Urban Culture and Underserved Populations, Community College Pedagogy in the 21st Century

Audits of Learning

I've been reading widely across the blog posts this morning - affect, emotion and learning, deep learning versus surface learning, race - and also reflecting on the WAC workshop I ran last night for people teaching WI classes for the first time and our conversation there about ESL student writing and our collective difficulty in addressing ESL student texts in ways that (we hope are) productive...

part of that conversation revolved around the emotional states of ESL students and the level of comfort (for lack of a better word) that ESL students do or do not feel vis-a-vis working in English...

and thinking, as well, about a conversation I had with one of my classes about "how they are doing" (seriously, that is what I asked one morning) and after a few moments of awkward silence, they spilled

I  started thinking (again) about how we audit the learning going on in our classes:

I guess I'm thinking here not only about tests or quizzes that we may give (I gave a "pop" quiz on an essay I asked my class to read the other day, not only to make sure they read the assignment but also to gauge their understanding of the essay in context of the larger issues of the class), but the other ways we audit the learning (a colleague next door to me is meeting with his students in one on one conversations, for example). 

So I have several questions: what kinds of audits do we use? how do we use them? do they combine auditing not only the..."factual" learning of a class but also the affective domains, as well?

Peter

Cognition and Affect

I wanted to pick up on the conversation that started at last week's seminar about the role of emotions in learning.  i think its no accident that we wound up at this place, given the focus of the two speakers on issues of community building in educational contexts.

To begin, I wanted to clarify some of the terminology we were using because, for some, it is new territory. The term "affective" is used (particularly in the fields of psychology, education) as an adjective that means: "pertaining to or exciting emotion." "Affect" refers to feeling or emotion.

To give you an idea of the degree to which interest in the role of the affective in learning is being investigated at the institutional level, I point your attention to JCAL, The Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning, a peer reviewed journal published out of Oxford College at Emory University.

I also wanted to direct your attention to this article, "Affective Learning--a manifesto," (linked here) from the October 04 issue of BT Technology Journal, a special issue published in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. In some ways it is a bizarre piece of literature in that it has, as one of its goals, the development of a theory of affective learning that would enable/support the design of "intelligent" "teaching" computers that could respond to learner's affective responses and needs as well as their cognitive responses and needs.

At this time, I don't want to even begin to say what I think about that project, (I'm some combination of appalled, bemused, and intrigued) BUT, that said, I like this article very much in the ways that it clearly lays out the established importance of affect in learning as well as some of the challenges, terminologies, and theories. I also like it because it is written by and for scientists and I feel therefore that it may help to bridge the humanities/sciences dualism that sometimes colors our conversations about the role of emotion/affect in learning--where the affective is characterized by some as that "touchy feely" stuff that's fine in English classes but has no place in the  rigorous realm of the sciences.

I would like to invite all of you to read this article with me and to continue, here on the blog, the conversation we started in the seminar last Friday.

Another issue of interest that was raised, (by Peter) but not yet fully explored was the degree to which we are prone to speak and think of emotion and learning (cognition and affect) as separate things--and even as at odds with each other, rather than interdependent. This issue is addressed some in the article and would bear further exploration here as well.

--Belle

Teaching in a Community College

Teaching in a community college is one of the many rewarding services that we can offer to our community. You have to have a passion for people to be happy with your job as a community college teacher. The quality of teaching is not based on the degree that you have but it is based on the commitment for the quality of teaching. You have to have an open mind and an open heart  to help, which is the only way that you can decipher how you can offer the best learning experience for the “people” who are your students.

With the open door policy of community colleges we are inviting people to come to us to help them achieve their dreams. Our students are coming from diverse backgrounds, age, requirements, culture and learning ability. They have jobs, they have other commitments and they have taken the very important decision of educating themselves, to either change or advance in  their career or complete a degree and do something for themselves.

Comparing a “two year college” or more commonly called “community college” to a four year college, we have to determine our roles as instructors and what is required from us to do the best job? We cannot assume the role of “instructors as dictators”, we cannot assume that all students have the ability to take responsibility to excel and we cannot adhere to our traditional format of teaching or being teachers.

