11/04/2007 | Георгій

...навчального процeсу (Teaching Methodologies Forum, TMF)

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Our first meeting took place earlier today (9 to ~10:15 a.m.), in room 121,
Education building. Present were Richard Holden, Sue Jolly, Linda Mahoney,
Carmen Osburn, George Pinchuk, and Scott Tollison. We talked about the
necessity of having ongoing discussions on issues of pedagogy where educators
of special subjects (sciences, humanities, arts, music etc.) would sit down
together with specialists in the field of education. It was a general consensus
that we should conduct our meetings every second Friday at 9 a.m. In the
interim, we will continue to post materials for discussion to our WebCT PED_101
("Teaching Methodologies") forum.

Scott Tollison volunteered to post a material on Bloom taxonomy. It will be on
the PED_101 WebCT forum in a few days. Please keep your eye on it. All are
cordially invited to discusss. If you are not yet enrolled in the PED_101 and
wish to be enrolled, write an e-mail to Scott or to Marty Brock.

We hope to see you join us on Friday, September 28th, at 9 a.m. in 121
Education. Coffee and refreshments will be provided!

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The [second] meeting took place earlier this morning, from 9 to 10 a.m. We welcomed our new members, Dr. Lillie Smith from Education and Dr. Xiaoxia Li from Arts and
Sciences. As planned, the discussion revolved around Bloom taxonomy and its
practical applications in our classrooms.

Some interesting points that were made:

1. Generally, we do not want to skip levels of Bloom's cognitive objectives; for
example, we are reluctant (and justly so) to give our students tasks that
develop and/or test their skills in analysis, synthesis and evaluation unless
we are sure that the students have achieved the level of comprehension and
application. However, sometimes it is possible and maybe even beneficial to
skip levels. For example, it is known that our non-majors who take science
courses often have poor computational skills and cannot apply their knowledge
of some basic concepts to quantitative tasks. However, they can at least begin
to appreciate the necessity of using their quantitative skills WHEN they are
asked to compare different objects (e.g., Petri dishes with varying numbers of
microbial colonies) and think about the origin of differences that they
observe.

2. Many of our freshmen and sophomore students (and especially those who come
from impoverished parts of the country) have a pre-formed idea that "school is
boring," and because of this wrong perception do not wish to show those
cognitive skills that they actually have. However, these students demonstrate
very well-developed analytical and synthetic skills when they do something
outside of school, e.g. play computer games with their peers or participate in
the work of a social club. It might be a good idea to bring more of the
elements of these activities, traditionally viewed as "extracurricular," to our
classrooms. This might help us identify useful skills in our students, and
develop these skills.

3. We should develop extensive guidelines about what exactly we expect from our
students during our tests. For example, in special handouts it must be made
clear - and supplemented with real-life examples, - that certain questions
require comprehension and not just regurgitation, or application and not just
comprehension, or synthesis/analysis/evaluation. Students must be explicitly
informed that they will earn credit if, and only if, they cope with these tasks
and not merely regurgitate terms, definitions etc.

4. To develop our students' comprehension and probably other cognitive skills,
we should make short (30 seconds to 1 minute) breaks during our lectures and
ask our students to explain a concept or its application to their immediate
neighbors in the auditorium. To the same end, ask students to come to you
during your office hours in groups of two or three, and have them talk to each
other about some concept that you are explaining.

5. We should not under-estimate a very serious deficiency in listening and
reading skills in many of our students. We must keep reminding them, using
every opportunity, that these skills are crucial for their learning and that
these skills can improve ONLY if they listen more and read more. It might be a
good idea to allocate a special time in our lectures asking a student to tell
the auditorium about something related to the topic and not presented by you in
your previous lectures, but read by the student independently.

Our next meeing will be on Friday, October 12, at 9 a.m. in 121 Education. Our
topic will be "H. Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence."

Please join us, and please read and post to the PED_101 Teaching Methodologies
WebCT part of this forum (to enroll, write an e-mail to stollison@muw.edu or
mbrock@muw.edu).

Best wishes to all,

George

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The topic of the today's [third] meeting was, as planned, "H. Gardner's Theory of
Multiple Intelligence." We discussed how we should apply it in our classroom.

