On-line learning (6 and final)

This is a response to the final reflective task of the "On-line tutoring" course, but I hope it may be of interest to anyone else who happens to stumble by here.

First, and most important, I need to say how much I was impressed by the quality of the course, its design, materials and tutorial support. To declare an interest, it is offered by the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development which happens to be my current temporary employer---but I wanted to work with them because of what I knew of their work, rather than I want to puff them because I am working there this semester.

And to look at this within a framework; following (roughly) Kirkpatrick's (1994) four levels of evaluation;

1. Did I enjoy it? No. The only time which came close to "enjoyment" was the final week's scenarios exercise. But clearly I was in a minority. I reject the notion of learning styles, but I do have preferences (which are at this level rather than 2,3,4) and this approach--and it doesn't matter what "this approach" is--just doesn't suit me. See below for expansion.
   
   
2. Did I learn anything? Yes. A lot. I'm not sure it was the same as the course set out to teach, though, and that is an interesting issue about this medium for learning. More on this below.
   
   
3. Will it make any difference to my practice? Yes, although since I am semi-retired this is not significantly important. It reinforced what I already knew about the commitment required of the on-line tutor (more, it has to be said, from the model set by the Centre--which was not stinting in its allocation of resources--and the tutors themselves, who were always there, than from what the course explicitly taught.) The difference it will make (at which point some people may legitimately heave a sigh of relief) is that I shall be even more reluctant to tutor on-line than I was before.
   
   
4. Will that affect the practice of my organisation? Probably not in the case of my current employer, but it might make a difference to the advice I offer to others in the future, and particularly to my approach to a staff development session I am scheduled to offer for another university in a couple of weeks' time on just this topic.
   

More idiosyncratically;

• The course emphasised on-line group interaction using the Virtual Learning Environment in particular but Web 2.0 tools in general;


• I found this difficult for various reasons. In their inventories of significant features of the design of on-line tutoring systems (the penultimate activity of the course), many members identified "comfort with the technology" as a basic issue to address. I am comfortable with some of the technology as this blog testifies, but I dislike VLEs. They seem invariably to complicate things which can be done more easily with other web tools.


• But that was not the major point. Diana Laurillard's (2001, maybe later--I'm being cavalier about referencing--this is a blog, remember, count yourself lucky to get any references at all...!) Laurillard's point was that e-learning tools need to be judged principally by their capacity to approximate the richness of a face-to-face learning conversation.


• Real conversation wanders. It moves up and down through levels of abstraction (Dale and Bruner); it drifts off by free association and returns to the main topic (sometimes); it is not constrained by rigid topic boundaries. This is very difficult indeed to replicate in an on-line environment; threaded posts, tags etc. all help, but they do require conscious and constraining decisions on the part of the poster, and complex discussions are defined as much by what people do not access (still less read, still less respond to...) as by what they do.


• I was inhibited by this. One week I hardly posted at all. Each of the list headings I looked at seemed to prescribe a certain kind of response--one which I did not want to make. I looked in vain for one labelled "None of the above" or "Contrarian"! But. I know... I am not criticising, just discussing a real problem to which I do not have a solution. And if you think lists labelled as above are a solution, think through their likely impact on the whole. And look at the research...




• Ah! The research! Considerable effort was devoted to the scholarship of learning and teaching on-line. There was a required textbook and links throughout to useful papers. Some of them were thought-provoking (as is this post, I hope) with plenty of references to previous papers, some endorsed, some qualified, some opposed. All the stuff of SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning).


• I may well be wrong here, because I cannot claim to have traced to their roots all the references cited in the readings for the course, but although they may be scholarly and (more important) informed by the experience of practice, they are a crust of accretions of legitimated opinion.


• I confess it is now six years since I really pursued this. I was supervising a master's student (in learning and teaching in nursing, specifically) whose dissertation related to e-learning in in-service nursing education. She had produced a very scholarly literature review, comparing and discussing different models... I had pushed her for hard evidence behind these peer-reviewed and published papers. She was upset--who was I to query the evidence? So I undertook the trail back through half a dozen of her sources, to make the point. It took a long time (before Google Scholar) and was I confess incomplete. (Come to think of it, why did I not publish? The evidence is discarded now!) But three generations back on six of her sources, roughly 216 sources, I found only ten which were unequivocally empirically researched, and at least two of those relied on research instruments which have themelves been questioned...


• Wandering now, but... I have been reading Nick Davies' book on the state of journalism*, which talks about "churnalism", where the demands of the system lead to stories being repeated without checking, and to rumour mills, moral panics and vulnerability to PR... It happens in educational "research" too. Next weekend, in one of my other jobs, I shall be working on a study day for 350 students. The visiting speaker will be Frank Coffield, the principal protagonist in the de-bunking of the egregious scam of "learning styles"--as a spurious, self-serving, commercially brilliant and politically convenient load of ordure. It, and other associated fads such as "accelerated learning" have prospered because pressured academics and practitioners have grasped at straws--and these ideas hovered tantalisingly on the edges of common sense (whatever that is...).



• Back to the mainstream. Consensual, interactive, social constructed knowledge was privileged (sorry about the jargon). We did not explore the nature of authority on-line. And that is a big, but concealed issue. (I am reminded of a phrase from "Cold Comfort Farm" which cannot be repeated nowadays.) The "subject matter" of the course was considered as an inert given, in the sense that it would not affect other processes, or indeed be affected by them. It's a noble gas, man :-) It isn't.

But I want also to thank my fellow participants. No, I didn't really get to know you. Sometimes I am sure that my tone was irksome and boorish. But your responses were unfailingly courteous and constructive, or you benignly ignored me--probably the best strategy (sometimes I wish I could ignore me, but it doesn't seem to work...)

The above goes a fortiori for the long-suffering tutors.

Many thanks!


* Davies N (2009) Flat Earth News London; Vintage Books.

On-line learning (5)

[This post is added pretty well "as is", several days after its original composition. The delay is accounted for by my self-imposed rule not to post if I wouldn't drive (a.k.a. I had a couple of drinks before I drafted it). The parallel is quite close. Mostly what follows is coherent and indeed representative of my views, but observe the twee infantilism of the initial paragraph... I draw attention to this simply because it is so difficult to gauge the state of mind of a contributor on-line, unless they flag it in some way...]

I've been a good boy this week. Or at least a better boy than the hissy-fitting curmudgeon of last week. Why? Fundamentally because a member of our small working group and a tutor were nice to me. That's very basic, isn't it? I got stroppy over something, doubtless in an "immature" way (maturity is independent of age, despite what people seem to think: I'm 64, and I do "immature" much better now than I did at 14...) --and I thought I had burned my boats with the group. Remember that the channels of communication are very limited on-line.

I joined in the conversation again with the merest hint of apology (actually a crass face-saving, "I woz bein' ironic, innit?" angle), and they scuppered my plans to flounce off by being very understanding and building on the few constructive remarks I had made... So! Another attempt to do a good flounce is thwarted. Will I never manage it? Flouncing is a young man's game. Well, no, it's traditionally a woman's ploy... Sorry! the deconstruction of flouncing was not a designated learning outcome for this course!

But was I really back in the group? How much is anyone "in" the group? Regardless of how much I might have offended or alienated the other members, the system posts messages to the group to all of us. Engage paranoia; are there back channels? Does it matter? What is the difference between formative and summative assessment in this context? However...

The above reflections (posh term; incoherent self-mumblings might be a better term) stem from the basic observation that unlike the real world, what happens in the virtual class is either up-front visible or not. "Not" is speculation or fantasy... I don't need to spell out the sequelae...

However! Different tack. I have responded to a number of different threads and forums this week. Actually I have responded to particular points made by individuals who have already posted, and I have done so with reference to those posts, not to the theme set by the tutors. On a couple of occasions I have realised that I could have posted about this issue here, but I have already done so to a doubtless more limited readership, there.

This is a function of the site design, and it has been a continuing bugbear of the whole course. And indeed of all systems which seek to regulate communication.

On restricted and elaborated code

I started reading this simply out of interest in the topic, but as I read on I realised that among other things it was an exploration of Bernstein's restricted and elaborated codes. I don't need to elaborate; but understanding is restricted to those who know the background (in two or even three senses).

This is of course not simply a pure illustration of the distinction; as in the real world (this may even be part of the real world!) it is embedded in and muddied by another discussion.

On-line learning (5)

We have been set up in small groups to work on a task, preferably via a wiki.

