Transcript Introducing_Teaching_for_Understanding_4-3

Masters in Teaching and Learning, DKIT
4-3-2011
Marian McCarthy, Ionad Bairre, TLC , UCC, Cork
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The Project Zero Exercise:
Think about the following questions: on
your own and then with a partner
What do I understand really well?
How did I come to that understanding?
How do I know I understand it?
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Feedback : group response and discussion
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What do you understand really well?
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Lack of sleep
Industry background (hotels)
Sports development
Student engagement
Work in my own business
(flavours)
tiling
Interaction of disciplines for
building services
Quality gurus
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Role of DNA in our cells
Golf
Map & compass
Empathy with students
Business plans
Time
Newtons second law
Attachment theory
How to write chinese
characters
singing
What do you understand really well?
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Building control regulations
Fly fishing
How to motivate my children
Bandaging animals
How to get a blood sample from a dog
Lipid nutrition
How to cook a roast dinner
Knitting
Baking
Hurling
Electronics
How did you come to that
understanding?
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By catching fish
Training &practice
Experience
Problem solving
Learn first (studying),
then understood then
apply (doing it)
Playing in competitions
Other styles of singing
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Being given out to !
Having to use
times/deadlines
Trying to explain it to
others
Performance – doing
something under
pressure
Watching someone else
Trial & error
How did you come to that
understanding?
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Having a curiosity for the
topic
Listening
Finding time for the topic
Being aware of how you are
behaving
Discussing with your peers
Multiple tasks
Being taught by someone
with more experience
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Teaching some one else to
help you understand it better
Feedback & experience
Experimenting
Being assessed, looking at
something from a different
perspective
Crisis management
Making mistakes
Good teacher
How do you know you understand
it?
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Clean plates !
Present situations to students
Trained people and give
them key lessons
Handicap comes down , seen
as an expert !
Sales
Apply it successfully, don’t
get lost !
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Ask the critical questions
Read the water /river
Response from people
Asked to produce something
for someone else
Want to improve it and you
can evaluate it
Failure
Experience from the failure
Predict & anticipate
Can answer questions
Implications
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Applying practice and feedback , assessment & reward
Takes time, need to put effort into it
Not linear
Stop & think
Constantly ongoing
Perseverance
Let your guard down
Dynamic & diverse ways of learning
Implications for how we know we
understand
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Flexible & read the class
Creative
Different ways of assessing the class
You assume they know it
Treat them as experts – let them self assess
Challenge them
Work placement
Presentations in class
Get students to teach part of the class
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MMc-Reflective Questions :
What kind of a process is learning in the above?
What does understanding look like?
What are the implications of this exercise for
how we teach?
What are its implications for how our students
learn?
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Knowledge, skill and understanding are the
stock in trade of education- What conception of
these underwrites what happens in schools?
Knowledge is information on tap
Skills are routine performances on tap
But understanding calls for more than
reproduction or routine
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“Understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety
of thought-demanding things with a topic – like
explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalising,
applying, analogising, and representing the topic in a
new way. Understanding is being able to carry out a
variety of “performances” that show one’s
understanding of a topic and at the same time, advance
it”.
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D. Perkins and T. Blythe, “Putting Understanding Up Front” in Educational
Leadership, 1994.
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Understanding is the ability to think and act
flexibly with what one knows.
An understanding of a topic is a “flexible
performance capability”
learning for understanding is like learning a
flexible performance- learning to hold a good
conversation, to improvise jazz- rather than rote
learning
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Learning facts can be a crucial backdrop to
learning for understanding, but learning facts is
not learning for understanding
This performance view of understanding
contrasts with the prominent
representational/mental image view of
understandings as things possessed, rather than
performance capabilities
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In casual speech, phrases like “I see what you
mean”, “I see the point”, “I see through you”, “I
see the answer” testify to a firm link in folk
psychology between perception and
understanding. Therefore, understanding- asseeing requires achieving a mental representation
that captures what is to be understood.
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Understanding lies in possession of the right
mental structure or representation. Performances
are part of the picture but simply in consequence
of having the right representation. A flexible
performance capability is a symptom. It does not
constitute the understanding but simply signals
possession of an appropriate image..
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Understanding is seen as lying in the
performance capability itself, which depending
on the case may or may not be supported by
representations
Understanding performances go beyond rote
and routine- they challenge
They do not undermine the importance of basic
knowledge and skill-we need these
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We can have a mental model of something
without understanding it
A mental model is not enough for understanding
simply because it does not do anything by itself
For performances that show understanding a
person must operate on or with a model-must
manipulate and interpret it =runnable
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No one views acquiring a complex performance
as a matter of “getting it”
Performances acquire attention, practice,
refinement.
Performances involve multiple aspects that need
careful and artful coordination.
