recognizing the visible evidence of invisible learning the collaboration for the advancement of...
TRANSCRIPT
Recognizing the Visible Evidence
of Invisible Learning
The Collaboration for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
Bloomington, MN Feb 16, 2008
Randy Bass, Georgetown University [email protected]
Comments on the Readings for Thursday November 13th Current Forum: Read23 timesWed Nov 12 2003 8:17 pm Date:Bastos, John Michael < > Author: [email protected]: Water... Subject:Not totally sure this is right, but I'll take a chance... My guess is that themicrobes "digest" the contaminants andinternally break them down into another substance. Although digest might notbe the best word, because it's not likethey eat them (they dont have mouths). But I suppose they look for a chemicalor protein and bind or absorb it, andthen break it down internally with other enzymes. The enzymes take one thingand then break it down into morespecific parts; then use some of it for food or energy to make more cells\parts -and then it probably just excreteswhatever else it doesn't need.That's my take at least.
Ventures answer whenuncertain
Good detail
Comments on the Readings for Thursday November 13th Current Forum: Read24 timesWed Nov 12 2003 8:31 pm Date:Whitehurst, Celadon Charles < > Author: [email protected]: Water... Subject:yeah, it seems like the microbes strip the pollutants of important chemicals thatchange its chemical makeup and makeit into a completely different compound all together.
confirmation
Comments on the Readings for Thursday November 13th Current Forum: Read27 timesWed Nov 12 2003 8:34 pm Date:Whitehurst, Celadon Charles < > Author: [email protected] things... Subject:It was really refreshing to hear how a microbe mutated in a way that benefittedus. The PCB resistant microbes thatactually eat the harmful pollutants are a welcome break from all of the antibioticresistant, disease-causing microbes wehave studied so far!One question i had was whether the Arabian Gulf was so rich in oil-eatingmicrobes b/c of the large amounts of oilconstantly being dumped... Did the pollution actually cause the proliferation ofthese microbes b/c they had toconstantly deal with the oil and then they were ready when Iraqi forces dumpedlarger amounts?I think the idea of producing and using the enzymes that break down thepollutants rather than using the microbes reallydoes seem much safer, but I am slightly confused as to the logistics of how theywould actually implement the plan.
Appreciation of therange of science!
Great attempt to answerown question
Comments on the Readings for Thursday November 13th Current Forum: Read22 timesWed Nov 12 2003 8:47 pm Date:Condon, Kelly C. < > Author: [email protected] cleaners Subject:The information I read in today's selections sounds really hopeful, but thearticles also bring up a few questions andpersonal reservations. It is very fortunate that the PCBs are helping to clean theHudson, but that should not take our
Link out to regulationand to peer comment
digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/bassr
In Memory of James Slevin, 1945-2006English, Georgetown University
The Right to Literacy, with Andrea Lunsford (MLA, 1990).
Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of Composition (Pittsburgh, 2001).
Francis March Award Address, December 2005
Shulman’s Table of Learning
Engagement and MotivationKnowledge and Understanding
Performance and ActionReflection and CritiqueJudgment and Design
Commitment and Identity
Shulman’s Table of Learning
“In a nutshell, the taxonomy makes the following assertion: Learning begins with student engagement, which in turn leads to knowledge and understanding. Once someone understands, he or she becomes capable of performance or action…
Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning”
Engagement and MotivationKnowledge and Understanding
Performance and ActionReflection and CritiqueJudgment and Design
Commitment and Identity
Shulman’s Table of Learning
“…Critical reflection on one's practice and understanding leads to higher-order thinking in the form of a capacity to exercise judgment in the face of uncertainty and to create designs in the presence of constraints and unpredictability. Ultimately, the exercise of judgment makes possible the development of commitment.
Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning”
Engagement and MotivationKnowledge and Understanding
Performance and ActionReflection and CritiqueJudgment and Design
Commitment and Identity
Shulman’s Table of Learning
“… In commitment, we become capable of professing our understandings and our values, our faith and our love, our skepticism and our doubts, internalizing those attributes and making them integral to our identities. These commitments, in turn, make new engagements possible—and even necessary.Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning”
Engagement and MotivationKnowledge and Understanding
Performance and ActionReflection and CritiqueJudgment and Design
Commitment and Identity
Table of Learning as Cycle
Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning”
“Shuffling the Deck”
Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning”
What Jim Learned
– Most students won’t go onto step two if not confident of step one.
– They will spend lots of time on a non-fruitful approach rather than try an alternative method.
– Students can solve in groups what they can’t solve alone.
– Most surprised that virtually all students had a lot of trouble articulating why they were trying any particular approach.
Jim Sandefur, Mathematics, Georgetown
Teaching Problem Solving Process: Pedagogy of “stuck places”
Process Matters:
•Students reflect on part of the problem overnight
•Watch the student problem solving video and stop at a critical spot
•Class discussion
•Write up their reflections on possible actions
Terry and Greg
Teaching Problem Solving Process: Pedagogy of “stuck places”
Terry and Greg
“So, we have two conditions to work with. I’m not sure how to reconcile them.”