The group is self-managing. That is probably the right strategy, because imposing the burden of chairing a group on an individual is unfair when it will last for a week or more, and when the tutors have had no chance to assess capabilities... But. A chair will emerge, and it is interesting to reflect on who will assume that role under the circumstances. Is that person likely to preside over the best possible "product" from the group?

It so happens that for various reasons I took my eye off the ball this week (that might not be the best metaphor, since I have never been able to catch balls even when looking directly at them, but...) With two consequences;

• I don't know where to find the group report, still less contribute to it, so
• I feel more left out, and less inclined to log in to find what I am left out of...

I report this not to complain, by any means. ("For Brutus is an honorable man“ OK!) but to reflect on the limitations of on-line communication.

There are no back-channels. For good reasons, I can't "whisper" to a friend, "What's going on?". Nor is there a "new readers start here" facility. A course leader might well argue that to incorporate such a facility would be to give carte blanche to every free-loading lurker to check in when it suited them and to feign participation. But it all depends on what you think people are there for, and I confess that I am now highly ambivalent about the course.

On the one hand, I am ever more intrigued by the challenge faced by course designers and tutors, of reducing the subtleties of pedagogy to the concreteness of rubrics and procedures, like trying to capture the flow and tumble of water in stone. And I am impressed not only by the skill of the tutorial team, but also by their commitment.

On the other, I am frustrated by what seems increasingly to be the demonstrable failure of the model. Rightly, I think, the tutors are trying to promote interaction between the course participants. But I have only the vaguest idea of who they are. We did an introductions exercise, but the other people are still merely labels to me. I have no sense of them as people. Earlier, I went back to the introductions to check on who was "speaking", but it was too much hassle. So I found myself responding to everyone in the same way...

The introduction of small group working is an interesting shift. OK, it's not surprising that I can't hold in my mind the distinctive characteristics and characteristic opinions fo a couple of dozen people. But perhaps I ought to be able to do so for half a dozen? Perhaps. I have failed because I took my eye off the ball, but I don't know what would have happened had I not. (As it were!)

So perhaps this conversation within the group and a broadly socially-oriented pedagogy and indeed epistemology is a challenge too far for e-learning? Or just for a 64-year-old? Or is this topic the ultimate challenge for e-learning? (For new readers, the topic is "on-line tutoring and blended learning")

Incidentally, I have finally got the book. It came from India--there's globalisation for you.

I'll stick with it, but if I started with a motivation score of 7/10, it is now about 3/10. Of course, if I had not been distracted and kept up a constant contact every day, the outcome might well be very different...

On simplifying

Someone called this columnist's bluff and asked for a straightforward account of an obscure argument in a previous column.

What do you make of the result?

• Was it well done?
• Do you now understand it?
• If you understood it before, was anything lost in translation?
• How much does the {lost in translation} stuff matter?
• Accepting that some academic and technical jargon and discourse is necessary, how do we define the boundaries?
  

On outcomes across the pond

An excellent rant about the pernicious outcomes of outcomes models, with some interesting follow-up comments.

On-line learning (4)

I've just been checking in with the course--hey, how better could one spend a Saturday (now Sunday) night?

I'm struck by the increasing demands on the tutors (although they did literally ask for it when they encouraged the use of web 2.0 resources). When I first tutored on-line 12 years ago, we used a package called FirstClass, which kept track of one's time on-line among other facilities. My first significant learning from that module was that I rapidly exceeded the allocated staff hours for the module, logged on to work with the student participants. And I was just one of three tutors working with nine students.

Returning to the fray years later, as a student rather than a tutor, I find that the channels have proliferated. I'm not a fan of the bounded VLE; it's a tool which tries to do too many things not very well and is obsessed not with privacy but secrecy. But, it certainly simplifies things for the tutors. And given that this course has already encouraged us to go to blogs and Flickr (sorry--not got round to that--I use Picasa and E-snips, are they roughly the same?) it must be a hassle keeping up. So, respect to them for their encouraging feedback; at the moment it is probably simple reinforcement for contributing, but in the future...?

But leaving aside the welfare of the tutors... Now, I want to know where we are going. I need a clearer sense of direction(s).

This course actually comes with a book! Sadly, my enrolment deal does not include a free copy; I have ordered it from the great river, but the stream which leads to my house is clearly clogged with ice-floes--we have received no physical mail for the past four days. (The library copies are out.) So I haven't read the prescribed chapters, yet... But I do need input. Input in respect of researched and established theory. Not "Let's have a chat and find out what works for us" stuff. The feedback has concentrated on encouragement; good idea so far as people have admitted their trepidation in joining in. I've received a couple of tutor comments which refer to "thought-provoking" ideas. They probably mean "bullshit", but of course they can't say so. Yet. I can't start learning, because that is what it is all about, until I get Feedback, with a capital "F". So we have to move on...

I know! Were I a tutor, I should be more circumspect. But I'm not a tutor! So I can be...

Frustrated? Yes. Is this a good thing? It does mean I am hungry for something. But it also suggests I am on the cusp of getting what I want or giving up... I shan't do that, but is this "normal" for e-learners? Is there an equivalent process to the supposed group development process of forming-storming-norming-performing?

On-line learning (3)

I logged on "casually" tonight, to find 71 unread messages. Too much. I logged off.

Face to face, the rules influencing contributions and attention to them are hugely complex and we all filter and attend selectively and wilfully ignore and prioritise, and we do it in "real time", as contributions are made and conversations unfold.

I don't know how to handle this as a "student". As a tutor, I just had to get on with it, and I was rarely off-line for long enough to let messages build up. After all, tutoring an on-line course was part of my core business, as it were. Paradoxically, I was less selective in my attention than I would have been in a real classroom.

I've read some of the posts, and thought, "Hmm, interesting point, I might respond to that---but no, don't be silly, responding only encourages them!"

---and that is of course really interesting in terms of being one one side of the fence or the other. As a tutor I desperately wanted this intercourse and debate; as a student I want to cut to the chase and get the substantive content. All these ideas from my fellow participants who (with of course all respect) don't know much more than I do are all very well, but... In class, the lecturer/teacher/tutor would (because the conversation is synchronous) close it down and move on. That option is only available via draconian measures on-line, which are experienced as censorship while being "normal" class management in the face to face world.

Of course, the other factor is to ask just how real this on-line course is? There are two issues here;

• first, this is a course about on-line learning so it has attracted people who are interested in it, and presumably have more to say about it. My comments about "don't encourage them" might be quite irrelevant/otiose in the context of a required course for undergrads.
• On the other hand, the distribution of contributions seems at first glance (the tutors have access to the stats, so they may confirm later) to follow the same broadly power-law distribution identified by Bales et al in the 1950s on participation in groups in general (see here)
  

Enough. In the time I have spent writing this, I could probably have learned more by reading those 71 posts, and perhaps responding to them and joining the debate rather than standing (arrogantly?) and sniping on the side-lines. And this critique is about the issues inherent in e-learning; it implies nothing about any individual or indeed implementation.

On-line learning (2)

The on-line course is now getting going; there are 22 participants including me and several tutors, of whom two have so far made an appearance. Several initial impressions;

• Every post is (at this stage) religiously responded to by the tutors. That really matters on-line. Frankly some of the responses are banal, but that is not the point. In class, I can nod, make eye-contact, smile, or note a key-word on a flip-chart. All such responses send "message received and (at least) valued", and they require no deliberate effort. Not so on-line; perhaps as the learning community grows (there are only about 4 contributors to date) the tutors will back off a little. If they don't, there is the danger of creating a "hub-and-spoke" pattern of communication which might inhibit direct "network" interaction between participants. I don't think that is very likely with mature, confident participants, but it could well happen with undergrads. (Of course, all this is my opinion and speculation--one of the things I am hoping to learn is whether or not it is well-founded.)
  
  
• I'm not exactly finding it difficult to navigate the site, but it is a little unnatural. The tutors have provided an excellent and comprehensive user guide/course orientation/study guide. I remember working with Steve Ryan and Bernard Scott in 1996 on my first "resource-based learning" course, and their emphasis on the Study Guide. I initiallly thought it rather patronising, but later learned how necessary it was. But it remains a really tricky job to "pitch" it just right. And my own ambivalence testifies to that. Part of the time I am irritated by the assertion of the plonkingly obvious, only to have to refer back to it because I have missed something...
  
