Developing Educational Practice #1

Developing Educational Practice

Lindsay JordanCentre for Learning and Teaching in

Art and Design

Overview of the course

• Day 1• Personal theories and metaphors

– How do we understand learning and teaching?• Context– What is Higher Education for?– Why is Higher Education like this?

• Practice– How do people learn?– How can teaching enable learning?

Overview of the course• Day 2• Reflection– Why is reflection so central to teaching and learning?

• Designing the curriculum• What are we trying to achieve?• How do we support student-centred learning?

• Practice– Teaching 1:1, small groups, large lectures– Managing crits

People bingo!

In pairs

Who is this?What have they brought with them?What are they hoping to leave with?

What is learning?

• Take about 5 minutes to write down what you think learning is or should be

What is teaching?

• Take about 5 minutes to write down what you think teaching is or should be

What we think learning is will shape how we approach learning

What we think teaching is will shape how we approach teaching

Conceptions of teaching

• Think about the teaching staff you’ve encountered – one’s you’ve liked and/or ones you’ve had difficulty with - how would you describe their beliefs about teaching?

Conceptions of teaching (Richardson, 2005)

• Teaching as imparting information• Teaching as transmitting structured knowledge• Teaching as an interaction between the teacher

and the student• Teaching as facilitating understanding

on the part of the student• Teaching as bringing about conceptual

change and intellectual development in the student

Teachers’ approaches(Richardson, 2005)

Disciplinary Characteristics

Conceptions of Teaching

Perceptions of the teaching environment

Situational Factors

Approaches to Teaching

Conceptions of learning

• Think about the students you’ve encountered – those you’ve enjoyed working with and/or those you’ve had difficulty with – what do you think their beliefs about learning are?

Conceptions of learning (Richardson, 2005)

1. Learning as the increase of knowledge2. Learning as memorising3. Learning as the acquisition of facts or procedures4. Learning as the abstraction of meaning5. Learning as an interpretive process aimed at the

understanding of reality6. A conscious process, fuelled by personal interests

and directed at obtaining harmony and happiness or changing society

Students’ approaches (Richardson, 2005)

Demographic Characteristics

Conceptions of Learning

Perceptions of academic context

Contextual Factors

Approaches to studying

Ways of understanding learning and teaching

• Some big words:– Constructivism– Social learning theory– Transformative learning– Threshold concepts– Experiential learning– Deep, surface & strategic

TEA!

Higher Education Context

• What is Higher Education and what is it for?– Discuss in groups of 3 and come up with a list of at

least 3 things that your group believes to be the purpose of Higher Education

– You will have 10 minutes to do this and then you will present your list to the big group and explain why you think those 3 things are important

Higher Education

• Meaning-making• Critical thinking• Reflection• Analysis and evaluation• “deep” versus “surface” learning

Higher Education?

• What are the factors that have shaped the HE system we work in today?

– Discuss in groups of 3 for 10 minutes

– Present your conclusions to the group

Massification

• Enormous increase in HE participation in relatively short time

• In 1962 there were 125,000 students at 25 Universities

• In 1996 there were over 1,000,000 students at over 100 universities

• Today the figure is over 2,000,000

Massification

• What are the likely consequences of a mass higher education system?

Widening participation

• HEFCE is “concerned with ensuring equality of opportunity for disabled students, mature students, women and men, and all ethnic groups”

• Attainment, Aspiration, Application, Admission

Widening participation

• What are the challenges for HE in focusing on widening participation?

Quality (1)

• The `modern’ system of higher education has its roots in the 1950s when it was devised to admit the top 5% of the population. It is now expected to admit the top 30%. Unless our teaching has improved by a tremendous amount or the population’s general level of academic ability has risen considerably, there must be a `dumbing down’.(Senior University Manager A)

• What do you think? If more people do well, does that mean dumbing down or does it mean a fairer, more accessible system?

Quality (2)

• People have been moaning about declining standards for the last 30 years. I doubt if it is possible to prove anything either way. The standards themselves are probably changing, but the old standards had a great deal wrong with them so it is just possible that these changes may be for the better. (Senior University Manager B)

• What do you think? What might have been wrong with the old standards?

Need to satisfy stakeholders

• Who are the stakeholders in HE today – who do you think should have the right to have a say in what goes on at University?

International students

• Currently more than 8% of the total income of UK universities comes from overseas students' fees

• On the one hand it means an injection of much needed funds into the sector, on the other hand there are concerns about reliance in this kind of money.

• Is this model of financing HE sustainable?• Are international students getting a fair deal?

