Transcript Reflective Teaching in an Online Environment

TESOL Arabia
Dubai, UAE
March 29, 2006
Reflective Teaching in an
Online Environment
Robert S. Williams
The American University in Cairo
[email protected]
http://www.aucegypt.edu/faculty/rwilliams
What is reflective teaching
How does one ‘do’ reflection
Why I decided to be a reflective teacher
How using a reflective teaching journal saved my hybrid course
From the Journal
Voices from the Students
What is Reflective Teaching?
Reflection is thinking about something in a
purposeful way
Dewey (1933) defines reflection as “…active,
persistent, and careful consideration of any
belief or practice…”
As teachers, we can reflect on classroom
decisions and events, but reflection also
involves the emotional, passionate, and
intuitive side of teaching
The Thinker
Auguste Rodin
So reflective practice in teaching necessarily
encompasses critical self evaluation, which can
be difficult emotionally
Can We Reflect on Teaching Alone?
“The process of learning and that of teaching go
together, just as do buying and selling. No one can
buy unless some sells, and no one can teach unless
someone else is learning” John Dewey (1910, p. 5)
Teaching doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists as part
of a system, along with learning, and situational
contexts such as administrations, cultures, etc.
John Dewey
1859 – 1952
Being a reflective practitioner then means reflecting
on the relationship between teaching and learning
and between teachers and students.
Why is Reflective Practice Relevant
to Modern Teaching?
A good teacher should learn while teaching,
and reflection turns experience into learning
Constructivist learning incorporates reflection
into the learning process, where learners learn
by observation, processing, and interpretation,
and then personalize the information into
personal knowledge (reflection)
Photo by Bill Thompson
How Does One Practice Reflection
Reflection can be done individually,
interactively, or situationally.
It can be carried out by thinking, journal
keeping, reading, conversation
Schön (1983) introduced the phrase a reflective
conversation with a situation.
Image: Hand with Sphere
by MC Escher
Cunningham Florez’ (2001)
Model of Reflective Practice
1. Collect descriptive data – reflective journals,
theoretical literature, talking to colleagues
2. Analyze data – in terms of attitudes,
assumptions, beliefs, goals, power
relationships, etc.
3. Consider how the situation or activity could
have been different – examine alternatives to
teacher behavior and choices and beliefs
behind classroom teacher behavior
Mallorie Ostrowitz
"Ladder Reflections"
4. Create a plan to incorporate new insights.
About the Class
The class, Learning and Teaching
Online, was a six-week summer
graduate seminar.
It was offered in hybrid mode – half
FTF and half online.
Students were in the MATEFL
program at AUC.
Thomas Hawk
The Game
The course was task-based, interactive, and constructivist, which
meant that students were required to think and act somewhat
independently and to work as members of small teams in solving
tasks.
My roles as the instructor were many, but mainly I was the guiding
member of the learning community.
Course Activities
Course activities consisted of:
• Acquiring a theoretical background
for online learning
• Using the theoretical background to
form a set of guiding principles for
designing an online language class
• Learning to build an online course
using the WebCT course
management system
Thomas Hawk
Toy Store
The course project: Designing and building a six-week online
language course using WebCT. Each course project was
accompanied by a paper that justified the course design and content
according to the groups’ guiding principles.
Course Activities, cont.
Theory acquisition and the learning of
WebCT was done in the FTF mode
during the first three weeks of the
class.
Construction of guiding principles and
all course project work was done
online during the second half of the
class.
For guiding principles construction,
the class of 12 was divided into two
online discussion groups.
Thomas Hawk
Seaside Romance
The course project was done in pairs or individually.
This meant that most work during the task-based online part of the
class was interactive.
How I Became a Reflective Teacher
Sounds like a great course, huh?
From my reflective teaching journal, June 2005
“Frankly, I was upset and a bit hurt after
class. I feel like I’ve put my heart and
soul into making a great course, and into
teaching the way I would like the students
to teach. So, when I sense a lack of trust,
and when some students tell me that I’m
being unfair to them, it hurts. “
Thomas Hawk
Trouble in Mind
Why My Feeling Were Hurt
Like most people who have been teaching for a long
time, I consider myself a skilled teacher, one who has
mastery of content and the ability to interact
meaningfully with students in a learning community.
I also spent an enormous amount of time building the
class – finding the best readings, constructing the
course tasks, and lining up an expert from our IT
department to help with learning WebCT, a
component of the class.
Thomas Hawk
Lost His Way
I also took care, or so I thought, to incorporate
community-building and anxiety-lessening activities
into the curriculum.
What I Did
Upon encountering student frustration, my first
reaction was to complain about it to colleagues.
Listening to myself talk to them, and to their
feedback, made me realize I had do something to
fix the problems.
This meant I had to take a critical look at myself,
not only as a teacher, but as a part of the teachinglearning system.
Thomas Hawk
My Friend Shadow
I decided to take Schön’s advice and have a
reflective conversation with the situation.
So…
Thomas Hawk
Letters and Signs.
…I started a reflective teaching journal.
The Reflective Journal
I wrote in the journal everyday after class and
even on some days when I didn’t have class.
I wrote about how things went in class in an
honest way, giving myself credit where credit
was due and criticism where that was due.
The “conversation” with myself in the journal
allowed me to vent my negative feelings and
then to reach a catharsis, which allowed me to
better understand myself and my students.
I was then able to direct my energy in positive
directions.
The Reflective Journal, cont.
The most valuable outcome of my reflection
was that it allowed me to understand and
manage student anxieties, without taking them
personally.
