question the texts that I read. I was taught to look beyond the obvious, to seek out my own meaning, and the meaning of the author, I learnt to think about the application of different ideologies to texts and above all, I learnt to question everything I read and heard. The books of Edward Said, Roy Porter, Terry Eagleton, Dale Spender, Kate Millet, Naomi Woolf and Germaine Greer (OK I was a bit of a feminist) still sit on my bookshelf today. Those years at university developed habits of thought that have become integral to who I am.

So what do epistemological relativism, cultural relativism and postmodernism bring to education? Why do their critics seem to fear them so much? What are their downfalls?

The relativist approach presents several risks to those who subscribe to it. There is a risk that you might become anti-postmodern through a committed adherence to post-modernism. Even worse, you many never develop a commitment to one form of knowledge or truth. Then there is the terrible risk that all relativists face; the possibility of over analysing and over questioning the most straightforward things. There is also the ever present danger of constructing a ‘truth’ without realising your own bias. However, the worst risk of all is that you could end up saying a whole lot of things without saying anything at all. (See the post modern generator for examples of this.) So, are these risks worth it?

According to Luke Slattery, critic of critical literacy and writer for The Australian Newspaper, using a relativist, postmodern approach to education is a travesty of the worst degree. Kim Laverty  posted one of his articles in PB Wiki this week. Her post juxtaposed an article about the teaching of critical literacy with one of his editorials. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24706127-5015675,00.html   Slattery claimed that the teaching of critical literacy is a fad which stems from ‘radical’ and outdated postmodern theory.  His editorial was presented with a hysterical undertone which would undoubtedly strike fear into the hearts of parents who have not had the good fortune to be taught critical literacy skills. However, his claim that critical pedagogy should be centred around ‘nurturing of critical intelligence’ is at odds with his rejection of critical literacy, for I cannot conceive how a text can be viewed critically, without some degree of deconstruction, including an analysis of purpose, positioning and cultural context.

So, what would an alternative to critical literacy be? We could identify the linguistic features of a text. We could look at the author’s use of literary devices, or perhaps we could focus on literal comprehension of the text or perhaps we could memorise large tracts of it. Of course we wouldn’t discuss the use of racist language in texts like “To Kill a Mockingbird”. We wouldn’t question the misogyny in “Of Mice and Men” and we would accept the portrayal of Shylock in “Merchant of Vencie” as fair and reasonable. Our pedagogy and curriculum would lack intellectual rigour, the students wouldn’t be able to link the literature to their own life worlds, thus instigating a culture of boredom and worse still values of bygone eras would be accepted as the truth.  But, at least teachers wouldn’t be accused of harbouring a radical ‘post-modern’ agenda!

To me, it is clear. Relativist thinking gives our students the ability to understand the depth and breadth of the human condition. It gives our students an understanding of different ways of thinking and develops their sense of empathy. It trains them to think critically about the world around them, and in this digital age of information overload, select what they consider to be the truth. Relativist thinking makes knowledge problematic, instigates substantive communication and establishes connections to the life worlds of those who engage in it.   Relativist and postmodern thinking has enriched my life, and if I were to choose not to teach my students to think this way, I would be guilty of a massive injustice.

committed knowledge

 

As I read the posts about committed knowledge, I have been thinking about the different ways in which people make sense of the world.

Some people can become quite comfortable operating within the rigidity of a known belief system. Whether it is a framework of religious, empirical, rationalist or canonical truth, it can be more comfortable to view the world from a familiar position with which you are aligned socially and culturally. Of course, to operate from such a viewpoint is also simpler, you can explain the world in a way that supports your version of the truth and reject any ideas that don’t quite fit as wrong, improbable or just crazy. Making sense of the world in this way leads to a mistrust of different ways of constructing the truth.  Mistrust breeds hate. Hate makes war.

