Teaching Strategies

day 6 was a discussion of Teaching Perspectives that came out of my ACRL Intentional Teacher Immersion program from San Diego last summer. I began by discussing the two books on teaching that we had used in that program: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield and The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. I briefly reviewed the main points of these two books. Palmer’s book focuses on the connection we make with our students rather than good teaching ‘technique.’ Brookfield’s book looks at teaching through four lenses: our autobiographies, our students eye’s, our colleagues’ experiences and theorhetical literature. I have both of these in my office if anyone is looking to read them.

Next the class looked at the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (http://teachingperspectives.com/ ) As we had all taken the inventory - we posted our placement on the continuum on the board. The five measures of the TPI are

• Transmission: Effective teaching requires a substatial commitment to the content or subject matter
• Apprenticeship: Effective teaching is a process of socializing students into new behavioral normas and ways of working. (Kolb)
• Developmental: Effective teaching must be planned and conducted ‘from the learners point of view’ (Vygotsky)
• Nurturing: Effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart not the head (Albert Bandura is a researcher here)
• Social Reform: Effective teaching seeks to change society in substantive ways.

Once again we fell all along the continuums of these five factors but an interesting discussion ensued on ways our perspectives inform our teaching and our students learning.

Last week Lauren did a brief discussion of the various learning styles. We brainstormed on ones we had heard of and came up with visual, auditory, kinesthetic, verbal, etc. We had all done the Index of Learning Styles questionnaire from NCSU available at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

I drew up the continuums on the board and had everyone come up and mark where they fell on them. The ranges were:

• Active — Reflective;
• Sensing — Intuitive;
• Visual — Verbal;
• Sequential — Global;

Here’s how we came out on these:

I think it’s interesting to see how we cluster in some areas and spread out more in others. I think our best discussion came out of how our own learning styles can impact how we teach our material.

Today we talked about several types of learning theories, really quickly. We’ll go into several of them in greater depth in the next few classes.

Because I used a very “meta” approach, I’m rolling the two posts into one here.

We started with a Q&A exercise that Kevin, Craig, and I have used in Lib100. Everyone (who wanted to) wrote questions they have in the course, and after it was over everyone (who wanted to) added tick marks to the ones they also shared. This will help Roz and me make sure to cover what you want by the end of the course.

We started with Active Learning, and used a case study as an example. The case study could be approached with an active learning strategy, but that wasn’t necessary. The point of the exercise was to experience an active learning activity.

Next up we addressed Problem Based Learning. In this case each pair had a problem they chose (how to teach a specific skill) and had a minute to find a way to solve the problem. The pairs shared out with the larger group, reflected and discussed some more, and had the opportunity to share their solutions again.

The third method we explored was Inquiry Based Learning which is perhaps the most student-driven solution. Pairs (again!) explored some aspect of IGI (how it’s related to the other subjects we’ve covered, if it is effective, how to incorporate it into instruction, etc) and shared out to the class.

Service Learning was our fourth topic, were everyone reflected individually on a project that they were very involved in. After reflecting we shared with the group.

The final category was conversation theory, in which the group would make connections as a whole. However, I had a meeting scheduled right up to that moment in class, so I had to leave at this point. If someone wants so share how that went… feel free to comment!

So, the big meta of the day:

• It was fast! It was designed to be fast to get through a lot of content for those who wanted a taste of a bunch of things. The speed also allowed us to demonstrate that there will be a lot of content about the specific topics we’ve singled out for future classes so that participants would know it’s more than just what is covered on the surface at conferences, in mainstream education literature, etc. Finally, if someone’s really busy and having a hard time making it to the classes, there was enough content to know if it’s something you want to know more about in the future. Of course, we hope you’ll come, though!
• I tried to fit in pair work leading to discussion, pair work that informs discussion that informs pair work, and personal reflection. Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses and a combined approach allows you to give more people a chance to do something that resonates with their own learning style.

If you have questions, please leave them here!

So we’ve done a lot lately! On day 6, Roz talked about teaching styles. Day 7 was a swap and share. Last week was spring break, which brings us to Day 8!

I’m about to post all the standard class posts, but wanted to give space for sharing the case study ideas you might have come up with when reading through the exercise and talking in pairs. So, if you had an idea… this is where to put it!

Thanks!