  
• ...but of necessity the course site is segmented into separate areas. Each week or assignment has its discussion board, there is a virtual coffee-bar (where participants are already unsure about what belongs and what should be elsewhere) and so on. In the real world---for better or for worse---we would move, slide, elide between these different conversations, without too much concern about what belonged where. Uh oh!...
  
  
• ...The net does not do ambiguity! (sorry, folks, if this is self-indulgent, but the problem/necessity [?] of ambiguity in curriculum design has been a preoccupation of mine [and colleagues] for many years).

Enough for now.

On course details

I know how you feel!

Thanks to the Marginal Revolution blog for the pointer.

On-line learning (1)

My apologies for the heading! I somehow fell into the pattern of prefacing all the post titles with "on" from the very start...

I posted a link a week ago about a Canadian professor of tourism about to embark on his his first e-learning course as an instructor. Well, I'm doing the same thing as a student; I have previously designed, written and run two quite different blended learning modules through several iterations, but I have never before been at the "receiving" (if that is the right metaphor) end of such a course.

The heading links to the course description, and since one of the requirements is to keep a reflective journal or blog (surprise!), I thought a bit about whether to create a blog solely for the purpose or to use this existing one. There is of course the danger that I will simply bore stiff those of you who for whatever reason read this in the real world, and those of you kind enough to sunscribe via RSS may well not be pleased to have esoteric ramblings pushed at you... On the other hand, the knowledge that I am not writing purely for myself or to be read only by "insiders" should impose some constraint on my self-indulgent ramblings. I promise not to post too frequently.

On the other hand... This blog's "manifesto" (pardon the grandiosity) is about modelling reflection, or at least producing samples of it for illustration or critique, so I have to share my thoughts to live up to that.

For those of you less interested in this, I'll keep to the same heading for related posts with updated index numbers and possibly sub-heads.

On obedience, nowadays

See also here

So! A researcher has reproduced (almost) the irreproducible!

Stanley Milgram's 1970s experiments on obedience to authority are some of the most famous in the history of psychology, but (as the linked article notes) they also deceived the participants to the extent of inducing persistent psychological disturbance; hence the discipline's attention to ethical clearance nowadays. It had been assumed that this self-imposed barrier would prevent the replication of the experiments, but (as in the case of Zimbardo's simulated prison experiment) it was possible simply to ignore those constraints by not pretending to be subject to academic control.

The linked post (as some of the comments note) simplifies greatly a complex experiment, but the results 35 years on were...

You'll have to read them for yourself to find out!

On my son's career

What do you do with a joint honours in philosophy and sociology? Go into fitting floors, in his case. It's a fascinating study, of course;

• All the political rhetoric about promoting social mobility fails to recognise (unlike Michael Young in 1958), that in a finite system, if some elements go up a corresponding number need to go down.
• It seems to be a trade without regulation or qualifications (they may exist but they exercise little influence), so my son is a sort of "apprentice", but without the safeguards implied by that. He is simply being inducted into a community of practice.
• But that confers enormous power on his employer. While my son is learning, he is a self-employed labourer. His employer has no obligations towards him, and if he has no work for him, he is simply laid off. His employer does not like paying him (or his other workers), but since my son is not yet acknowledged as a full-fledged fitter, he can't move on in reaction to delayed payment. The tax deadline is looming at the end of this week; the employer shows no inclination to provide the required paperwork to evidence tax deducted at source. Marx and Robert Tressell would love this!
• My son has just done his first free-lance job in his own right. It was a simple laminate flooring job, but it took him twice as long as he expected, and so he only got half the rate he thought he was charging.
• It took so long because he had no-one to ask about problems he was encountering, and had to work them all out for himself. On reflection he thinks this was a good thing, because the lessons will stick. Well, yes; but did he learn the best techniques? He learned to survive, but is that enough? Will his mere survival actually hold him back?
• One thing he did learn was a variant of the Pareto principle (a.k.a. [roughly] as the 80/20 rule) He hadn't heard of this (he has a sociology degree? But it's more economics and not fashionable nowadays) but recognised it instantly. You get 80% of the job done in 20% of the time, then spend the remaining 80% fiddling with the remaining 20%--and that's not time-wasting, it is built into the nature of the system...

Of course, he wanted to do something practical... he'd had enough of theory!

On negative capability (a.k.a. "I don't know")

After some discussion with colleagues about how to "do reflection", it occurs to me that it might be interesting to devote occasional posts to "tools to reflect with". The first is the sine qua non;

(drafted Friday)

I spent over three hours in the car today, as ever listening to news and comment about the recession and the incessant question, "how long will it last?" Only the bravest pundits were prepared to say, "I have no idea."

Being not only prepared to admit that, but also to defend it against both explicit and insidious pressure until it is no longer true, is the prerequisite of reflection. John Keats coined the phrase:

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

[Letter to George and Thomas Keats (21 Dec 1817).
in H. E. Rollins (ed.), (1958) Letters of John Keats, Vol. 1, 193]

This more than merely not "jumping to conclusions"; it is an active—and sometimes tense—determination to stick with ambiguities and uncertainties, lest their richness be lost in coming down on one side or the other. Most conclusions are reached "on balance"; like an election won with 51% of the vote, where the 49% of the losing side may well count for nothing, it is important not to lose the possibilities inherent in the alternative accounts of what may have been going on.

In the days when I taught residential social work, I had a simple exercise to illustrate this;

• A 12-year-old child* comes to you at breakfast time and complains that she has a pain in her tummy.
• On the basis solely of this information, what might that mean?

All the answers would be written up on a flip-chart—and I would not be inclined to let a small group off the hook until I had at least a dozen accounts. Only then might we proceed to eliminate some of them on the basis of more precise information and look at the potential consequences of acting on any of them. It is perhaps worth noting that field social workers, who rarely acted precipitately or without lengthy consultation, found it much easier than residential social workers, for whom there was no premium in dithering. For them, it was more important to act, even if they acted wrongly.

* You can tell how long ago this was, by the presence of a twelve-year-old in a children's home.

On an old dog reflecting on new tricks

The heading is precise; this is a reflective blog from a Canadian professor offering a course on-line for the first time. I look forward to following his experience. I'll put the link in the "shared" section of the side-bar so you can keep track, too.

On hiccups

Very little to do with learning and teaching, but a possible answer to a fascinating question, and another example of what evolutionary theory can do (in this Darwin bi-centenary year). I had always believed that hiccups were totally inexplicable, there being no way in which they could contribute to the fitness of any animal; but it appears they make sense if you are a tadpole. And presumably, annoying though they are, having arrived through conferring an advantage only on this transitional phase of an amphibian's life-cycle, they have not conferred sufficient disadvantage to have been bred out of the population, even as far down as ourselves.

Thanks to Mindblog for finding it.

On 45 years on

I'm an outsider (British, if you haven't noticed), and political comment is not the business of this blog, but today is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the USA, and tomorrow is arguably the most tangible fulfilment of his dream of 28 August 1963. There is a synergy here which cannot be ignored;

On the possibility that they are right after all...

The other night, I was watching the immediate aftermath of the New York crash landing on the news channel. Apart from being amazed and gratified that everyone--everyone!--survived, I was challenged at a personal level. I've watched those videos and witnessed those choreographed demonstrations so many times (including a micro-teaching exercise about training cabin crew to do it...) and always thought it was simply a benign euphemistic mythology which no-one believed.

I suspect that the airlines and the authorities thought the same. There's a common joke about the assuming the crash position which concludes, "...and kiss your a*** goodbye!" It was well advised but never tested.

I heard some expert on the radio being interviewed about it and his reaction to seeing the plane floating. Was he surprised? No, not really--that was that it was supposed to do--but he was pleased, because to his knowledge none of the manufacturers had ever tested it in practice (it would be prohibitively expensive).

So perhaps I should not be so sceptical? Perhaps.Hey, it is difficult to re-learn trust...

On self-indulgent nostalgia

Why not? It's my blog!

Actually it is a little more complicated than that. This blog is (largely) about reflection, and the point at which reflection tips into self-indulgent or self-justifying wallowing is not clear.

Just something to contemplate while you listen to Les Paul and Mary Ford's "Meet Mr Callaghan" (c.1957?) There was a feature about Les Paul on BBC4 this evening, and this was the theme I chose (no doubt with total disregard of copyright) for the first film I ever "directed" courtesy of the film society at school, around 1961. The only bit which had any merit at all was the initial titles sequence of a girl (Sandra Whitehead, should you ever google yourself under your maiden name; I directed you in awe, as callow youths did/do at 17...) cycling through the town...

