Valuing Inquiry Into Teaching Anthony Ciccone Professor Emeritus UWMilwaukee President International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning The Teaching Academy 10 th Annual Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning ID: 637894
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Slide1
Learning Matters
Reflections on
Valuing Inquiry
Into Teaching
Anthony Ciccone
Professor Emeritus, UW-Milwaukee
President, International Society
for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
The Teaching Academy
10
th
Annual Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning
The Ohio State UniversitySlide2
The Teaching AcademySlide3
Value of Reflective Inquiry
Integrative epistemological stance toward all
learning
A natural
stance that precedes
differences
Impetus for disciplinary scholarship
Expanded definition of exceptional teaching
Valued pedagogical strategy
Desired perspective on learningSlide4
Where do you find the consequential questions?
Inquiry
into
the student experience
International students
Transformative learning
Inquiry into changes
to teaching practices
Technology: QM standards, social media
Personal Learning Plans and Student-directed learning
Problem-Based Learning
Backward design
Cooperative learning
Writing across the Curriculum
Inquiry into learning
goals: change in knowledge and
skills
Scientific literacySlide5
Where else could we look? What Learning matters?Slide6
Learning matters
“Success is defined by students not only as learning lots
about
a subject, but knowing
how
they learned it and
why
what they learned matters to their understanding and interaction with the world around them.
”
“
“ the complexity of the task before us – studying how our students come to understand and value
learning --
suggests the need for a new type of interdisciplinary, narrative inquiry that sees the field not as, an
a priori
set of problems, solutions, and tolerances, but as a
site for action
– a space in which to frame burning questions (and) to develop context-specific ways of addressing those questions…”
--
Carolin
Kreber
,
The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries Slide7
Learning matters
Cerbin
: “learning studies”
how students learn and develop specific concepts, skills, habits of mind, and sensibilities relevant to one’s discipline
Pace,
Shopkow
,
Middendorf
, Diaz: “Decoding the disciplines”
How faculty define and make explicit the kinds of thinking and acting that are required for success in courses in their fields (“bottlenecks” related to content, skills affect)
Meyer and Land: “Threshold Concepts Framework”
How students pass through portals that represent transformed ways of understanding, interpreting or viewing crucial concepts in the field
Slide8
Types of inquiry
“instrumental” or “what works”
Will this intervention lead to better learning or help us reach currently defined goals?
Helps us “do things better.”
Limitations:
why does it work?
What does it tell us about the learner vis-à-vis ascribed value?Slide9
Types of inquiry (2)
“communicative,” or “what is”
“critical” or “visions of the possible”
Descriptive, interpretive, hermeneutical
Subject to subject
Metacognition
Multi-disciplinary
Helps us “do better things”
Draw on theories of knowledge and learning from different fields.Slide10
Your interests
What have you always wondered about student learning in your course?
How would you gather information to answer your question? (What information might you already have?)
How will you make sense of the information you gather?
Who else would care about or benefit from an an answer to the question you are posing?Slide11
Communicative inquiry
Formulate interesting and consequential questions arising from classroom interaction/observation
Gather information or evidence using methods appropriate to the discipline, the question, and the context
Make sense of that information by finding its broader significance through connections with existing knowledgeSlide12
Reflect on what was learned, why, and how, with colleagues from similar and different disciplines
Apply the results to practice
Share the new knowledge with others
Reflect again
Ask the next set of questionsSlide13
Impetus for inquiry
“
How do you go on, Ciccone?”
“
All I know is that I wouldn’t want to have to teach me.”
-- freshman seminar students, circa 2005Slide14
What next?
Instrumental inquiry
Immediate solution, perhaps
Question deserved more attention
Communicative inquiry
What did I know about my students as learners?
How could I find out more?
Why
was
this course worth it – to me and to them?Slide15
Freshman seminar on comedy
Explicit learning goal: Articulate your own “theory” or explanation of what is essential for understanding comedy, humor and laughter.
Less obvious goal: begin to think like a humanist (
problematize
, complicate; reach provisional understanding; accept ambiguity)
Structure: inductive
Pedagogy: constant complication
Assignments: daily writing assignments; papers; reflectionSlide16
Simplify, simplify, simplify…
Dewey: “the spontaneous (
unreflected
) ‘interpretation’ of experience”
“Funny is what we laugh at and vice versa.”
“Why do people laugh. Seems like a simple question. People laugh every day. It’s a natural reaction.”Slide17
Reflection prompts
Pre-course assignment
What
is comedy? What does it mean to have a sense of humor? Why do you think people laugh?
What
types of comedy do you enjoy? What are your favorite shows and comedians?
After first class
What
ideas did you find interesting in class today
?
W
hat
questions would you like to explore this semester
?
W
hat
are your expectations for the course
?
W
hat
would you like to learn this semester in this class
?
After
10 weeks
Please spend some time reflecting on what you’ve learned so far about comedy, laughter and humor, how your thinking may have changed , the questions that have become (or remain) interesting to you, and what remains
unclear.Your
will want to review your pre-course and first day assignments.
As part of course
evaluation: In
a paragraph or two, write some advice for next year’s students.Slide18
Categories of thinking
I. Recognition of one level of meaning, mainly surface
II. Recognition of two levels of meaning
A. Content might mean something for self or other
B. Possibility that content has larger meaning
III
. Recognition of what it means to learn
A.
What have I learned?
B. How do I learn?
C. Curiosity
D.
