As the Writing Realized staff finishes up a second round of consultations with a group of nursing students, I'm reminded of a very important consideration when it comes to our students. It is easy to come to the table with big expectations for our students and there is nothing wrong with demanding excellence. In fact, we owe our students at least that much. It can be easy to forget, however, that each student may be coming from a very different place.
I reviewed a paper for an online student, today, who was kind enough to send me a note to say how much she appreciated both my comments and my approach. She felt less assaulted by the criticism because of the spirit and tone in which it was presented. Part of the process involves a Jing presentation, so the student actually heard my voice giving her guidance as she watched the computer screen scroll through her paper. It was very gratifying to hear that she was encouraged by my feedback rather than discouraged or overwhelmed.
I forwarded the exchange to her professor who then informed me that this student is a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling her kids while she finishes a graduate degree in nursing. Wow! She has a lot on her plate!
Learning and writing come together in a very personal journey. All week long, I have been working with students in the lab who really are confused by how to write scholarly papers. Some of them are traditional students and others haven't been in the classroom for years. It would be easy to make the jaded assumption that the traditional students have just been lazy and never bothered to learn certain things or that a non-traditional student might not be cut out for college or graduate work. The truth is, we don't always know where they are coming from or what goes on in the background of their lives.
The students who have really chosen to be here, to participate in their learning, will come with open arms and at least partially open minds. If they are in the lab, whether it is because the professor requires it or not, they are here for a reason. They have come looking for guidance in their journey. They willingly open themselves up to our criticism so that they may meet another milestone, conquer another challenge.
It is a pretty powerful thing to see a mind open up and see what is possible. It is even more powerful to have been invited to the show.
Showing posts with label authentic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label authentic. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Authentic Learning, Collateral Knowledge and the Importance of Audience
As a teacher, I've given a lot of thought to making learning meaningful and relevant for my students over the years. I say "learning" because that is really what I hope I am teaching them—how to learn. Of course making the content relevant is part of that process, but it's not always as easy or obvious as it sounds. Whatever the content, there needs to be a sense of active, authentic participation for the students that will help them truly internalize the concepts and make it part of their own system of knowledge. There is plenty of literature, as well as debate, about authentic learning, pedagogy, and assessment, but I want to consider just a few brief points.
After an extensive literature review of educational scholarship on "authentic learning tasks," Jan Herrington, Ron Oliver, and Thomas C. Reeves identified 10 key characteristics of authentic learning activities. I am going to cherry-pick a few that really seem to meet the mission of the QEP program at ASU:
I don't know if anyone has used this term before, but it seems to fit the phenomenon that accompanies good teaching strategies. In the NCLB panic that has left school systems across the country diving into into the CYA bunkers of the war on illiteracy, collateral knowledge has been sacrificed in the name of self-preservation. Yes, thanks to vague language and misguided implementation, NCLB has lead many educators to "teach to the test" rather than to facilitate learning in order to cover their asses and get satisfactory numbers on the standardized test. But have the student's really learned anything through that approach? Or have they simply been drilled on certain facts and constructs that will evaporate ten minutes after the test is over? In one particularly horrific example, a school system has mandated a "concept education" approach, which strips a course like English Literature down to a cataloged list of naked concepts taught out of context. Students may read a chapter of THE GREAT GATSBY only as an example of some theme, but they will never read the novel as a whole. Once they have written a paragraph about the dangers of wealth or the demise of the American dream, they move on to something else without ever really seeing the concept at work. It's a meaningless blip in a catalog of disconnected terms.
If the learning is authentic, the knowledge is permanent. If you look at the really good teachers who have continued to facilitate learning in the classroom and use creative, student-centered approaches, the students will learn the content and they will perform well on the tests. A good case in point is an interdisciplinary course taught by Carl Rosin and Paul Wright at Radnor High School in West Philadelphia. While the course was not labeled as an AP course, Rosin and Wright encouraged their students to take the AP Language and Composition test simply because they realized that the course material seemed to be compatible with the test. They did not teach to the test, but offered another application for the knowledge the students would gain from taking the course. They scored exceptionally well across the board. That is collateral knowledge at work. It is sustainable and transferable.
No matter what the content area—science, social studies, English—students must write. It's a life skill and an integral part of the learning process itself. However, many writing assignments come to a student, laid out with all the do's and don'ts and word limits, etc., but fail to clearly identify the audience. The reasonable assumption is that the audience is the teacher, and the teacher alone. One way we can make these learning tasks more authentic is by defining and utilizing a variety of audiences.