These anxieties were caused by:
 A challenging class
 The short summer term
 Learning new technology
 Being asked to perform new types of classroom
tasks: reaction paper, the course project,
interacting and producing outcomes online
From the Journal
Today we were able to spend the entire 1.4 hours discussing the
readings, though we did talk a bit more about the first assignment, a
reaction paper. This was the cause of some anxiety, since not
everyone had previous experience doing a reaction paper. I thought
my prompt was pretty specific and clear, and our discussion of the
assignment bore this out.
However, an interesting cultural element was present. The
assignment asked the students to synthesize the readings by
developing three principles of online learning from their perspective.
Many of the non-American students were confused about the idea of
forming principles on their own. One asked where they should get
the principles, and I explained that they would develop them.
From the Journal (2)
A tough day – introduced project, which caused even more anxiety.
Some students felt it was unfair and an extra burden not to be able
to do their project in Arabic.
I spent the entire day talking about the project and reassuring the
students. This often the case when students are asked to do new
learning. None of them have ever done a project like this, and are
afraid of failure. They may also be afraid that I will grade harshly.
From the beginning we’ve talked about building a learning community,
and the kind of trust we need to establish among the group to make
it work. This not only included them trusting each other, but also
them trusting me to be fair in my evaluation of them.
From the Journal (3)
[Dealing with student anxiety and anger] is also emotionally draining,
and I vented my hurt feelings the next day. I couldn’t help it.
Thinking about things later, I realized that frustration engenders a
range of emotions, including anger, which I definitely felt from some
students.
However, this is all part of teaching. I am a believer in sociocultural
models of learning, and part of scaffolding is keeping frustration
levels down. After I settled down emotionally, I spent quite a bit of
time reflecting on this class, specifically how human emotional
interaction works in a learning community. The reflective analysis
help to put the day into perspective, and helped me to understand
that emotion and passion is a central part of human social events – in
this case, of learning.
From the Journal (4)
I decided to see what I could do about lessening the anxiety level,
but without rehashing the experience that brought it about. One of
the things I did was to open the threaded discussion early. I asked a
question about anxiety, and learned from one student’s reply that
what I thought was making people anxious was really not.
“Personally I'm not too worried about the online discussions. What I find kind of
overwhelming is the technology involved in the actual design of the course. It's a
lot more than just having to click on the reply button, type your msg, and finally
click on send. Running in parallel lines to the technology anxiety is the amount of
different material that I have in my mind which I carefully need to funnel into the
design of icons and course menus. And to think that all this will be graded.
Heeeelp!”
From the Journal (5)
I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to get the class back on
track, since we’d spent the entire previous class period discussing
assignments. However, we had an incredible class. The students had
all done the reading and liked it, and had lots to say. Plus, we talked
about some big life issues related to online learning, including the
relationship between humans and technology and how online
technology, coupled with constructivist pedagogy, might be subversive
to economic, political, and social institutions. Part of this was a
discussion of the subversiveness of open-source material. I later
opened a thread to continue this discussion online.
It was one of those great moments in teaching. I came out of the
class excited and energized. I hope the students, at least some, felt
the way I did. Maybe there’s hope yet that the course will give the
students the kind of learning experience that I’ve planned and
worked for.
Student Voices
I guess it's my turn to make an exit. It has been such an interesting
learning experience. I think we formed a great community of
practice. I'll miss you all on the discussion forum. I'm certain though
that it won't end here. Thank you Dr. Williams. Thank you M. You've
been a great support.
Guys, this class was a unique experience for me. I have learned many
things, among which is the importance of building a community of
practice. I really realize now how it is important for learning.
Student Voices (2)
This has been an incredible experience - hasn't it? I must say that
last week's discussion was a highlight for me, especially because of
being so far away. I mean, it would have been really easy to feel 'out
of it' and detached from the whole course with so much else going on
in my life that is not course related. Last week's discussion helped
me to still feel part of the class.
I also found the project very rewarding but frustrating. I think the
frustration came from having such a limited time to work in (I tried
to get most of it finished by the time I left Egypt) and I just didn't
have time to explore all the possibilities of WebCT. I think I could
have done things in an easier way than I did, but once I'd started it
was hard to undo it all and start all over again, so I just kept going.
Student Voices (3)
This is my first posting. I read all of your postings and I see how we
all are excited to have finished, delivered and accomplished. "First
hand knowledge" was a good title for your posting Ahmed because it
truly is. What we experienced can not be taught in a book, but the
theories and principles we endlessly discussed (dreamed about at
night sometimes) made it possible for us to do the job. I think it was
Dewey who started the idea of project based learning, I must say I
had always liked the idea but now I truly believe in its effectiveness.
On line learning for me, was like a new modern way of presenting
knowledge and Technology allowed us to enter and develop it. Today
after this course I guess it is more than that. I would call it a unique
learning environment that has similarities and differences with our
usual FTF settings. I guess that all these readings, discussions and
ideas enabled me to realize this uniqueness and build up my own style
to deal with it better in the future.
Student Voices (4)
Wow I can't believe it's over. I learned so much… It's been amazing,
and frustrating at the same time, but as I mentioned to Dr. Williams
in my final paper, this course really took me out of my comfort zone,
sometimes eight hours a day, and I feel like I learned so much
because of that. H and I really pushed ourselves, and thank God for
M, who saved the day when we almost lost our minds with the whole
uploading process, where you know you uploaded something but it
doesn't appear when you click on the hyperlink aaaaaaahhhh!!!
References
Cunningham Florez, M. (2001) Reflective teaching practice in
adult ESL settings. Center for Adult English Language
Acquisition. http://www.cal.org/caela/.
Dewey, J. (1910) How the mind learns. White and Blue5(2): pp 5 –
14.
Dewey, J. (1933) How we think. New York: Heath & Co.
Schön, D.A. (1983) The reflective practitioner: How professionals
think in action. New York: Basic Books.
Hawk, T. Various images. http://www.thomashawk.com
All images used by permission.