To operate solely within a framework of committed knowledge is detrimental to individuals and the world at large, it impedes the development of both progress and peace.   Progress is pushed forward by those who think outside a body of committed knowledge.  The world’s great thinkers, inventors and explorers all thought beyond the bounds of the knowledge establishment, and as a result, contributed to progress.   Peace is also forged by those who are able to think beyond their own version of the truth. These people are able to perceive and empathise with outside beliefs and points view. They do not feel the need to convert, refute or ridicule alternate ways of knowing, they can accept, learn, appreciate and celebrate the diversity of human culture.  These people can comprehend other ways of thinking. They can place trust those who are different to them and they can build peace in our world. 

So, if the future of the world needs those who can think beyond established bodies of knowledge and individuals that are comfortable with other ways of knowing,  then education must design learning experiences to develop these qualities.  Of course, this is not an easy task.  It requires educators themselves to think outside their own body of expert knowledge, so that they can find a way to create a learning community which values building new ways of knowing and understanding the world.   We need to teach our students to keep their eyes, ears, minds and hearts open.  

So, how does this translate to classroom practice?   

I think that what we teach is just as important as the way it is taught.   If we teach our students to view knowledge as problematic, they will begin to look for answers beyond the obvious.  When our our students are experiencing they examine familiar and new concepts within their own framework of beliefs.    By conceptualising they become labellers, manipulators and constructors of knowledge.   When they analyse they develop an awareness of the function that knowledge has and the power agendas that exist within it.   Finally, when our students apply their knowledge in creative ways they have the opportunity to see beyond their own realm of beliefs and explore new opportunities.  The way that we teach our students can make a huge difference to the way that they view the world.   Given the chance to work collaboratively, view the world through different lenses and create solutions to problems our students can develop the confidence and creativity needed to move beyond committed bodies of knowledge into the more challenging but satisfying realm of the unfamiliar. 

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

This learning element has evolved over a few years.    Initially, I set the topic as an in class essay question.  I used it as a diagnostic tool, a way of seeing what my students were capable of.   No discussion, no research, no scaffolding.   Just write about the statement ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.   The essays came back.  Some students sort of ‘got it’.   Others just wrote about how nice people don’t have to be beautiful.   It was clear that I wasn’t seeing the thinking that they were capable of.   It was like asking painter to paint a landscape without allowing them to use paint.  Of course some individuals might be ingenious and devise a way to make paint from dirt, but the majority would be unable to fulfil the request.   The topic beauty was a powerful way to get kids thinking, yet I had wasted a teaching opportunity.  

So when Prue (with her youthful enthusiasm) started to develop resources to help kids think more deeply about the topic, it began to evolve into a learning element.   Initially we didn’t plan it using the knowledge processes, but our familiarity with using the Learning by Design framework helped us to make the unit more robust by scaffolding student thinking, providing visual and written resources and making the students question their own perceptions.  So a learning element was born.   In 2009  it was finally fully documented, taught and then rewritten using the CG learner website.  Each rewrite enabled me to ‘tune’ the learning element, and by adding and modifying activities I was able to provoke deeper thoughts and more searching analysis.   This year, when I collected the essays they had written, I got a far more vivid sense of what my students were capable of.   They were starting to really think about social and cultural influences on an individual’s notion of beauty.   They were thinking about beauty from different perspectives and moving beyond their own frames of reference.

 

Of course an essay is not a definitive assessment tool.    While we were exploring, discussing and thinking about cultural perceptions and influences on the notion of beauty, my students were engaging in substantive communication.  This took the form of lively group discussions about the reading materials and an enquiring approach to researching perceptions and practices to do with beauty.  They experimented with using metalanguage through a discussion in our fledgling wiki and many of them delighted in what one student described as ”sounding smart” when they responded to each other’s comments.   For policy reasons I am unable to provide public access to our wiki so to convey a sense of the discussions which were taking place I have included a selection of wiki posts.    They were written by my Year 10 class (15-16 years old).  It was interesting to see that some of the most quiet students in the class were most vocal in the wiki discussion forums.  

Dako.     4. Beauty (first student comment ! Hell yeah !!!!) Mar 5 2009, 9:23 PM EST | Post edited: Mar 5 2009, 9:23 PM EST

Beauty has no absolute definition, no meaning, it is indefinable. It is percepted by individuals, social communities and cultures differently. So if it is indefinable, is that the definition after all ?