That may be legitimate reminiscence (for me), but it is not in itself "reflection". What is the added value of "reflection"?

Incidentally, the tv remained on as I wrote the above and I looked up to see a tribute to Oliver Postgate. I have enormous affection and respect for his work, and I'm delighted to find an excuse to post a link to him. But that is not reflection, is it? What would need to be added to make it so?

On "brain-based" education

Not only is this a beautifully clear exposition and an exemplary simple video, it is also an important corrective to a lot of rubbish!



And, of course, see this one about "learning styles" (which just happens to coincide with my own view here!) Willingham's site also has a lot of material well worth reading.

On a (miserable) new year

Obviously, best wishes to all readers for a happy, healthy, harmonious and even prosperous 2009!

While it has to be admitted that things are not looking good on many fronts, I am dismayed by the glee with which the media and commentariat are talking down the outlook. Not only is "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." according to J K Galbraith (sorry about the sloppy referencing...), but of course the financial world is the primary habitat of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

In such a climate I keep returning to Noel Coward's wonderful "Ode to Depression" (1952, full lyrics, both domestic and international, from the heading link above). Here's a sample from the international version, which is not quite as clever or funny as the British version, but does not rely as much on taken-for-granted background knowledge...

Verse 1

They're nervous in Nigeria
And terribly cross in Crete,
In Bucharest
They are so depressed
They're frightened to cross the street,
They're sullen in Siberia
And timid in Turkestan,
They're sick with fright
In the Isle of Wight
And jittery in Japan,
The Irish groan and shout, lads,
Maybe because they're Celts,
They know they're up the spout, lads,
And so is everyone else.
Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!
Trouble is on the way.

Refrain 1

There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no use whining
About a silver lining
For we KNOW from experience that they won't roll by,
With a scowl and a frown
We'll keep our spirits down
And prepare for depression and doom and dread,
We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag
And wait until we drop down dead.

Sadly the only performance I can find on the web is the one below by a certain Robbie Williams, which is pretty abysmal, although it does pick up a little in the last minute: (if the aspect ratio of the video itself is distorted, my apologies, but it is beyond my control)

To my mind the definitive version is that of the King's Singers (1975).

Have a great new year!

On Christmas Greetings

Have a great Christmas and may the New Year bring all you hope for and none of what you fear!

On bad arguments

I'm a bit slow on picking up on interesting material from Times Higher Education this week, but I was struck by this article on bad arguments. It's an interesting teaching device for one thing, but for another, it contains;

As long ago as 1985, an Australian philosopher, David Stove, ran a competition to find the worst argument in the world. In his marking scheme, half the marks went to the degree of flaw in the argument, half to the degree of its endorsement by philosophers.

He awarded the prize to himself, for the following argument: "We can know things only as they are related to us under our forms of perception and understanding in so far as they fall under our conceptual schemes, etc. So, we cannot know things as they are in themselves."

What is wrong with that? (Apart of course from the difficulty of knowing what it would mean to "know things as they are in themselves"—or is that the point?) And it does have precedent...

On structured reflection

Mike Arnzen's "Pedablogue" (I wish I'd got that name first!) has an interesting review of Reflective Practice in Action: 80 Reflection Breaks for Busy Teachers by Thomas S.C. Farrell. (I've not yet read it, so I can't comment directly on it.)

As the title suggests, it is about structured exercises to promote reflection. Read my comment on the blog post assuming Mike decides to publish it. And if you have any ideas about the second point I make I'd be really interested to hear them!

On the devil in the detail of teaching practice

I'm not generally a great fan of over-hyped Malcolm Gladwell, and the overall starting point of this article— that by culling the worst 10% of teachers school standards in the US could be greatly improved—is contestable to say the least (although "instructional quality" does come out with a high effect-size in Hattie's meta-analysis of educational variables).

However, here he does offer a very accessible discussion of the problems of judging the "worst 10%", and his eavesdropping on a panel assessing teaching skills on video is fascinating and informative. Assuming, of course, that the panel are focusing on significant behaviour.

On writers' rooms

No comment—it's simply fascinating. Be sure to click on "show captions" before you run it.

On reflection on reflection

Meta-reflection? I have been entertaining the idea of taking on a part-time "job". I have several sessional contracts, but there is very little continuity to them, so I applied for a fixed-term proportional post at another university; as I write I have no idea whether I shall be offered the post, or whether I shall take it if offered. That's not the point of the post; the point is an epiphany in the interview.

I knew that one standard question would be, "why do you want this job?" And my response would be, "To keep my hand in..." But later, working through the standard litany of questions, the panel came to; "What do you think your professional development needs are?" They qualified that at once by acknowledging that as a semi-retired academic, it was probably otiose to ask that of me, but unexpected as the question was, I had no doubt about the answer; "practise" [sic.]*

I found myself explaining with reference to this blog and how it has changed over the (few) years of posting. I'm not going to do the analysis—only recently have I bothered even to tag the posts— but clearly over the past year, since I stopped doing much teaching, they have changed. The post before or after this one (I'm not sure how it will turn out), is on photos of writers' rooms. Interesting, I think, but at one level simply padding—it's merely a second-hand link, and at another an instance of "mission drift". There's nothing about learning and teaching, and precious little reflection.

It doesn't of course "matter". At the last count only nine people had signed up to the RSS feed anyway! (Scroll down to the "Atom" link at the bottom of the right side-bar if you would like to join this exclusive club.) It's merely illustrative that reflection cannot exist in isolation...

*Oh dear, pedantry wins again! I did indeed mean "practise" with an "s", as short for "opportunity to practise".

On Yorick

The news story today concerns the use (or not) of a genuine skull in the graveyard scene opening the final act of Hamlet (Shakespeare c.1600). The skull was bequeathed by a concert pianist, Andre Tchaikowsky.

I knew him, Horatio! No, actually I didn't; but one day in October 1972 I was visiting a student on placement at one of the world's most amazing therapeutic establishments for young men, Finchden Manor. Do read this site. I was not quite 28 years old; two years older than the oldest resident in the establishment at the time.

I was ushered into the presence of George Lyward, the charismatic founder and Chief of the place. No, it was not a "therapeutic community" as now understood and discussed in the literature. It was far too autocratic. I could go on and on about Finchden Manor on the basis of my limited acquaintance in Mr Lyward's final years, but you can get first-hand testimony from the website.

Mr Lyward was indeed charismatic (in the Weberian sense). But his charismatic quality was one I had never before (or since) encountered. He made me feel that he was privileged to meet me. I was a callow 28! An upstart tutor on a social work course who had never done any social work in his life. A fraud, basically (although not deliberately so; I was so naive then that I did even know that there were some things a degree in European Studies did not equip you for). And Mr Lyward was honoured to meet me. It was not an act.

This of course was even more disorienting than being interrogated and put down. However, from the room next door came wonderful piano music. Trying to make conversation in my blundering way (nowadays of course, I should not have to "make conversation". We would immediately have got down to the forms and reports and checklists), I asked about the hi-fi, as I thought it must be. "No," said Mr Lyward, "that's not a recording. That's Andre Tchaikowsky practising for his concert at the Festival Hall. He's an old boy of Finchden, you know, and he comes back here to practise when he has something big coming up." Tchaikowsky had come to Finchden to overcome some of his trauma from growing up in Warsaw in WW2 and the loss of most of his family.

(An aside; when I ventured to get down to the material for the placement report, I asked Mr Lyward what he had asked the student [Steve Williams--I remember you, and it's an episode for you to be proud of, too] to do. "DO?" he replied. "I don't want him to do anything. I want him to be." He would have stood no chance as a "practice teacher" nowadays.)

That's as close as I got to Yorick, and to some other things, too.

On "Chinese Whispers" in the history of psychology

I've picked this up rather late, but it alludes to a substantial problem represented in professional education programmes, including teacher education. Rarely have lecturers actually read the original, primary sources for much of the research they report, and even where they have done so, they may have chosen to represent them in a manner which is more consistent with their own beliefs or interests than the evidence warrants. I confess I've done it, too.

On doubting

OK, so there's nothing good on TV tonight!

Just as there was a happenstantial link between the previous post and its predecessor, so this one picks up on a linked theme with the post on "bad science". That ended with the question whether students doing a vocational qualification at National Qualifications Framework level 3 [that's roughly "A" level equivalent for UK readers] could sustain a distanced, etic, stance to ideas. The article argues, admittedly on case-study evidence and in an elite school in Israel, which may be different from the secondary school round the corner where you are, that it is possible.

