Transcript Preparing for the “Underprepared” Faculty Summer Institute: 2009 Lynn Fauth What’s “Unprepared”? childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black you always remember things like.

Preparing for the
“Underprepared”
Faculty Summer Institute: 2009
Lynn Fauth
What’s “Unprepared”?
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in
Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to
have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about
Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any
difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write
about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth
and they’ll
arobably talk about my hard childhood and never
understand that
all the while I was quite happy
“Nikki-Rosa”, Nikki Giovanni
Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.
“The Human Abstract”, William Blake
Underprepared?
Do we have the students we want?
or
Do we have the students we get?
And
What do we do with/to them?
Exposition
What are We Doing!
How do we do what we do?
Transmittal model; assumes student brain is
vessel to be filled. Students are passive
receivers of “knowledge” from the sage on the
stage.
King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide
on the side. College Teaching.
Sage on the Stage?
Professor Kingsfield: The Paper Chase
– Socratic Method: theory
– Socratic Method: practice
Sage on the Stage 2?
• Ben Stein character: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
– Socratic Method: Economics lesson
• Mr. Keating: Dead Poet’s Society
– “Look at things a different way”
– Poetry composition, a lesson
• Apple polisher
• Smart-ass
• Unprepared generates “barbaric yawp”!
Guide on the side?
• Did last Dead Poets’ clip show a Guide?
• Workshop after workshop presenter says:
“Be a Guide on the side,
not a
Sage on the stage!”
• Should/Can we be Kingsfields or Keatings?
• What’s our personal skill level?
Where do we fit?
• Time travel:
– Your best teacher(s)? Why best?
– Your worst teacher(s) Why worst?
• Who did you want to be like?
– Early career
– Middle career
– Now
• Who do you want to be like? Why?
Pedagogic Workshops
Most I’ve attended advocate
the
“Guide on the Side”
not the
“Sage on the Stage”
(usually they’re led by a guide/guru on the stage, with PowerPoint slides!)
It’s Rooted in Constructivism
Social Constructivism
• Emphasizes the collaborative nature of learning
• Articulated in Vygotsky, Mind in Society (1978),
– argued that all cognitive functions originate in, and
can be explained as products of, social interactions
– Learning is the process by which learners are
integrated into a knowledge community
– Through collaboration we can create knowledge from
prior knowledge
•
http://gsi.berkeley.edu/resources/learning/social.html
Constructivism 2
• Knowledge is not packaged in books,
professors’ brains, or downloads.
• Knowledge can’t be transmitted wholly from
one source to an empty vessel.
• Sources contain information, not knowledge.
• Knowledge is understanding existing only in
mind of individual knower.
Therefore. . .
Constructivism 3
Knowledge must be constructed by each
individual knower who tries to make sense of
new information in terms of what s/he already
knows.
Learners use own existing knowledge and prior
experience to learn new material.
Teacher is a guide on the side helping student
develop a relationship between what s/he
knows and what s/he is experiencing.
Constructivism 4
What evolves from relationship of prior
knowledge and new information is knowledge.
So,
How does all this apply at OC?
Carolyn Inouye’s observations on OC’s
“underprepared” students (4/26/09)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Is it Us vs. Them?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Are they the students we want?
How do the students we “want” behave?
What were we like as students?
Who sat next to us in our classes?
Where are they now?
Why are our students so different?
Today’s Survey results:
What “Knowledge” can we construct?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Are “they” really
“underprepared”?
Clifford Adelman’s Research
– Answers in the Toolbox (1999)
– The Toolbox Revisited (2006)
Or,
Are they just differently prepared from what we
think we were like when we were their age?
Were you “college prep”? Have they been?
What was your college of first choice? Theirs?
Your Default/back-up school? Theirs?
Strophe
Learning Theory:
Today’s “Conventional Wisdom”
Today’s students
• Carolyn Inouye’s Results
• Beloit College Annual Survey
Today’s Students 2
•
•
•
•
•
Texting
“Sexting”
Twittering
My Space
Facebook
Are they as adept as they’re ascribed to be?
Today’s Students 3
Digital Generation?
English R 101 and BUAD 610
• Source Identification
• Search methods
– Ask.com
– Google.com
• Wikipedia
• Sparknotes.com
• Etc. etc.
Tools for Real Sources:
vetting the net
•
•
•
•
•
ProQuest
JSTOR
FirstSearch
LexisNexis
.edu vs. .com vs. .org vs. .net
A Complication: Reading Problems
“The Net”
• Bauerlein—spokesman for curmudgeons?
– They’re distracted
– Diaries vs. Facebook
• Nielsen: “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web
Content”
– They can’t “read”
– F-shape = F grade?