PomTom09  5. RE: What is Beauty? Mar 5 2009, 9:25 PM EST | Post edited: Mar 5 2009, 9:25 PM EST

I agree that in this modern world beauty is viewed or associated with youth and that older people are trying to appear as youthful as possible but do they really have to go and alter there face why can’t they just except who they are.

MadeleineN   6. RE: What is Beauty? Mar 5 2009, 10:03 PM EST | Post edited: Mar 5 2009, 10:03 PM EST 

I agree with what Dako said, that beauty is indefinable. You could never condense the true meaning of beauty into a defintion.The way I see it, beauty is something that you take a second glance at. You don’t know why or how, but beauty draws you in.
You see something beautiful, and you can’t take your eyes off it. It’s mesmerising. 

AznKid_7. Since we could not really define beauty…its easier to quote it. Mar 6 2009, 4:32 AM EST | Post edited: Mar 6 2009, 4:46 AM EST

Beauty.
It is a human requirement in our lives. Like the air we breathe, the food we eat, the sounds we hear, beauty gives us the pleasure of life.
Without beauty, we would live horribly boring lives……
or go mad from all the ugly sights.
Whichever comes first.

AznKid_8. RE: Dakos opinion of Beauty (first student comment ! Hell yeah !!!!) Mar 6 2009, 4:43 AM EST | Post edited: Mar 6 2009, 4:43 AM EST

Well actually, according to this giant 2 tonne dictionary, “Beauty is that qualities or characteristic which excites an admiring pleasure, or delights the eye or the aesthetic sense”
after reading this, i thought to myself. thats pretty much what beauty is isnt it…??

As the discussion grew, the students experimented with more language and sought quotes to help explain their responses.  

There were some amusing juxtopostions of formal and colloquial language.   For example:  

 kukjae_kid   20. RE: Dakos opinion of Beauty (first student comment ! Hell yeah !!!!) Mar 10 2009, 7:26 PM EDT | Post edited: Mar 10 2009, 7:26 PM EDT

Beauty isn’t something to just brush off one’s shoulder…asthetics are important in day to day life because we made it that way.
The only way to recognise true beauty is internally, focussing on the good inside people… not how white their teeth are or how big there boobs are… =/

The wiki showed me that many of the students were beginning to grapple with far more abstract, philosophical questions:

 KTRN09  34. RE: Mar 11 2009, 5:49 AM EDT | Post edited: Mar 11 2009, 5:49 AM EDT

Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought”  -Kahlil Gibran

I think that beauty is not necessarily all around us but instead the potential for beauty is.  I have a statement in my head that will only be understandable through a question:
Is beauty a constant quality or is it only there when someone perceives it?  I personally think it is only there when somebody perceives it. Some people define beauty as something that catches your attention and others say it is everywhere but you just haven’t noticed it yet, but if beauty is all around you, and it just hasn’t captured your attention yet, how is it beautiful?On the other hand this is not how everyone defines beauty, everyone thinks of beauty in different ways, so we are always going to come back to the essay topic: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  (I’m just putting it out there) 

danielle.1512_x  35. RE: A quote Mar 11 2009, 6:02 AM EDT | Post edited: Mar 11 2009, 6:02 AM EDT

I like this quote too – is beauty an emotional rather than visual quality? This question could relate to Penny’s confucious quote “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” are there people who are unable to experience beauty? “i dont believe beauty is just a visual quality in something. if you ask someone who is blind or visually impaired what they think beauty is, what would they say if they havent ever seen beauty? Beauty is undefinable, but i think it has many different meanings depending on what the individual person thinks/believes. 