On bad science in education

Do read this disconcerting account of a medical scientist's attempt to get someone from an educational awarding body to explain the presence of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo in an Edexcel Level 3 qualification in Health and Social Care. (The reference to Alan Sokal in the heading banner makes a tenuous link to the previous post.)

In brief the argument is that "it's not true and it doesn't work so you should not be teaching it." I have a great deal of sympathy with that argument, and it has particular potency in relation to alternative medicine (assuming that the positivist account is the only legitimate one). But go beyond the "health" component and start looking at "social care", and you will find very little which is demonstrably "effective" or "true". The corpus of "knowledge" in this area consists largely of best guesses and conformity with current values in the services, and not always shared by the population at large. It's not that there is a conspiracy to foist principles of "valuing diversity" or "empowerment" on any one; it is just that in the "care" arena no-one knows how to test and research the ideas. And it is not for want of trying.

(It's exactly the same in teaching—viz the egregious rubbish about "learning styles", and even "e-learning" which has been puffed over the past few years.) Until you have agreed and uncontested criteria of "effectiveness" or "truth", you can't aspire to a gold standard of what works.

The issue may not be about what is to be taught; after all, complementary medicine is out there and is big business, so it cannot be ignored. And social care has to work on some basis, even if we don't know which. Perhaps it ought to be about the stance which is taken towards it; why, for example, do many people—both practitioners and patients—believe that CAM works, even if the research (I know—they contest the methodology) says that it doesn't? They are not all charlatans and dupes, after all. The placebo effect is much more complex than is often portrayed, for example.

But—to come back to Edexcel Level 3 awards—can learners at that level (perhaps more significantly at that typical age) actually sustain that distanced stance. Must the wave of uncertainty collapse for them into true/false, right/wrong etc.? Some research suggests that it must.

Oh dear.

On Levi-Strauss

No, not jeans!

Today is the centenary of the birth of Claude Levi-Strauss. Indeed it is his birthday, for he is still alive. But age is not his claim to fame; that lies in his theorisation of anthropology through "structuralism". He sought underlying principles of human thinking through the discovery of common themes in the culture and language of disparate peoples. That is as close as I will go to the edge lest I sink into mire of gallic intellectualisation; if you want to know more, google him at your peril.

I have no idea what to make of him. I read most of his major works thirty-odd years ago when I felt the need to justify myself as an "intellectual"--a need now happily past. Like many others, I wore my membership of the club of those who had finished The Raw and the Cooked or The Savage Mind, more as a badge of my conquest of tedium than as testimony to my own thinking having been informed in any useful way. Later, of course, he appeared to be a model of clarity and simplicity alongside his "post-structuralist" heirs.

Sorry to be dog-in-a-mangerish on his birthday, but he has outlived his reputation. Not because he was "wrong"--there is no way to demonstrate or argue that in his weird world--but because nowadays, intellectual fashion can pass over one in the course of a lifetime. And I still have no idea what he and his gang thought they were contributing to any understadning of the real world... But, he did persuade lots of people to play his game!

On automatic bibliographies

[www.easybib.com]
It had to happen! You can now get automatic bibliographies generated for you on-line, from information as minimal as a book's ISBN number. Try it!

Two words of caution, though;

1. It does not set up the in-text flags for you, such as Jarvis (2006), and
2. Its default format is MLA (Modern Languages Association) while like most social "science" disciplines, we use APA (American Psychological Association); in order to get that, you have to take out a subscription, but that is only $7.99 (just over £5.00) for a year.

On a cookery show

The series is called "Indian Food Made Easy" and it does what it says on the tin. But...

This evening's show (available through the link in the title for just a week after posting) featured a guy who is a keen cook, and likes Bengali cuisine, but who has never cooked it for guests lest he get it wrong. I have no complaints about the show as entertainment, but to suggest that any of it was about learning to cook in an Indian style is mendacious.

Actual cookery in Bengali cuisine appears very straightforward. You would find similar directions on the label of a jar of Tikka Marsala sauce in the supermarket. (Yes, I know about that...) The magic comes from the spices, and their combination and balance--and this programme was merely (and vaguely) prescriptive about them. If you could follow the recipe before, you would be no better off.

The only "insight" was about how Bengali cuisine uses sugar. (I have doubts about that; the interaction of sugar and salt is more subtle than suggested.)

Why am I going on about this marginal programme? I'm not so naive as to believe that the producers are on a mission to improve the audience's cookery skills and eating habits. I'm simply drawing attention to a problem in pedagogy. One bottom line in the practice of an autonomous cook is mastery of heat and timing etc. But another is mastery of flavours, and that involves much basic memory as anything else until (I imagine/speculate...) there is an epiphany, and a few cooks are able to manipulate flavours in their minds and then test them in the outside world...

Where does the rote learning of recipes figure in this?

On relying on textbooks

I had an enquiry from a reader in Romania, who teaches psychology to students taking the International Baccalauriate. She was initially concerned with the structure and tone of the textbooks, every more abstract and distanced from practice. But as we discussed it, it became apparent that it was more to do with the students' approach to the textbook... And then I had something of an epiphany. With the possible exception of two years spent teaching "A" level sociology (very useful experience, that; I knew no sociology at all when I started, and had an article published in the prestigious Sociological Review by the end of it. OK it was 1970-71...); with that possible exception I have never had to teach a course to a textbook, so I had not thought about how it works. I do keep a few standard undergraduate textbooks on my shelf as a quick way in to the "standard model" of particular areas of study, so I looked at how they were structured, and I realised...

It all stems from the assessment system, in practice. The textbooks are not about teaching psychology as such; they are about equipping students to pass the exams in psychology, which is quite different as you have understood.

Your students are highly anxious and focused on the assessment (and they are probably under pressure from their families to perform well). They /dare not/ concern themselves with anything else until they have passed their exams (by which time they may well have forgotten that they were once interested in psychology for other reasons...) I applaud your efforts to introduce group work, etc. but for them the bottom line is---"will it help me pass the exam?"

There is an extensive research strand exploring this issue; see http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm for an introduction, but none of it helps you to solve the problem unless you can change the assessment regime.

You will be familiar---more than I am---with the research on how a problem or challenge is "framed". You have no alternative but to use the frame, "This will help you to pass the exam." If you can get the students to accept that the groupwork or whatever strategy you propose will indeed help with that limited goal, they will rise to the challenge. However, they are--as you now know--very conservative. They find it very difficult to adjust to any approach to learning which does not seem aimed directly at the assessment; but you of course know that the direct approach is very limited...

Or am I on the wrong track? (Thanks to Oana for posing the original question.)

On opportunity costs again

I keep on about threshold concepts almost as much as I do about Frank Coffield, and anyone familiar with the idea will be aware of the economists' favourite TC—opportunity cost. It is discussed very well by Robert Frank in his entertaining new book [Frank R H (2008) The Economic Naturalist; why economics explains almost everything London; Virgin Books]. I don't think he has ever heard of TCs, but he acknowledges the significance of the concept in very similar language (pp. 4-7).
Incidentally, the book is also based on an exercise he routinely uses in an introductory economics class; clearly an excellent teaching device!

On mentioning the unmentionable

And here, too.

Sorry I only found out with 45 minutes to go (GMT), but today was World Toilet Day.

Earlier on, a friend passed me a rather sentimental slideshow on a global "count your blessings" theme (duly qualified with some legitimate scepticism about some of the quoted statistics; but forwarded because the issues do indeed matter a lot). Access to clean water figured, as it should. Freedom from shit didn't. We are talking physical shit/faeces/bowel movements/excreta here. And it is indeed part of life. I seem to remember at school giggling at hearing that "excretion" was one of the criteria of life.

It won't go away, but getting its consequences to go away is probably the greatest and least glamorous public health challenge of our time.

What's it got to do with learning and teaching? For all his limitations; Maslow.

On less being more at Master's level

I have been on a validation panel today, grappling with the problem of how to specify modules at Master's level. It was very instructive.

The team developing the programme had understandably assumed that outcomes for a Master's level module would have to be more tightly specified than for a lower level course, in order to ensure that the learning and the assessment would be at greater “depth” than for an undergraduate module.