To get a feeling for how my students think and write and to learn a little more about their life experience, I asked my ENGL 1102 students to write a "This I Believe" essay for NPR. Their audience with the NPR audience, not just me. I encouraged them to get personal and shared some examples from the NPR website. I was amazed and thrilled with the essays I received. Not all of them were beautifully written or well organized, but they had guts. The students had used writing to face issues that were tough or funny or uncomfortable or sad. They still had to follow some basic grammar guidelines and word-count restrictions, but they explored. Themselves. After I handed their papers back, I read aloud my own "This I Believe" essay, which I had written the day before. That simple act transformed the classroom. It changed my students' attitudes, just a little, towards writing and literature and perhaps even why they were there. We went on to examine the relevance of great literature like HAMLET and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and other challenging pieces and they saw something personal in it.
Oh, I'm guilty of assigning those essays that assume the teacher is the only audience too, but over the years I have tried to pay more attention to that and offer more meaningful parameters. Having students teach each other is a powerful strategy. You might have them write a children's book about a topic (a very difficult task, indeed!). One business professor asked his students to write up a business conceptualization. Students could contact an existing business or make up their own business and write up a plan to maximize profits, quality, service, efficiency, etc. In the science room, you might give them a conference to write for or a demonstration to a specific group of people. Invite the outside world into the process and give your students something authentic, something real, something personal. Something sustainable.
AUTHENTIC LEARNING TASKS
After an extensive literature review of educational scholarship on "authentic learning tasks," Jan Herrington, Ron Oliver, and Thomas C. Reeves identified 10 key characteristics of authentic learning activities. I am going to cherry-pick a few that really seem to meet the mission of the QEP program at ASU:
- Have real-world relevance. Are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity.
- Comprised of complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time.
- Provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources.
- Provide the opportunity to collaborate.
- Provide the opportunity to reflect.
- Can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes.
- Allow competing solutions and diverse outcomes.
COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE
I don't know if anyone has used this term before, but it seems to fit the phenomenon that accompanies good teaching strategies. In the NCLB panic that has left school systems across the country diving into into the CYA bunkers of the war on illiteracy, collateral knowledge has been sacrificed in the name of self-preservation. Yes, thanks to vague language and misguided implementation, NCLB has lead many educators to "teach to the test" rather than to facilitate learning in order to cover their asses and get satisfactory numbers on the standardized test. But have the student's really learned anything through that approach? Or have they simply been drilled on certain facts and constructs that will evaporate ten minutes after the test is over? In one particularly horrific example, a school system has mandated a "concept education" approach, which strips a course like English Literature down to a cataloged list of naked concepts taught out of context. Students may read a chapter of THE GREAT GATSBY only as an example of some theme, but they will never read the novel as a whole. Once they have written a paragraph about the dangers of wealth or the demise of the American dream, they move on to something else without ever really seeing the concept at work. It's a meaningless blip in a catalog of disconnected terms.
If the learning is authentic, the knowledge is permanent. If you look at the really good teachers who have continued to facilitate learning in the classroom and use creative, student-centered approaches, the students will learn the content and they will perform well on the tests. A good case in point is an interdisciplinary course taught by Carl Rosin and Paul Wright at Radnor High School in West Philadelphia. While the course was not labeled as an AP course, Rosin and Wright encouraged their students to take the AP Language and Composition test simply because they realized that the course material seemed to be compatible with the test. They did not teach to the test, but offered another application for the knowledge the students would gain from taking the course. They scored exceptionally well across the board. That is collateral knowledge at work. It is sustainable and transferable.
AUDIENCE
No matter what the content area—science, social studies, English—students must write. It's a life skill and an integral part of the learning process itself. However, many writing assignments come to a student, laid out with all the do's and don'ts and word limits, etc., but fail to clearly identify the audience. The reasonable assumption is that the audience is the teacher, and the teacher alone. One way we can make these learning tasks more authentic is by defining and utilizing a variety of audiences.
To get a feeling for how my students think and write and to learn a little more about their life experience, I asked my ENGL 1102 students to write a "This I Believe" essay for NPR. Their audience with the NPR audience, not just me. I encouraged them to get personal and shared some examples from the NPR website. I was amazed and thrilled with the essays I received. Not all of them were beautifully written or well organized, but they had guts. The students had used writing to face issues that were tough or funny or uncomfortable or sad. They still had to follow some basic grammar guidelines and word-count restrictions, but they explored. Themselves. After I handed their papers back, I read aloud my own "This I Believe" essay, which I had written the day before. That simple act transformed the classroom. It changed my students' attitudes, just a little, towards writing and literature and perhaps even why they were there. We went on to examine the relevance of great literature like HAMLET and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and other challenging pieces and they saw something personal in it.
Oh, I'm guilty of assigning those essays that assume the teacher is the only audience too, but over the years I have tried to pay more attention to that and offer more meaningful parameters. Having students teach each other is a powerful strategy. You might have them write a children's book about a topic (a very difficult task, indeed!). One business professor asked his students to write up a business conceptualization. Students could contact an existing business or make up their own business and write up a plan to maximize profits, quality, service, efficiency, etc. In the science room, you might give them a conference to write for or a demonstration to a specific group of people. Invite the outside world into the process and give your students something authentic, something real, something personal. Something sustainable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)