Week 4

Time may change me (but I can't trace time): 
 
Pedagogical ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I enjoyed reading about the core ideas for the postindustrial paradigm of instruction (in chapter 8) and hadn't previously considered the role that industrialism played in shaping educational theory.  I think I'd like to print out Mr. Reigeluth's list to use as I get further into teaching, because even though it's more "both-and" than "neither-nor," I think one side of each dichotomy represents the old way and should be moved away from.  Here I'll briefly discuss the first five (out of eight).

1.  Learning-focused vs. Sorting-focused:  This is something we still see quite a lot, but it occurred because students needed to be shaped into either manual laborers or the people who employed them.  Now, especially in urban areas, students are still sorted where they can't reach the same levels of success as their counterparts in more affluent areas.   I've tried to correct this, when working with students who expressed interest in a life of labor, by introducing them to college study plans and various forms of literacy--this way, even those students who might sort themselves suddenly have similar opportunities as the rest of their learning community.

2.  Learner-centered vs. Teacher-centered Instruction:  This hearkens back to the teacher writing Latin phrases on the chalkboard for his or her students to copy down.  Students had no freedom or control (and thereby much less chance of internalized motivation) over their own education.  I went to a professional development meeting where strategies for teaching gifted students were given, and I learned about a bingo-like chart of options for students to learn by doing in regards to a common topic.  This gives students a chance to plot their own course based on their own experiences, talents and needs.

3.  Learning by doing vs. Teacher presenting:  I've encountered many teachers so far whose singular objective is to stand up and talk every day for 45 minutes to an hour (including most of my high school teachers, which is why this is difficult to break away from).  The key term here is student self-direction, which involves cultivating motivation and student interest as well as developing assessments that are authentic and performance-based, giving students a real chance to "show what they know."

4. Attainment-based vs. Time-based progress

and

5.  Customized vs. Standardized instruction:  These are very similar (even though #5 goes beyond #4) in the sense that the old-time half of the dichotomy means that everyone learns the same thing at the same time (again, like when I was in school).  The opposite of this situation presents a very different idea of education than the one that I'm used to experiencing, where students learn at their own pace and continue until they understand the content (as opposed to being left behind if they don't) and also have activities that are geared specifically towards them and how they learn.

As I get closer to being a teacher, I want to be able to integrate these forward-facing ideas into my curriculum so as to give each student a chance to succeed (as opposed to continuing the old ways where some students are groomed for jobs that entail a life of wealth and some students are almost guaranteed a continuation of poverty and hard labor).

Week 3

Mirror, mirror: Constructivism and George

In Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he writes "Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world."

As I read the chapter on constructivism, I thought back to multiple classes where Freire's work was emphasized--a pedagogy involving reaching students where and as they were and challenging them with issues that they would likely encounter in real life (as opposed to just read about in an old textbook).

What's not to like about constructivism?  According to the text,  it involves

• real-world meaning-making
• learning opportunities through cognitive conflict, challenge, and puzzlement
• collaboration
• natural (instead of forced) reflection
• and learners taking responsibility for their own learning.

I liked reading about the instructional models tied to the theory and the potential benefits, but I hadn't considered that there might be potential risks and challenges.

This is where George comes in.  He wants so badly to be a constructivist that he dooms his students to boredom and complete lack of fulfillment.  I learned from this chapter that there should be a balance of both the old and new ways in order to teach successfully like this. I see this especially in a continuation high school setting, where the students are given individual work in packets and other projects and it seems like they can escape the institution without having really learned anything.  I would like to read more about this school of thought to try to figure out the answer to this problem.

Week 2

The educational revolution will not be televised (or shown with a magic lantern): technology, design and instruction in the 20th century 
 
"In 1913, Thomas Edison proclaimed: 'books will soon be obsolete in the schools...It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture.  Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.'"

100 years later, as I read this line from Edison from an expensive textbook, how I wish that his proclamation had come true (even if I'm not exactly in the demographic he was thinking of). One of the things I was found most surprising in the readings for this week was was how sure some were that each technological advancement was going to be the future of education, that schools would transform into centers where students learned only by listening to radios or watching television.

I also found the section on the history of instructional design interesting.  It would've been worthwhile to have read this as we originally learned about things like objectives and authentic assessments to get a better idea of where they came from. 

Week 1

I'm really looking forward to developing marketable technology skills in this class.