First, though, it is quite easy to specify “learning outcomes” for low-level courses. When people are learning the basics of any subject or skill, what any one person learns will have to be the same as any other learner. It's easy to assess, and “correct” knowledge or performance is clear-cut. It's not so easy at higher levels. Knowledge and “understanding” (not to mention, for those who care, the higher regions of Bloom, or Krathwohl and Anderson) may be contestable, and indeed one person's understanding or “take” on the subject may quite legitimately be different from their neightbour's. So when you get to Master's level it may be reasonable to specify that the outcomes will include so-and-so, but it may well be patronising and simply counter-productive to presume to set them out completely and exhaustively.

Even so, how do you incorporate the academic level requirements into the outcomes? It's traditional to use all those recommended “Bloom verbs” to produce “SMART” objectives. (What's the difference between an objective and an outcome, in this context? Strictly between ourselves, I no longer have to pretend that I know, and I don't care.) So the first-year students “list” or “describe”, the second-years “analyse” and the third-years “evaluate”... So Master's students? They “critically evaluate”, it seems. (That means in practice that they evaluate on the basis of one or more over-arching frameworks, showing that there are no simple answers.)

That is fair enough but it does risk becoming formulaic, and also implying that there is a correct procedure for doing it. The more specific the directions, the more restricted the outcomes, and the less the scope for the exercise of individual initiative and creativity (if that is desirable in your discipline, of course!) Master's students are experts, or at least nearly there. They need to be given their heads rather than constrained. (I am referring mainly to experienced practitioners of their discipline undertaking Master's study part-time, here; I am aware that full-time “second cycle” students who were undergraduates last year may not fit this picture.)

Personally I would rather just set out the aims of the module just so the students know what they are letting themselves in for, and recognise that the outcomes will be different every time it runs, and different for every participant. But that won't wash in the compliance climate where standardisation is all. So what can we get away with?

(Specify the level and assessment criteria at a scheme/programme level so you don't have to do it at a module level)

"On completion of this module, participants will (I prefer “participant” to “student” at this level);

• Come to their own informed conclusions about the significance of...
• Explore ... in the context of ...
• Use ... as the basis of original work on ...

Or have I got it wrong?

On autistic insight into the student experience

The link is to another article in the "Passion for Teaching" series in Times Higher Education. It jumps about, rather, but apart from anecdotal experience, its chief source is a remarkable book, which I recently read out of sheer interest but without making the connections Blaisdell (the article's author) does to the student experience.

Temple Grandin is Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, and a renowned expert on stock handling systems in abattoirs. She is also seriously autistic. Her remarkable book (Grandin T and Johnson C (2005) Animals in Translation; using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behaviour London; Bloomsbury [ISBN 0-7475-6668-2]) explores animals' (particularly dogs' and cattle's) experience of the world on the basis of parallels between their experience and that of a person with autism. To the academic reader's understanding it is written remarkably directly, even naively; but as it goes on one begins to understand why.

What Blaisdell does is to suggest that this account of the behaviour of animals in the abattoir can illuminate the students' experience in class--and it is not cheap "lambs to the slaughter" stuff.

On diminishing returns

Maria Colwell, Jasmine Beckford ... Victoria Climbie, baby P. Children who died at the hands of their carers over thirty-odd years. From what I hear on Newsnight, one still dies every week. But there are 50,000+ plus children on "at-risk" registers. In other words, one in a thousand dies each year, out of those already deemed to be at risk. In Maria Colwell's day, we didn't even know how many were at risk.

I used to teach social workers. In the discussion of the latest tragedy I was pleased to detect no sign of the strident blame which characterised previous cases. I was pleased to see that Herbert Laming is being commissioned not to review this particular case in the usual blaming exercise, but to look at overall nationwide strategies and procedures.

It's tragic. There is no acceptable level of child abuse, let alone murder. But there is a law of diminishing returns. The NSPCC has a Full Stop campaign against child abuse. And so they should. I've worked with NSPCC staff and I have enormous respect for their work (as well as some reservations about their care for their staff injured in the line of duty). But practitioners know that "Full Stop" is marketing bulls**t.

The danger is that defensive practice which is aimed more at forestalling criticism than working in the best interests of the child will inevitably create more problems than it solves. And I do mean "inevitably"; it is built into the nature of the system. I know that we can never be complacent, and that more can always be done, but there does come a point at which enormous amounts of time, resources and effort can be invested to no discernible advantage. After all, the measure of "improvement" is something which does not happen.

In the public services nowadays, in education and health care as well as social services, and as in the economy, the one taboo is the admission that we do not know what is going on and a fortiori that there is nothing we can do about it. Powerlessness is not an option, but as Taleb points out in that odd and infuriating book The Black Swan (2008) it may be a necessary admission.

Having said that, how did a paediatrician miss a broken spine, or two police investigations decide not to proceed, or sixty visits by professionals not notice what was going on? Perhaps this time all the inter-agency working led to a diffusion of responsibility, to no individual being prepared to take individual responsibility for launching that horrible juggernaut of care proceedings?

Indeed, is it just possible that it was the sheer level of resources and number of personnel involved which introduced those unintended consequences?

On a threshold concept again

In today's Guardian Education section, Jonathan Wolff has an interesting piece on whether or not academics can or do indoctrinate their students. However, it particularly includes this point;

... the response students have to radical or challenging ideas ... depends almost entirely on where they start from. Take, for example, an idea that comes up when I teach Marx's Early Writings: that, contrary to the Christian teaching that God made man in God's image, man made God in man's image. And that's why our paintings of God show him in human form.

For some students, this thought is as close as they will ever get to a revelation. It puts into words something they have been struggling with, crystallising a thought, or at least a doubt, that has been festering in their subconscious. ... So, confrontation with radical ideas can be eye-opening - but only to those who were already hoping to open their eyes.

Other students - those who are fairly firm in their religious beliefs - will be charmed or appalled by what they think to be the naivety or superficiality of Marx's argument. Some will say, in a rather patronising tone, that they find his ideas interesting. Others feel angry, or almost frightened, when confronted with something so challenging. But I haven't come across a student who has said they have changed their religious convictions on reading Marx's texts. And why should their political convictions change either?

A great example of a threshold concept and liminal reactions to it. If you are not familiar with the idea, there are some links here. What is more, it is a threshold which is more about the affective than the technically cognitive component of learning, as Peter Hadfield, Renee Meyers and I discussed in a paper which still up for discussion here. Comments welcome!

On the constructive use of hot air

Not since Marilyn Monroe... It's got very little to do with anything, but it's fun, so what the heck? I like the polar bear in particular. Pity we don't have those air ducts much here.



Thanks to the Radio 4 PM blog for passing it on!

On the ups and downs of student progress

I'd like to agree with Mary Beard in this post, but she is writing from the privilege of Cambridge, where undergraduates are taught in part through tutorials, and dons know their students. That is not the case in most mass higher education, and I suspect many employers would say that references from universities are singularly uninformative. That's not the fault of the academics, merely a reflection of the numbers and that they will probably only remember the outstanding and the troublesome students in any given; the average are as ever anonymous.

Even so, I can applaud this sentiment;

Another [reason for replacing degree classification with a record of achievement] is the idea that the final degree class doesn’t reflect the strengths and weaknesses shown by a student throughout the course. Thank heavens it doesn’t, I think. I am privileged to teach some of the very brightest students in the UK. I want them to develop their potential in all kinds of ways – so that, in whatever walk of life, they can go on to be stunning citizens (cliché but true). That often means taking apart their preconceptions. It means watching them take intellectual risks, make intellectual mistakes, even do badly before they do really well. The last think I want is every course they have done listed and graded. [...] Some of my best student in Cambridge have got deltas on the way to alphas, and have learnt in the process about how not to be yes-women, when and how to take risks. Isn’t that what UK employers need?

On CPD and SoTL, from Lewis Elton

The 200th post on this blog! However—

Lewis Elton has written a thoughtful piece tying in the scholarship of learning and teaching with Wilhelm von Humboldt's conception of a university from the early 19th century (predating Newman, who has been more influential in the UK, by half a century or more). It's good to see it on open access on the web. It's also good to see further counterblasts to the materialistic utilitarianism which besets so much current debate about universities.

On the other side of plagiarism

Or "confessions of a term paper ghost-writer". Interesting in its own right as a sub-cultural phenomenon, but with a sound point at the end;

I don't have the academic credentials of composition experts, but I doubt many experts spent most of a decade writing between one and five term papers a day on virtually every subject. I know something they don't know; I know why students don't understand thesis statements, argumentative writing, or proper citations.

It's because students have never read term papers.

It's an exercise re-discovered time and again, like the wheel; get students to mark/grade and comment on specimen papers written for your module, so they know what they are supposed to look like.