Quality assurancehttp://www.qaa.ac.uk

Frameworks for

HE qualifica

tions

Code of practice

Subject benchmark statements Program

me specifica

tions

Academic infrastructure

Quality assurance agendas

• Universities need to be accountable to stakeholders

• They need to say what they do – to have predictable measures of achievement

• They need to do what they say – deliver consistency and measurable outcomes

• This drive for consistency, measurability and control is problematic for some academic staff – why do you think that is the case?

LUNCH!

How do people learn?

What do we already know about how people learn?

What does our knowledge about how people learn mean for

teaching?

Ways of understanding learning and teaching

• Some big words:– Constructivism– Social learning theory– Transformative learning– Threshold concepts– Experiential learning– Deep, surface & strategic

Learning changes people

Different theories explain how this happens in different ways, but most

are concerned with some developmental process in the learner

Transformative learning theory

Jack Mezirow (1991)

• Recognising limits of existing knowledge• Developing an expanded understanding –

becoming more inclusive, discriminating, integrative

• Acting upon new understanding

Transformative learning theory

• In this model, being challenged, stretched, required to defend positions that you don’t necessarily support, being able to understand and engage with conflicting view points, are all important teaching and learning activities.

• The most important idea is that the student’s existing understandings of the subject area are disturbed and have to be newly formed.

Challenging within a framework

• Challenging existing viewpoints is important, but new learning has to be structured, supported and scaffolded

• We have to understand who students are, what prior knowledge and experience they bring to the learning situation and how best to enable their learning

Constructivism

• We learn by fitting new understanding with what we already know, reorganising, extending and supplanting existing knowledge.

• A good explanation of constructivism is available at this websitehttp://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/index.html

Constructive Alignment

John Biggs (2002, p.1) “The ‘constructive’ aspect refers to what the learner does, which is to construct meaning through relevant learning activities.”

Constructive alignment

• Biggs (2001, p.1-2)“The ‘alignment’ aspect refers to what the

teacher does, which is to set up a learning environment that supports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes.”

Constructive alignment

• Biggs (2002, p.2) “The key is that the components in the teaching

system, especially the teaching methods used and the assessment tasks, are aligned to the learning activities assumed in the intended outcomes. The learner is ‘trapped’, and cannot escape without learning what is intended.”

Social learning theory

• Learning is not just about change within an individual learner

• Communities of practice theory (Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger, 1991) argues that learning is a social activity that is just as much a part of everyday life as it is the focus of formal education

Communities of practice• The domain– Participants in the COP share an interest in a

particular area of activity• The community– Participants are linked by relationships in which

they help each other, have discussions and share information

• The practice– Participants develop a shared repertoire of

resources, stories, tools, ways of thinking and problem solving

Legitimate peripheral participation

• It is Ok to be a beginner: We enter new communities not knowing the rules of the game, not understanding all the terminology and the unspoken codes of behaviour

• Think about communities of practice that you belong to – draw a circle for each one (some may overlap)

• How involved are you in each one?• How did you move from peripheral to full

participation?

Communities of practice

Importance for teaching practice:1.Understand that learning is about

relationships between people2.An educator’s role is to cultivate community3.Knowledge and involvement with activity go

together

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvOWJjyTpp4

Experiential learning

Experiential learning

• Kolb’s learning cycle• Concrete experience • Reflective observation• Abstract

conceptualisation• Active experimentation

• Most importantly, the learner is ‘engaged’ – they are personally and directly involved, they can’t be passive.

• They have to reflect on the activity and learn from it.

Threshold Concepts

Threshold concepts

• Notion of a portal or a gateway – some essential understanding or way of being in a discipline that we must gain in order to progress

• Passing through the threshold is transformational, exhilarating or even distressing

• Can get stuck in a liminal state – leads to mimicry, lack of authenticity

Threshold concepts

• Transformative – can lead to shifts in values, feeling or identity

• Irreversible – unlikely to be forgotten and difficult to unlearn

• Integrative – enables connections between different areas of a subject

• Potentially troublesome – e.g. tacit; conceptually difficult; culturally alien; inert

What have you learned today

• Take 3 minutes to write down everything you can think of from today

• 30 seconds - feedback to group

ReferencesBiggs, J. (2002) “Aligning the curriculum to promote good learning”. Available

at http://www.palatine.ac.uk/files/1023.pdf (Accessed: 27 October, 2009)

Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Meyer, J & Land, R. (2003) Threshold concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising int the disciplines. Available at http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk/docs/ETLreport4.pdf

Richardson, J. (2005) “Students’ approaches to learning and teachers approaches to teaching in hgher education”. Educational Psychology, 25(6), 673-680.