Spring 2005

SOTL Reflection

Practices employed to encourage deeper thinking:

Technology education majors typically take Advanced Curriculum Methods and Assessment during their last semester on campus prior to student teaching. It is the second in a series of curriculum methods and assessment courses that they take in their preparation to become licensed technology education teachers. The first course focuses on curriculum and assessment at the macro level, i.e., the course and program level. The second course focuses more on the preparation of daily lessons, their delivery, and assessment of student learning.

The first half of Advanced Curriculum Methods and Assessment provides the foundational theory that underpins the activities in the rest of the course. Topics include Maslow's hierarchy of needs, cognitive learning theories, learning styles, behavioralism, constructivism, etc. During previous semesters, students were given a synthesis assignment where they were asked to take what they have learned to date and create a generic model that represents what a teacher should do to insure that learning would occur. We called this assignment the development of a model for teaching. The intent was to have students move their thinking from theory to practice. How would they take what they have learned about learning to date and create a model that could be used as a starting point when designing lessons? Students were asked to create a graphic representation or model using symbols to represent distinct activities or steps, arrows to show flow, making sure to label each part using meaningful descriptors. Once the model was complete, the students were instructed to write a narrative describing each part of their model. The final requirement was for the student to validate their model by describing what would happen during each step of a lesson of their choice.

This assignment has been somewhat frustrating for the instructors that teach this class. Many of our students have a very difficult time conceptualizing and synthesizing. Student models typically reflect simplistic thinking about learning, and indicate a lack of an ability to synthesize that which they have been taught and then apply it in a meaningful way.

Frustration with this assignment was the impetus for this inquiry of a different approach. Many Technology Education students are concrete learners. It was hypothesized that maybe they needed a concrete experience to draw on before being asked to create a model for teaching. This led to the creation of an action research project.

Teaching and Learning Problem

Do student perceptions of the teaching and learning process change as a result of a teaching methods course?

Method

A pretest/posttest research model was used to determine if students' perceptions of the teaching learning process changed over the course of their advanced Curriculum Methods and Assessment course. The teaching model assignment was moved to the first assignment of the semester. This model provided baseline data from which to compare. The same assignment was given again as the culminating assignment of the semester. Initial and culminating models were compared to determine if student perceptions of the teaching learning process had changed. A follow-up survey was also constructed to gain more insights into students' perceptions.

The Difference Between a Teaching and Learning Question

Teaching questions typically focus on inquiries related to teacher actions. In that sense, they are typically input oriented. This can lead to simplistic thinking about the teaching learning process. The teacher could leave the classroom believing that, just because they put on a good performance, student learning occurred. A radio station can broadcast an excellent educational program, but if no one has his or her radio tuned in, learning is not going to occur. Another potential problem with this approach lies with the students' ability/inability to interpret information. If the teacher focuses only on what they do without taking their students' needs into consideration, they could create a lesson that, in their own mind is pedagogically sound, but in reality, is not appropriate for the students in their classroom. A radio station can broadcast an excellent educational program but student learning could be hindered because of the student's inability to interpret the language being used during the broadcast.

Moving away from a broadcast mentality in education could enhance learning. Learning occurs through an elaborate interaction between a learner and their environment, and introspection. This is why it is important to investigate learning questions. Learning questions are more process and output oriented. They focus on students. This is not to say that a teacher should ignore inquiry as to how to improve their lessons by changing their own behavior or interactions with students. But they should evaluate the effectiveness of their actions through the lens of student learning. Was student learning enhanced as a result of their approach?

What Does it Mean to Have Students Learn Deeply in a Course?

Deep learning implies learning beyond simple rote memorization. Improving a student's ability to function at the higher levels of Blooms Taxonomy, i.e., analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, could be considered deep learning. Other clichÈs that fall within this realm include critical thinking and problem solving. A test that could be used to determine if a student has learned something deeply is to see if, when posed with a problem, they can call upon past knowledge and apply it successfully to this new situation. This is an admiral goal because one cannot realistically expect to teach students about all of the possible scenarios they may encounter in life. But if we can teach them to analyze, synthesize and evaluate, they may be better armed to face life's challenges.

Plans for Future Investigations

I have the great benefit of sharing the responsibility of teaching sections of our Advanced Curriculum, Methods and Assessment in Technology Education course with a colleague. We are always coming up with new ideas to try in our classes. We also have the luxury to meet almost daily to reflect on our successes and failures.

The results of this inquiry have fostered more questions than answers. The role of reflection and iteration to improve teaching is the most likely place I would like to investigate next. The results of the surveys indicate that students value their micro teaching assignments. But little data has been collected to determine whether the reflections that we ask them to do after each micro teaching lesson is being used to improve subsequent lessons. In other words, when they point out that they forgot to clearly communicate student expectations during one lesson, do they actually follow through and do something about it in their next lesson? We do not know whether the reflections represent ≥just an assignment≤ or a meaningful tool to self diagnose and improve practice.

The usefulness of having students create graphic models to communicate the scaffolding of a generic lesson deserves more attention. I would have expected more pronounced differences between their original and final teaching models. I also do not know if there is any correlation between the fidelity of their models and their performance during microteaching. Is there a correlation between teachers that have the ability to create intricate models representing best practices when teaching and theirs students' learning?