Proposed “Solutions”:
Learning Theories
• Rooted in
– Rousseau
– Freud
– Piaget
•
•
•
•
Perry
Reflective Judgment
Women’s
Baxter-Magolda
Learning Theories:
Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
William Perry’s Stages
King, et. al., Reflective Judgment
Belenky, et al., Women’s Ways of Knowing
Baxter-Magolda’s Gender-Related Patterns
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
Sweller’s “Cognitive Load Theory”
Any others you care to add?
Antistrophe
Why don’t “they” like school?
Why Don’t Students Like School?
• Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2
• (Roger Waters / David Gilmour)
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave those kids alone!
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
Yikes!
• 50 years of research on Learning Styles has
not found consistent evidence that people
learn differently!
• People are more alike than different in terms
of how they think and learn.
Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students
Like School.
Maryanne Wolf
We’re not born to read; reading was invented a few thousand
years ago. The invention of reading rearranged the
architecture of our brain.
Our brain’s elasticity enables connection necessary for
reading.
Studies how reading develops in the brain; some brains
cannot read! What about dyslexia; is it not so bad in a
culture that reads pictographs? From right to left? Top to
bottom?
Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading
brain. Harper: 2007.
Merryl Pischa
“Why is it that the hardest thing children are
ever asked to do is the first thing they’ve
asked to do!?” (qtd. Wolf (2007), p. 116)
Why yachts are tough!
• Incredible complexity of reading task as it has
evolved over the last 4000 years.
• “Not being able to decode well in grade 1
predicted 88 percent of the poor readers in
grade 4”! (Wolf, p. 117)
The bow on Hugh’s hewed wooden
boat was covered by a huge red bow.
• 32 million word gap by age 4! (Hart & Risley,
2003)
• Linguistically “advantaged” children have
heard 15,000 more words than
“disadvantaged” (Moats, qtd. by Wolf, 124)
• By end of 3rd grade, students have a working
vocabulary of 9000 words
• From grade 4, decoding to comprehension
Something a bit different. . .
I take it you already know
Of touch and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
A bit different 2. . .
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
Even more. . .
And here is not a match for there,
And dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose—
Just look them up—and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
The bitter end
A dreadful language: Why, man alive,
I’d learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to read it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned at fifty-five
Have we reached this level?
Have our students?
Feeling “high” in mother’s lap. Hear words from
voice associated with love and nurture.
Associative “high”: recognize page marks
associated with sounds we’ve heard-pseudo-r
Decode “high”: begin sounding out morphemes
Dangerous “high”: private world of story—
escape to fictional world away from mundane
School “high”: Interpret, learn, think, write . . .
What’s a teacher to do?
Handbook of college reading and study strategy
skill research, 2nd ed. Flippo, R.F. & Caverly,
D.C. Erlbaum, 2009.
Chapter 2, Academic Literacy
Chapter 5, Vocabulary Development
Chapter 6, Comprehension Development
Chapter 7, Reading/Writing Connection
Flippo & Caverly (2009) continued:
Chapter 8, Strategic Study-Reading
Chapter 10, Note taking from Lectures
Chapter 11, Test Taking
Flippo & Caverly: Problems
• Little research devoted to Adult learners
• Much research has found various schema
don’t work!
• No one really respects Reading as a discipline
• Little respect for developmental specialists:
“Those students should have learned that in
high school! Why should my tax dollars be
used to remediate dopers and screw-ups and
The latest
Willingham, D.T. (2009). Why don’t students like
school? A cognitive scientist answers questions
about how the mind works and what it means
for the classroom. Jossey-Bass.
Willingham’s 9 Principles
1. We’re naturally curious, but not naturally
good thinkers. If cognitive conditions are not
right, we’ll avoid thinking.
2. Factual knowledge must precede skill.
3. Memory is the residue of though. Pay
attention!
Willingham’s 9 Principles 2
4. We understand new things in context of what
we already know; most of what we know is
concrete.
5. It’s virtually impossible to become proficient
at a mental task without extended practice.
Drill does not kill.
6. Cognition early in training is fundamentally
different from cognition late in training.
Willingham’s 9 Principles 3
7. Children are more alike than different in
terms of how they think and learn.
8. Children do differ in intelligence, but
intelligence can be changed through sustained
hard work.
9. Teaching, like any complex skill, must be
practiced to be improved.
More Willingham
• Problem with thinking:
– It’s Slow
– It’s effortful
– It’s uncertain
Willingham on “received” knowledge
Those Different types of learners
“Children are more alike than different in terms
of how they think and learn” (p. 113)
What about visual and aural and kinesthetic?
What about linear and holistic?
Say What?