Some key points that were made:

1. A teacher of any discipline, be it humanities, arts, business, or
science/mathematics, should try to address in his/her students *all* of the
Gardner's innate intelligence types (logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial,
musical, bodily-kinetistic, intra-/interpersonal, and naturalist). A certain
caution must be used when an instructor tries to assess the corresponding
"learning types" in students; students should not be rigidly "labeled" as
logical or spatial or "visual" learners, etc., because (a) most people learn
with a combination of intelligences, and (b) the "learning styles" can, and do,
change in the process of learning.

2. Our great concern is that very many of our students, especially junior-level
but also some senior students who are about to graduate, show very serious and
threatening weakness in their level of logical-mathematical intelligence.
Practically all of our "struggling" students are completely unable to outline,
categorize, classify information. They do not see logical patterns and
connections between the "chunks" of information that they are trying to absorb.
We need to help them by (a) making visual classifications, flow charts, graphic
organizers during our lectures, right in front of our students' eyes, and
stressing on the importance of these in the process of "putting things
together," "making sense of things," etc.; (b) posting various graphic
organizers on our WebCT site(s); and (c) giving our classes the task of
organizing material during our lectures (for example, we might divide the class
into two or three groups, ask these groups to write an outline or a flow chart
or a classification of a certain topic, and then ask the students from these
groups to share what they did, and how they did it, and and why they did it).

3. To address our students' interpersonal intelligence, and also to overcome the
teacher-student "barrier" in the ways we think, an instructor might try to ask
his/her students to prepare exam questions. Again, this can be done in groups,
or through a random exchange. Students should be asked to explain to their
peers, why did they put these questions and not other, and what answers do they
expect to obtain.

Our next meeting will be on Friday, Sept. 26, at 9 a.m., in room 121 Education.
The topic will be, Lev Vygotsky's theories of scaffolding and proximal
development.


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The topic of our today's [fourth] meeting was L.S. Vygotsky's theories of interiorization
(more known in the West as "internal dialogue") and ZPD (zones of proximal
development).

Some of the ponts that were made:

1. A certain number of our students, especially freshmen but also more senior
students, experience a huge discomfort when they are immersed in a new language
("school" language vs. their "home, family, community" language). The language
used by instructors conflicts with the language they keep using in their
"interior dialogue" (Vygotsky's term for the phenomenon of "speaking to
oneself" during the learning of new concepts). Overcoming this difficulty to
many of our struggling students is a serious problem, because they (a) haven't
been trained to listen to complex intellectual speech and make sense of it,
instead relying entirely on visual and audiovisual/rhythmic stimulation, and
(b) do not understand the "culture of power," either seeing their instructor as
their peer or (when the instructor opposes this perception) distancing
themselves from the instructor completely.

2. Vygotsky's "interiorization" implies that in a learner's mind, there is an
ongoing imagined dialogue between self and a "significant adult" whom the
learner perceives as a role model and a person who would highly appreciate
their success in the learning. However, many of our students do not have such
"significant adults." Their families and communities sometimes react very
negatively to their changing image and especially language ("what have they
done to you in that school of yours?"), and, in the case of African American
students, accuse them in "acting white."

3. We need to do more to the end of involving our struggling students in the
dialogue with us and also to the end of stimulating their "internal dialogue."
For example, we might expand the time during our first, introductory lectures
when we introduce ouirselves; we might play situational "games" like "two
truths and one lie," etc. We absolutely ought to dispel wrong cultural notions
about professions (like, "a nurse is not a doctor who knows a lot, but a person
who is very caring," or "when I become a teacher, I am going to play with kids
all day"), and instead make our students believe that nurses, teachers, etc.
are intellectuals with a serious "baggage" of conceptual knowledge, with
professional patterns of thought and speech. Perhaps we need, in addition to
endeavours like SM100 (a seminar course where our *majors* in science and
mathematics meet "real" scientists), develop some effort to expose our
*non-majors* to the patterns of thought and speech of
professionals/intellectuals.

Our next topic remains open so far. We might continue to discuss Vygotsky's
theories (especially ZPD, as we did not have time to discuss it today), or,
alternatively, we might switch to a discussion about J. Dewey.

We will convene for our next planned Forum meeting on Friday, November 9, at 9
a.m.

Please join us when you can! The door to room 121 Education will be open!

George