Conversations about Learning

In supplement to and in dialogue with the reading that Dr. Rojas has suggested, I would like to also strongly encourage you to read this article by Theordore Marchese, former vice President of AAHE:

"The New Conversation about Learning: Insights from Neuroscience and Anthropology, Cognitive and Workplace Studies."

I think it provides greater depth on some issues raised in the Reynolds article and a broader overview (including acknowledgement of the controversies) of how some work in nueroscience and cognitive science has been taken up in relation to teaching and learning.

Comments

[Arancha]

Here are some comments on "New conversations about learning", by Theodore J. Marchese.

I liked this article, even though it seems to go in different directions at the closing (meaning that the author doesn’t pull together all the preceding argumentation).

Here are the ideas that I´d like to highlight for discussion:

1. The issue of students’ evaluations NOT really reflecting the learning that has occurred in the class. I have given some thought to this issue in the past: satisfied students (students who give a positive evaluation) do not equal satisfactory (deep) learning. How useful are our present students’ evaluations in giving feedback about the learning taking place? Not much, and I say this even though I love it when students praise my teaching. A part of me, though, always asks whether I truly deserve it.

2. The distinction between surface and deep knowledge. Like the author, I much prefer this distinction to the active-passive learning one. The active-passive learning distinction evokes too much “doing”. In our Western and North American society, frantic doing is overvalued and often impedes the accruement of meaning that happens only by being able to pause and look again. That is, deep learning takes time. In this sense, I´d like to think about ourselves, the teachers at QCC, as a continuum. I might start preparing students for the deep learning that will take place in Belle’s class, for instance. For this, we need to renounce stardom (no “teacher of the year”, sorry) and conceive our classes more in the line of open-ended processes.

Also, deep learning, I think, might sometimes look very passive to an observer, because it happens within the person. It is an inner phenomenon.

3. “Clarity about the character of learning we intend for students” and Swedish university students not getting the point of what they were studying “simply because they were not looking for it”. I have become quite aware of this issue lately, and I have begun asking students what the point of a certain activity they have just done is. Suppose students have just read or studied a chapter where the tools for doing that activity are explained. Yet, they don’t know to which part of the chapter the activity refers. They don’t know then, what the purpose of the activity is, but they still do it obediently and blindly. Now I ask them all the time: “What is this activity about?” I even require that they write it when they hand in assignments. I am determined to fight that blindness.

4. Apprenticeship. Not only do we lack apprenticeship modes in our teaching-learning dynamics, but we have not had apprenticeship in our own learning of the teaching career! One comes before one's first College class knowing very little about teaching, and moves throughout a whole life of teaching without ever considering her/himself and apprentice with a cohort of teachers and peers. These seminars could be an apprenticeship process for us.