On a new site on the scholarship of teaching and learning (BeSoTLed)

A warm welcome to a site from the University of Glasgow, led by Jane MacKenzie, which aims to

promote the development of teaching and enhancement of the learning environment by providing practical, collegial, academic and pastoral support for staff to engage with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

It's full of useful material, all with a clear awareness of its target audience; academics who want to improve their teaching practice in a disciplined way. I'm sure it will prosper--do pass on the word!

On "dumbing down"

The link is to an article in today's Times Higher Education which does at least look beyond some of the facile assertions being made about "dumbing down" and pieces together views from a range of eminent academics, together with survey results from the less-eminent rest of us. Do read it.

On the real lowdown on brain hemispheres

(And follow the link to the TED video)

In short, Jill Bolte is a neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke, and emerged in the unique position of being able to testify both from within and without, as it were, about the contributions of each hemisphere of the brain to our coherent experience of the world and ourselves. Remarkable.

On the potency of taking offence

This is only indirectly a teaching point, but it does reflect on the culture of our classrooms. This article and this one (both from rather right-wing perspectives, agreed, but that does not mean there is no virtue in them) make the point that sensitivity to possible offence is now a potent element in political debate at all levels--particularly where a shame-culture prevails (as it does much more than most of us would like to think). See also this report.

"Political correctness" (in itself a contestable label) in its most benign form, sets out not to offend anyone. OK, but that gives hostages to fortune in ceding great power to anyone who decides to be hypersensitive about, for example, being bald (sorry! "Follically challenged" I don't think that phrase was ever more than a joke anyway, and I can call it because I am myself bald...). Or being of a particular ethnic origin, or having a specific learning disability, or espousing a particular faith...

The fact that one falls into one or more of those categories (and several more) does not automatically make one a morally superior person, exempt from venal desires to take personal (or group) advantage from any strategic error by a competitor. (I'm looking at this systemically.)

If major players in a system elevate "not giving offence" to their primary moral principle, then they cede authority to whoever can be most easily offended. And given that "not offending" is th ultimate pusillanimity (wow! Did I spell that right?) they probably deserve the consequences.

On learning to deconstruct

I'm posting this simply as a resource. It may be irrelevant to your discipline.

But if it is relevant;

• How do you make sense of/interpret/deconstruct it?
• How do you teach others how to do that?

I'll leave it there...

On the commodification of higher education

Here is another voice, this time Paul Standish of the Institute of Education, raised against the consumer orientation of HE. In particular, he argues against excessive demands for accountability and transparency, pointing out that they are reductionist and unable to do justice to the complexity of education at this level.

In the same edition of Times Higher Education Terence Kealey of the University of Buckingham is highly critical of the assumptions on which the Quality Assurance Agency purports to review institutions; it institutionalises mistrust of professionals. Actually, I think he protests a little too much; he must have known how they operate, and since Buckingham is the UK's only private university, he was not obliged to invite them in at all. So why did he? Even so, there is a fit between the two articles; and of course the interesting thing is that as a private university, one might expect Buckingham to be more consumer focused than public institutions. Since it scores top for student satisfaction, it may have an appropriate consumer orientation, rather than a "toxic" one, to use the new cliche.

On plugging Coffield again

In this week's Times Educational Supplement Stephen Jones is plugging the Coffield paper Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority... As well he might. Read it!

On tough career paths

I thought it was tough in the UK!

On practicalities of marking

Peter Barry's article from today's Times Higher Education has some sound things to say about how to communicate feedback to students. He even mentions what he calls "two-shot" methods, which we know as "dry runs", where students get comments on an early version of an essay, and revise it before submission for marking. And he has a version of what Phil Race calls "feed-forward"—concentrating comments on recommendations for subsequent work rather than critical remarks about a piece now past.

I do however rather wonder how much of this is re-inventing the wheel. On the other hand, you do appreciate more the wheel you have invented for yourself rather than the one someone else supplied off the shelf before you knew you wanted one... It might not be such a bad strategy after all.

On-line Lectures

This does not surprise me, of course; I've long recognised that many of my reservations about e-learning in terms of the transparency of the medium are not any concern to students who are entirely at home with iPods and the like.

But I'm still not entirely convinced they aren't missing something from the corporate experience of attending the lecture... I'm looking at ways of pod-casting my stuff at the moment (CamStudio free version looks like the best way of capturing slides for webcasting, by the way--unless you know better!) but it's not the technical stuff which gets in the way, it's the question of how much of the unmediated experience can be shared, and if so how. I suppose it is analogous to adapting a novel for film or TV.

On the blank slate

This is a little late, but TED has just featured it again, so it's worth reminding people about.

The so-called "nature-nurture" debate crops up in all kinds of courses and teaching discussions so the video is a useful resource. Pinker presents the issues well, of course, and is interesting on the passions engendered. The best popular treatment in print is still, I think, Ridley (2004) Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human London; HarperPerennial.

On the psychology of morality

This is not particularly within the remit of this blog, but the "liberal-conservative" construct does reach into our classrooms, and is highlighted by the US presidential line-ups; so do look at the linked video and links from Jonathan Haidt's home page to make sense of the implicit and underpinning values.

If you want to check out your own views in relation to others, the site Haidt referred to was www.yourmorals.org.

From a slightly different perspective you might also be interested in http://www.politicalcompass.org/.

On a come-back for "education"?

Perhaps it's just "confirmation bias" (the tendency to pay more attention to evidence which supports your point of view than that which tests or contradicts it), but I do detect occasional voices raised in the press arguing for the re-instatement of a broader-based critical education in colleges and universities, rather than narrow instrumental employment-focused courses. Here are two short articles from today's Times Higher Education, which draw attention to different aspects but point in the same direction:

• On the separation of skills and content
• The value of an educated rather than trained employee

On stories and teaching

Reading this article reminded me of yet another reason to avoid presentation packages (PowerPoint, blah blah) wherever possible. The article contrasts narrative with "exposition", but principally points out the ubiquity of narrative; it cites one study suggesting that 65% of conversations, across all settings and people, concern social topics (Dunbar, 1997). And most of those topics are stories.

So why don't we tell more stories when we are teaching?

See also this blog post (the promised page is here)

On new academic year resolutions

The second idea; "Do it first, then we'll talk" is not exactly earth-shatteringly new, but it's a useful illustration of variation theory (http://video.strath.ac.uk/06/140-06-03.wvx) on the derivation of principles from variation in examples. A different angle on getting at the same thing can be found in these exercises http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/exercises_definitions.htm

On a philosophy of teaching philosophy

Talking to a friend recently about a course on entrepreneurship at a business school, he summed up the confusion surrounding it as, "They don't know whether they're teaching about it or for it." Is this etic examination of the topic from without, or emic preparation from within? (No, it's not quite the same question as whether it is education or training.)

It's a central question in professionally/vocational curriculum areas. It beset our degree in "Educational Studies" for years and probably still does. It was not accredited as a teaching qualification in its own right, but it found little to say about education. (Sadly; there was so much which could have been said but wasn't.)

The linked article is about a professor who has taken the for approach to teaching philosophy;

Jolley says he thinks of his relationships with his students less as teacher-student than as master-apprentice. His goal, as he sees it, isn’t to teach students about philosophy; it is to show them what it means to think philosophically, to actually be a philosopher. When the approach works, the effect can be significant. Several years ago, a student named Zack Loveless wandered into one of Jolley’s classes and very nearly dropped it after the first day. “I was expecting a survey course, and in walks this big scary guy, using words I’d never heard before, talking about Hume as background for Kant, telling us how hard the class was going to be,” Loveless told me.

Loveless, ... is now getting a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago. He describes Jolley as more of a collaborator than a professor; rather than answer his questions, Loveless said, Jolley tried to work through philosophical problems with him.

Do you share the article author's admiration for this approach?

On the failure of technology

There's apparently no similar-scale evidence relating to further and higher education, but;

"Those and other trials by Nielsen amount to an important research project that helps explain one of the great disappointments of education in our time. I mean the huge investment schools have made in technology, and the meager returns such funds have earned. Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, money has poured into public-school classrooms. At the same time, colleges have raced to out-technologize one another. But while enthusiasm swells, e-bills are passed, smart classrooms multiply, and students cheer — the results keep coming back negative. When the Texas Education Agency evaluated its Technology Immersion Pilot, a $14-million program to install wireless tools in middle schools, the conclusion was unequivocal: "There were no statistically significant effects of immersion in the first year on either reading or mathematics achievement." When University of Chicago economists evaluated California schools before and after federal technology subsidies (the E-Rate program) had granted 30 percent more schools in the state Internet access, they determined that "the additional investments in technology generated by E-Rate had no immediate impact on measured student outcomes." In March 2007, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance evaluated 16 award-winning education technologies and found that "test scores were not significantly higher in classrooms using selected reading and mathematics software products." Last spring a New York State school district decided to drop its laptop program after years of offering it. The school-board president announced why: "After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none."