Vongmala  36. RE: Mar 11 2009, 7:12 AM EDT | Post edited: Mar 11 2009, 7:27 AM EDT

I agree with katrina. i think beauty is only there when someone perceives it.
Think about this: Does beauty exist if there is no one there to interpret it as beautiful? Without a mind to perceive it, there is no beauty, just as there is no color without eyes and brains to perceive it.I’ve also found out something interesting about the whole ‘does animals have aesthetic capabilities’ or is it just humans? in fact some animals do, a book by James and Carol Gould called Animal Architects states that some birds (for instance bowerbirds) have something like an aesthetic sense. It requires the mind to perceive beauty, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a human mind.

MadeleineN  40. Quote Mar 11 2009, 9:21 PM EDT | Post edited: Mar 11 2009, 9:21 PM EDT

“Beauty is a form of genius as it needs no explanation” – Oscar Wilde.To me, this quote makes me think that beauty is not necessarily a concept, but it is more something that is created in the mind by a person. It cannot have a defintion because you’re the one who decides whether beauty is present in an object or a person.Just like Katrina said, “beauty is not necessarily all around us but the potential for beauty is”.  Something isn’t beautiful until someone believes it is.

 The entire discussion is far too long to reproduce here.  In the end it included five different threads and well over 90 separate posts.   This was real evidence that my students were engaging with the topic and thinking about complicated abstract ideas.   By using the knowledge processes to conciously plan a learning element I was able prompt higher order thinking and I could really see what my students are capable of.    I also found that by using a wiki, I had provided the less gregarious students with a voice.  They could carefully consider what they wanted to say and communicate to the class without the pressures of thinking on the spot or speaking before a larger group.   I am really pleased with the way that this learning element has evolved, it provoked the students into thinking critically about what influences their own perceptions and made them aware of the fact that other people percieve the world through different lenses.

Social Cognitivism

I must confess that Psychology has never been my favourite subject. It just didn’t engage me during my Graduate Diploma of Education. At the age of 21, I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t relate the theory to what was happening in schools. Perhaps it was because of my narrow life experience or maybe it was my limited understanding of learning environments. Or more likely, it was because I was just interested in other things… but that’s entirely another story …

 In any case, it was hardly surprising that while researching and reading about Social Cognitivism I experienced an ‘ah-ha’ moment. Suddenly my understanding of the Learning by Design Framework clicked together. I knew that the framework was based on theories of knowledge and learning, but I didn’t really understand why they seemed to work together so well. I knew how to link the knowledge processes with teaching strategies. I knew that by using all of the knowledge processes we were getting the intellectual quality. I could see that by using the framework to inform our pedagogy we were getting sengaged in higher order thinking, substantive communication and meta-cognition.

When researching Social Cognitivism, I came across Professor Philip Adey’s Cognitive Acceleration research in England. I was amazed to find a clip that described an approach to learning with such strong links to what we are doing with Learning by Design. On further reading, I was even more surprised to read that the results of his research had lead to the conclusion that the key to school improvement and educational reform lay in the professional development of teachers.

It was like reading an overview of the work we have been doing in the Lanyon Cluster!

It got me thinking about how we use lots of cooperative learning strategies in our learning elements. I have used cooperative teaching strategies in my classrooms for years. I thought it helped to make learning fun, gave kids responsibility, taught social skills and involved them in what was happening in the classroom. I viewed cooperative learning activities as a useful teaching tool. However, while reading and thinking about Social Cognitivism I realised that cooperative learning is actually much more than just a teaching strategy.

Suddenly I understood that learning in groups is a necessary part of learning. Humans are social creatures, we learn from those around us. We learn by discussing, collaborating and reflecting with other people. We imitate them, we build on their ideas, we seek their feedback and affirmation. We are engaged, energised and motivated when we work with an effective team. The work of the Social Cognitivists shows us that collaboration with others is crucial to learning.

  This leads back to my ‘ah-ha’ moment (probably caused by several synapses being completed in my brain). The knowledge processes help us to get kids thinking, use meta language, view knowledge as problematic, see things from different perspectives and construct their own understandings. What makes them work so well is the way that they underpin a collaborative approach. To get the depth of conceptual understanding, critical analysis or creative application that makes effective learning, learners must be able to share ideas and interactions with the people around them.