50 years of research to predict if learning style
theory effects student learning when teaching
style is adapted to the student’s learning style.
“[N]o one has found consistent evidence
supporting” such a theory”! (113).
“[T]eachers should be aware that, as far as
scientists have been able to determine, there
are not categorically different types of
learners”! (114
Why?
Cognitive abilities vs. Cognitive styles
• Cognitive ability: capacity for success in
certain types of thought—math for some,
English for others
• Cognitive style: bias/tendency to think a
certain way—sequentially vs. holistically
Ability vs. Style
• Ability: how we deal with content.
• Ability: reflects the level (quantity of what we
know) and can do.
• More ability is better than less ability.
• Do we consider one style better than another?
Cognitive Style
•
•
•
•
•
•
Some are impulsive
Some ponder awhile
Some relish complexity
Some want simplicity
Some want concreteness
Some love abstractions
Which is better? Willingham says none!
Cognitive Style 2
• Cognitive style is Stable within an individual
• Cognitive style is Consequential—has
implications for important things we do
• Cognitive style represents the biases in how
we prefer to think
• Cognitive style is not a measure of how well
we think (Willingham, p. 117)
Cognitive Style 3
Three Features to a Cognitive Style
1. Consistent. Most stick to one style
2. Different styles = think and learn differently
3. Not indicative of difference in ability
Note chart on p. 116 in Willingham
Caveat: given these 3 features, psychologists
have not been able to find them!
Learning Types:
Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic
No proof that they exist, or can be replicated;
rather they represent our preferences. We
would rather learn using the one that suits us
better. Nevertheless, we can use other
modalities to learn, and do.
Much of what is used to “prove” existence of
Learning types is confirmation bias. (121)
What about Multiple Intelligences?
• Many rely on Gardner; he makes claims for
only his first concept, that we have multiple
intelligences.
• Gardner doesn’t think MI should be taught in
schools
• Gardner does not think intelligences can
maximize student understanding (123)
• Most scientists, and Willingham disagree with
Gardner.
So, What’s Willingham’s Answer?
• Think in terms of content, not style. It’s the
concept, not the game learning it that counts.
• Promote attention by variety. Talk to visual;
singing to handling. Force refocusing.
• Some students are smarter than others; deal
with it!
• Save your money on cog style materials.
Background knowledge is more valuable.
Willingham’s Chapt 8: Slow Learners
• Nature vs. Nurture.
• USA sees intelligence as nature.
• Asia and elsewhere see intelligence as nurture
• Failure in USA = stupid
• Failure in Asia = lack of effort
Malcolm Gladwell
• Blink—people make snap decisions. Is this
natural ability, or the result of lots of
information in long-term memory enabling
quick response?
• Outliers—people are successful because of the
10,000 hour rule; practice makes perfect.
• Willingham’s premises seem to support
Gladwell’s popularizing accounts.
Willingham’s Premise
People do differ in intelligence, but intelligence
can be changed through sustained hard work.
Rough truth: intelligence is inherited, but it’s
also developed.
Intelligence = the ability to reason well and
catch on to new ideas quickly (132)
Challenging bright ones is easy; what do we do
with less bright?
Willingham on the less smart
• Telling someone less smart that s/he’s smart
makes him/her less smart (127)
• Twin studies; show role of genetics to g.
Genes are about 50% (136)
• Good environment helps too—about 10
points (136)
• Flynn Effect: if we’re good at something, we
practice; genetics lead to nurture.
Willingham on beliefs about
intelligence
• Do we choose easy success and quit if it’s
difficult? We think Intelligence is fixed
• Do we choose challenges and work our way
through them? We think Intelligence is
malleable.
• Are you smart because you’re born that way,
or are you smart because you worked hard at
learning things?
Classroom Implications
• Praise effort, not ability. Work the scheme!
• Hard work pays off. 10,000 rule vs. talented
goof off.
• “Failure means you’re about to learn
something.” (143) Failure = natural to learning
• Don’t take study skills for granted. Slow
student thinks 3 hrs study is lots; good
students may spend 20 hrs studying
Classroom Implications 2
• Catching up for the underserved = long-term
goal. It’s the students we have, not the ones
we want.
• Demonstrate confidence in students.
• Don’t praise lousy work; say, instead, “I
appreciate you finished the project on time,
and I thought your opening paragraph was
interesting. Let’s talk on how you can make it
better.” (145)
Epode
Where Do We Go From Here?
Self-Serving Example 1
College Level Study Skills Curriculum Project
Strategic Study-Reading
Research Essays
Self-Serving Example 2
Classroom Learning Strategies Project
Vocabulary Analysis/Application
Self-Serving Example 3
Classroom Learning Strategies Project
Comprehension Strategies
The End!