But the reasons, Mark Bauerlein argues in the article, is that technology-enhanced teaching does not work because students apply to their learning the same skimming and skipping skills that they bring to their other net-based activities; they don't pursue arguments and follow them through on-line.

On a backlash?

Yes, I'm being a little partisan in the links from the heading, but there's an interesting surge of articles supporting the case--unless I'm a victim of confirmation bias:

The magic of face-to-face teaching

The spark that tingled to my bones

but... I have to admit that "passion" is not a term which attaches readily to teaching about COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health)

The argument is not about education versus training per se but about the re-instatement of "education" as a legitimate discourse.

On inclusivity/normalization... whatever

I went to Marks and Spencer in Cambridge today, and was served with their customary efficiency and courtesy. Only difference—the cashier who processed my purchase had Down's syndrome. Which made no difference to the service; as it should be. Respect to him and to the store!

On Phil Race's new address

The header says it all; Phil has had to change his web address, but his site continues to be as useful as ever. Now I have to add to my "to-do" list up-dating all the links to his old site before people start complaining they don't work!

On PowerPoint again

This comes up every year, and so it should. The link is to Tara Brabazon at the Times Higher Education site.

My previous post on this is here

On 40 years on

Radio 4 is running a brilliant series of five-minute sound collages at five to five each afternoon, covering 1968 day by day. Last week, as the link shows, followed the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia and the end of the "Prague Spring"; today covered the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The counterpoint of the themes is fascinating. Almost as fascinating as recalling what I was doing this day forty years ago!

I was a "deviationist". While that sounds like some kind of marxist heretic who might be identified with the Czech dissidents, it was much less dangerous. A friend and I (with help from some assistants who were as ever much better at the task than I was) were volunteers leading a camp of a couple of dozen younger teenage boys from a Christian organisation (link here to its current incarnation) labouring on the Ffestiniog light railway in North Wales. We were helping to create a rising loop beyond Dduallt (pronounced THEE-a-cht) to go round the reservoir created for the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station to restore the link to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

In those days I had Freudian tendencies. I thought that boys who were keen on railways and train-spotting would be "anally-retentive" (obsessionally tidy and organised). How wrong can you be? We lived in an old Nissen hut at the end of the line. When the trains stopped running at about 6pm, we were totally out of contact with the rest of the world, other than listening to our transistor radios, until about 8am. The closest contact with civilisation was through Colonel Campbell, whose house was a 45-minute scramble away down a near-vertical but heavily-wooded face. (I seem to remember that he was merely "the Major" in those days.) He was the authorised person in charge of the gelignite for the blasting...

The camp owned an old minibus (bought for the duration and sold afterwards--cheaper than renting) which was kept in Porthmadog at the coastal end of the line. The radiator leaked, and so it was that, stuck in a traffic jam on a hot Saturday afternoon in August trying to cross the "cob"—the two-lane breakwater across the delta to Porthmadog—I turned the engine off to stop it over-heating, only to find when I tried to start it again, that it had seized up... Not only were we holding up the entirety of Welsh coastal traffic on the busiest day of the year, but rescue vehicles could not reach us... (Cue ground opening up to swallow me.)

On alternate days we were hewing away on the deviation, clearing the rubble from the blasting, or trying to create the required gradient with pick and shovel. 6am reveille for breakfast and bible reading to start on site at 7.30. Usually in the rain.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world—just a little ashamed that what we were playing at, others were doing for real, without the option.

On returning responsibility to people

I have been working on a presentation for a conference next week, exploring the extent to which curricula—particularly in professional education—are becoming ever more prescriptive. They demand that students (and tutors) simply comply with ever more specific external requirements rather than learn through experience and mistakes, and own that learning.

I was struck by the parallel with recent thinking on traffic management, of all things. The connection may be a little too distant to make it into the paper, but there's a fair amount about on YouTube, which lends itself to blogging about it. I think the parallels are obvious:



There's also an article about it here.

On a "motherclass"

I went to Birmingham today, by train, and the journey was a succession of disasters (which translates as "mildly irritating delays" in the overall scheme of things).

But so it happened that I had to take a train from Coventry to Milton Keynes (about 1650 from Coventry, in case anyone wants to pin this down) and found myself in a seat in front of a mother with two young daughters of about 3 and 5, who articulated and projected very well. I resigned myself to an hour of purgatory. Instead I got an hour of heaven.

You are a mother on your own, with two girls, on a much delayed train to London which is packed. The three of you are sharing two seats. They are tired and a little fractious. It's a recipe for short tempers and peremptory orders and threats and...

No. I was privileged to listen (although not watch) from the seat in front. Mother responded with patience and courtesy to whatever the girls came up with, including burps. She played games to settle them (Let's see who can keep their eyes closed for longest) and when that didn't work she had other games for them (counting and reading, but more important, engaging and fun) and she responded to them with patience and encouragement. And clearly with love and pride--as well she might, because these little girls may well conquer the world.

I considered saying something to her as I left the train, but one of the girls was just settling down to sleep and I couldn't think of how to say anything which would not come across as patronising. So in the unlikely scenario that she or someone who knows her reads this, my thanks for more than making up for the delays caused by a fire on a freight train at Bletchley.

Not that she will care less; she has much more important concerns.

On kidding ourselves

I'm really not sure what to make of this fascinating presentation. How does this relate to cognitive dissonance? What does it say about student choice?

On essential reading

The link is to the Learning and Skills Network site where you can download Frank Coffield's excellent new polemical pamphlet; Coffield F (2008) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority London; Learning and Skills Network.

It's free, it's only 75 pages, it is well argued and meticulously referenced and even sometimes very funny. There is no excuse not to read it. Moreover, it is addressed principally to college management teams, so there is no excuse for them not to read it, either.

Post-compulsory education is stricken with the ideological hegemony of a crude instrumentalist approach to training and skills. All that means is that much of its practice goes unquestioned, and indeed that people are so immersed in current practices and assumptions that to question them would seem silly, rather like asking whether good health is a good thing.

Coffield above all shows that such questioning is very far from silly; as such this pamphlet could become the curriculum spine of a whole DTLLS course, and as such it would make much more sense than the dog's breakfast LLUK has produced.

He is well-known for co-authoring a report on Learning Styles in 2004. He notes that despite that report, even in 2006 support materials published by LSN (the same body which publishes this pamphlet);

...still blithely maintain[s] in the face of the evidence we presented that 'this does not mean that it is no longer relevant to consider learning styles' (Jones, 2007:).

How more explicit could we have been? Let me try harder this time. There is no scientific justification for teaching or learning strategies based on VAKT and tutors should stop using learning style instruments based on them. There is no theory of VAKT from which to draw any implications for practice. It should be a dead parrot. It should have ceased to function.

(Coffield 2008: 32. Emphases in original.)

However, if you really must use a learning styles questionnaire, he has devised a new one on page 65; Coffield's Learning or Teaching Styles questionnaire (CLOTS)

On "Can't read, Can't Write"

This fascinating but in some respects quite misleading series is bound to be much used for teaching purposes in the coming year, particularly on DTLLS and similar courses.

Here are some more detailed notes which might help tutors to find useful (and less useful) sections for discussion.

On evaluation, a US perspective

This is about "assessing" teaching, which means evaluating it in UK terms. I've linked to it because it raises a number of questions about the similarities and differences in approach between educational cultures in the US and the UK. They are much freer from external regulation; indeed from our perspective it not always clear just what guarantees consistency of standards between and within institutions. (But they seem to do all right without it...)

But to cite Socrates and eros as the alternative model? Not even Coffield's latest pamphlet (of which more later) would adopt that rhetoric.

On Threshold Concepts "in the wild"

The link is to a paper Renee Meyers and I presented at the Threshold Concepts; from theory to practice conference in Kingston Ontario, in June. Peter Hadfield contributed to the research and writing but was not able to attend to present, unfortunately. It's fairly self-explanatory (it also explains why this blog has been quiet for a few weeks!) but comments will be welcome.