Observations from the Think Alouds Goals for ChangingTeaching Practice
Observation 1: Students are willing to work. I had themisconception that poor quality or missing homework wasthe result of students not making sufficient effort. Early on,I discover this is not always the case.
Goal 1: Help studentsspend their time moreproductively.
Observation 2: Students are often stuck at the verybeginning of a problem. The students who were trying todetermine the a and b values that resulted in 3-cycles nevereven understand the question being asked. In anothersituation, one of these students was videotaped working agraph theory problem. For 40 minutes, the student just keptrepeating the question, but never made a first step.
Goal 2: Help studentsget started on theirproblems.
Observation 3: Students keep repeating the same steps,even when they clearly do not help. In watching mystudents work, I noticed they were like a wind-up toy carthat is stuck in the corner, wheels spinning but not goinganywhere. Once students decide how to approach aproblem, they have difficulty trying a new approach.
Goal 3: Help studentslearn how to try avariety of approachesand to developflexibility in theirthinking by usingmultiple approaches.
Observation 4: Students avoid looking at examples andinstead try to solve the general problem. Students are notonly reluctant to try examples, but when they do tryexamples, they tend not to reflect on how the examples canhelp them solve the problem,
Goal 4: Help studentslearn to use examplesto develop a betterunderstanding of theproblem and to reflecton examples to helpthem understand thegeneral situation.
Strategy 1: Give prompts. I have had moresuccess with prompts than with hints. Aprompt helps the students organize theirapproach. They tend to be the questions thatwe ask ourselves when we are solving aproblem, and they tend to be the same,regardless of the problem
“What I discovered as I began teaching thiscourse is that prompts are the questions Iask myself, almost subconsciously. Todevelop good prompts, I have learned toobserve my own thinking as I workproblems, somewhat of an internal ThinkAloud, and focus on what I am askingmyself as I work problems.”
Strategy 2: Multiple drafts: For difficultproblems, hints will clearly help thestudents. The problem is that a hint mayhelp one student and be of no use toanother…Hints work better if they aresomewhat student specific. Because of this,I have instituted a multiple draft system.
“This system in which each problem isgraded several times is time consuming forme. Because of this, I assign fewerproblems, but they are generally harder andmore involved.”
Strategy 3: Making conjectures: Insteadof asking students to prove a statement, Inow try to have more problems that causestudents to explore a situation and constructtheir own conjectures. This helps combineproblem solving with construction of proofs.Students are encouraged to try to understandwhy the examples work by reflecting ontheir construction.
“One difficulty that often arises is thatstudents have so much fun looking forpatterns, they forget to actually stop andprove some of their results. A secondproblem is that the problem must be wordedcarefully so that the students actually seesome patterns. Many students are sodisorganized that they may work for a longtime without making any discoveries. Ibelieve one of the greatest shortcomings ofpost-secondary mathematics education is thelack of development of our students’ abilityto look for patterns and make conjectures.”
Observations>Alignment with Goals > Strategies
Going public with the difference that inquiry makes
James Sandefur, Mathematics, Georgetown
Instead we need to explore learning products appropriate to
learning processes
NOVICEprocesses
LEARNINGprocesses
EXPERTprocesses
Visible Evidence?
LEARNINGprocesses
LEARNINGprocesses
How can we better understand these intermediate processes?
How might we design in response to them?
From the Charea Batiste
interview
[19:41] Because I was never involved in the civil rights movement, as I said that was a long time ago for me. I feel that I don’t have… can’t in my own words describe what happened. I was never there, I didn’t experience any of those things, so my words are just from an outside point of view.
But the pictures are first hand. These are people who actually went through the pain, who went through the torture, and their stories are told through these still images.
My voice was used I guess to give life to those pictures, but the pictures itself they told the story.
And my voice, I remember listening, I would get very angry telling the story. And I think that’s what added to the images. Because the anger in my voice--although still in tune with the digital story--without being irate was enough to make the images real, relevant, so you could feel the anger that was, you know, produced from those acts of violence. [20:52]
“On the relationship of the images to her voice”
Where is Charea’s digital story as project that begins with engagement and ends with commitment?
Insert stills of hands, pose question about alternative endings…be more “critical”?
Greg Ulmer: “From Literacy to Electracy”
“For example, general education writing courses…serve at least the following consensus needs, listed in order of current priority—
methods for using the language to learn specialized knowledge;
practices of rhetoric and logic required for citizenship in a democratic society;
models of self-knowledge for living the examined life.
We may assume that these needs continue in electracy, but that they will be articulated differently. But there will be an inversion of the literate hierarchy; the first communication of an electrate person is reflexive, self-directed” (5).
[Writing competency]
[Critical thinking]
[Capacity for reflection]
Key ReferencesRandy Bass: [email protected]
• Lee Shulman, “Making Differences: A Table of Learning” http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/publications/sub.asp?key=452&subkey=612
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
• Charea Batiste, “Chocolate Innocence” (Cal State Monterey Bay, Cecilia O’Leary--teacher)
• James Slevin, Francis March Award Address, available at: http://english.georgetown.edu
• James Sandefur, Department of Mathematics (Georgetown University)http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/sandefur/