Developing understanding = attaining a
repertoire of complex performances
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Attaining understanding is less like acquiring
something and more like learning to act flexibly
in this model, teachers less in the role of
informers and testers and more in that of
facilitators or coaches. Their challenge is one of
choreographing performance experiences that
constantly extend understanding
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Though teachers acting in the performance
model may well give a lecture or grade a test,
these are supportive, not central, activities.
The main agenda is arranging, supporting,
and sequencing performances of
understanding.
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Central to the
discipline
Exciting to students
and teachers
Accessible to students 
Multiple connections, 
think points and entry
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points
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These topics give you
the big picture - the key
ideas in your field
around which lessons
can be organised
History: Revolution
English:Stereotypes
Science: Evolution
Business: Money
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Science: “Students will
Publicly state what
understand why some
teachers want students things sink and others
to understand
float”
State as explicit
 Democracy: “Students
statements or open
will understand the
ended questions
relationship between
Explicitly link to UP’s rights and
and assessment
responsibilities”
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These challenge
students’
misconceptions,
stereotypes, and rigid
thinking
Active engagement by
students that develops
and demonstrates
understanding of one
or more goals
 DTS: Build a character
varied, complex and
sketch of X in a key scene,
often collaborative
focusing on props, costume
sequenced purposefully
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design, set design and
lighting.
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Clear,public criteria
tied to U Goals
Formal and informal
assessment tied to each
performance
Varied sources: self,
peer, teachers
Indicates progress and
informs planning
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Any discipline: “Students
brainstorm a list of questions
about a particular topic,
before they begin to study it.
They review the list regularly
and identify which questions
they have answered”.
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“At first glance the framework seems simple and rather obvious.
Five years of collaborative research have demonstrated that this
framework is more subtle than it first appears. Teachers who
have used the framework to structure extended enquiry about
their practice have found that it stimulates them to learn more
about their subject matter, their students and their assumptions
about learning even as it guides them to make profound changes
in the way they plan, conduct, and assess their work with
students”. (M. Stone Wiske, Teaching for Understanding; Linking
Research with Practice Jossey Bass 1998)
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Knowledge: ( What ?)
What questions do experts ask?
What do they need to know about?
Forms (How Expressed?)
Methods: (How?)
How do experts find out?
How do experts communicate?
What are the tools of the discipline?
Purposes (Why?)
Why do they do what they do? What is the goal?
How do experts use what they know?
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PEDAGOGICAL
FRAMEWORK
 Generative Topics: central,
accessible, exciting, making
multiple connections
 Understanding Goals: public,
interrogative, holistic and
specific – the big picture
 Performances of Understanding
–what the students do to
demonstrate and develop
understanding
 Ongoing assessment :
continuous feedback to students
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DISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK –
THE DIMENSIONS OF
UNDERSTANDING
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Knowledge – conceptual
frameworks of the discipline
Method – how experts think in
the discipline
Purpose – why this topic is
worth studying – ownership
Form – how understanding is
represented
“Pedagogical content
knowledge”
TfU fuses the two
SoTL lens- grammar of practice
TFU AND SOTL
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TfU as sotl process :
It has all the rigour of good
curriculum design and its focus on
student learning
The focus is on active learning and
student performance/doing to
demonstrate and develop
understanding
Methods of assessment provide raw
data for faculty re their student
learning – and for me
It helps faculty to develop a
language of practice – the naming
of parts
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EMBEDDING SOTL IN THE
CULTURE  Developing a community of
practice
 Building trust and security over
time
 Creating opportunities for
discussion and reflection at each
session
 Providing food for thought
 Aligning assessment with SoTL
 Providing opportunities for
teachers to publish and to gain
recognition ( President’s Awards,
NAIRTL grants and publications
and international conferences )
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Bernstein, D., Burnett, A., Goodburn, A & Savory, P. (2006). Making Teaching and Learning Visible:
Course Portfolios and the Peer Review of Teaching. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co.
Blythe, T. (1999) The Teaching for Understanding Guide
Cross, K. P. (1996). Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching. San Francisco:
Jossey- Bass.
Hetland, L. (2002). Introduction to TfU video resources, Harvard: Project Zero Classroom, 1-5.
Hutchings, P. (ed.), (1998a). The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance
Practice and Improve Student Learning, Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education
(AAHE).
McKinney, K. (2004). The scholarship of teaching and learning: Past lessons, current challenges
and future visions, in C. Wehlburg & S. Chadwick- Blossey (eds.) To Improve the Academy: Vol
22. Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development (pp.3- 19). Bolton, MA:
Anker.
McKinney, K. & Jarvis, P. (2009) Beyond lines on the CV: Faculty applications of their SoTL
research. IJSoTL, Vol.3. No 1.
Shulman, L (2004) Teaching as Community Property: Essays on Higher Education
Wiske, M. (1998) Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research with Practice
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