Judgment
/expertise
IV. Developing appreciation of second-level meaning and content value
A. What is the value of comedy?
B. What is the larger value of
thinking about
comedy?
V. Experiencing change in the complexity of one’s thinking
A. Articulation of an awareness of change in thinking
B. Articulation of how I now think differentlySlide19
More than we expected…
“I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.”
“I don’t accept things as just simple ideas any more. I engage myself to reflect more now and not just accept what is given to me as right and wrong.”Slide20
Reflection prompts (2)
Addition to 10 – week reflection
Based on your experiences in this class and others, how has your thinking changed about what learning is and what it is for?
Final
paper
The
purpose of your final paper is to demonstrate what you’ve come to understand about laughter, humor, and comedy through the evidence and examples we’ve examined over the past months. In it, I’d like you to formulate your personal understanding of laughter, comedy, and humor.
How have you come to understand these concepts and their connections?
What do you believe are the most important parts of a good understanding of these concepts? Throughout your paper, I’d like you to spend some time reflecting on the changes in your understanding of comedy, humor and laughter.
How has your thinking evolved?
Slide21
Threshold Concepts Framework
“
A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.
It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.
As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view.”
(Meyer and Land) Slide22
Experiencing complexity
as a
Threshold Concept in understanding comedy and laughter
“I was very surprised to learn that people have written books and even developed theories of why we laugh.”
(significant shift in perception)
“Humor
is a much broader subject than I expected, and I didn’t realize that it crosses into philosophy, psychology, sociology, and
other subjects
.”
(integrative)
“I’m cannot watch any form of comedy now without analyzing it. Even when I laugh at one of my friends, I still think in terms of techniques and
theories.”
(irreversible
)
“I didn’t know how to answer what I thought was a simple
question.”
(
troublesome)
Slide23
Entering the “liminal space”
“People tend to laugh at things when they find
something funny.”
“
When completing the first assignment I remember having feelings of
confusion
and
aggravation
when I was trying to respond to the
seemingly simple questions.”
“Laughter is very
ambiguous
in its nature.
Simply
, we laugh because we find something funny,
but
that in and of itself is very subjective.
”
“In all honesty I cannot think of a reason why we laugh. I could take a guess and say it’s to relieve stress or make us feel happy, but I feel like that’s just a safe answer.”
“I thought it was a simple topic but this class is already making it seem very complex and it’s only the first day.” Slide24
Getting through…
“Laughter, comedy, and humor are three things that I never thought much about before taking this class….
never asking myself
what is going on that is making me laugh.
“Before coming to this class I had never heard of the superiority theory. Looking back on things that have happened to my friends, I can say that I laughed at their misfortunes. I guess I did it all the time and I didn’t even know it.
”
“I would come into class with your mind ready to think in ways it never has before
.Slide25
Looking back: transitions and transformations
“I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.”
“Now I realize that comedy usually seems to be addressing the larger issues at hand. Is comedy shaping how society views important issues? Does comedy help us deal with our daily lives.”
“
The class has made anything and everything sufficiently less funny. It’s hard to get pleasure from a skit or joke without now analyzing it mentally…. How did (a class on comedy) make everything less funny? Because I’m thinking too much about what is happening to me more that what I am watching. I am engaged in myself and to enjoy comedy you have to be disengaged.”
“Now I feel like I get it. “Getting it” makes you laugh and I like how I “get” why I laugh.”Slide26
Value of the learning process
Although to
outsiders
, comedy seems as simply a source of entertainment, to the
insiders
, comedy is a little insight as to what life really is.
”
“Learned a lot about comedy and what it is over this semester. I think I learned a little too much. I hope that the trend of my saying “Oh, there’s a cognitive shift” doesn’t stay for too much longer. I liked it when I just watched and laughed. It was such a simple thing to do.
“
As we begin to think more critically (about comedy, humor and laughter), we come to ask ourselves ‘why does any of this matter?’
Humor
allows us to deal with life, and stress, and social scenarios that we are otherwise unprepared for… Humor allows us to just step back for a moment, and think and analyze, …
”
“
Studying comedy has helped me look beyond what other people see as funny and to think about why it’s funny, why it was said in the first place, and what values it has….hopefully, knowing how to analyze comedy and what it says about society will help me in situations I may come across later on in life.”
Slide27
The most
interesting types of inquiry involve…
:
Epistemological change: value of topic, value of studying the topic
;
what it means to understand
Ontological change: knowing and appreciating; acting differently because of what one now knows; being differently in the world.
Who am I and how am I different because of what I’ve just done?Slide28
Full circle
How do you go on, Ciccone?
I wouldn’t want to have to teach me.
“I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.”
“As we begin to think more critically, we come to ask ourselves ‘why does any of this matter?’ Or, ‘what value does humor possess’?”
“I don’t accept things as just simple ideas any more. I engage myself to reflect more now and not to just accept what is given to me as right and wrong.”Slide29
Conclusion
Teaching matters because learning matters.
Teaching matters more when it is includes reflective inquiry into student learning.
Reflective inquiry
into teaching is part of a coherent professional life.
Communicative or critical (what is?) inquiry is a crucial component of our
work
We need to study not only
what learning is
but more importantly
what learning is
for,
and how those definitions change for students over time.
How do students come to ascribe value to their learning
?
How can we study that process? (
metacognitive
practices and evidence
)
H
ow do students grow in their learning and how do we grow in our ability to foster that
?Slide30
Thank you