The mainstream student body is to attain a degree or skill to entitle them to get into the workforce. Teaching should be the emphasis of a college that claims itself to be a community college.

I would like to quote – “ Although instructors often view themselves as the ultimate authority on the subject matter, it is still up to the learners to determine whether the ideas presented in the session should be incorporated into their work or personal lives. Despite the primary role of the learner, instruction is not a passive, laid-back, go-with-the-flow process for the instructor. As the facilitator and catalyst for participants’ learning, the instructor makes it possible for learning to happen by designing and performing all the activities that the learning process requires. Sullivan, Wircenski, Arnold and Sarkees (1990) assert that the establishment of a positive learning climate hinges on understanding the characteristics of adult learners who will be participating in the instructional process.”

Students who come to our classes are adults. Adults have different attitude towards learning – they have experience; they have a mental model of the topic or the class that they are taking; they have expectations; they tend to decide what they need to learn and they have the need to validate the information and above all they have self respect.

Taking into account all of these premonitions, the teacher/instructor has to think differently.

I have prioritized the requirements as I think will help to be effective.

1. To create professional, caring, welcome atmosphere in the classroom.
2. The teacher has to place himself/herself to the students as a facilitator and guide.
3. As we, the instructors, value student’s knowledge and capacity to learn, the mode of instruction will not be the traditional way of dissemination and assimilation of information.
4. Emphasis has to be on active participation. Instructor has to set a dialogue that instruction will be through interaction.
5. Getting to know the students is essential. This allows to break the barrier between instructor and student, it is respectful and provides for self-esteem.
6. To know their expectations. Asking questions as “What is my (student’s) role in the class and what is the role of the instructor?”
7. To assess their knowledge at the beginning of each teaching unit. A common way of doing that is to have a pre-lecture quiz on the topic or raise a discussion topic.
8. Based on the input from the class, the instructor has to design the mode of delivery of information to make it most effective.
9. To provide students with supplemental material to keep them engaged and connected to the material, when not in class and to create their curiosity or desire to learn more on the topic from relevant research work and web links.
10. Assessing whether their learning has met our expectations. The instructor has to have a variety of assessment techniques to evaluate student learning.

---Samita

1. To create professional, caring, welcome atmosphere in the classroom.
2. The teacher has to place himself/herself to the students as a facilitator and guide.
3. As we, the instructors, value student’s knowledge and capacity to learn, the mode of instruction will not be the traditional way of dissemination and assimilation of information.
4. Emphasis has to be on active participation. Instructor has to set a dialogue that instruction will be through interaction.
5. Getting to know the students is essential. This allows to break the barrier between instructor and student, it is respectful and provides for self-esteem.
6. To know their expectations. Asking questions as “What is my (student’s) role in the class and what is the role of the instructor?”
7. To assess their knowledge at the beginning of each teaching unit. A common way of doing that is to have a pre-lecture quiz on the topic or raise a discussion topic.
8. Based on the input from the class, the instructor has to design the mode of delivery of information to make it most effective.
9. To provide students with supplemental material to keep them engaged and connected to the material, when not in class and to create their curiosity or desire to learn more on the topic from relevant research work and web links.
10. Assessing whether their learning has met our expectations. The instructor has to have a variety of assessment techniques to evaluate student learning.

Metaphors for knowledge/random thoughts

I have always referred to students as mine or my "kids" and somehow had convinced myself that this meant I cared about them, which I genuinely do. However, it never occurred to me, and apparently not to them either, that there are connotations of ownership and power contained in those possessive pronons.

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In response to Belle's comments about how we so easily reduce things to economic relationships, I think the same can be said of the educational community. More and more we hear about how there are achievement gaps for underserved students, yet the very measures aimed at helping those students are targeted at the students most likely to be successfull and not those that are neediest. We are about to offer scholarships to students who can commit to a full-time education and are triple-exempt from any type of remedial work. While this is admirable, it ignores a large population of students who have tuition covered by PELL grants, but cannot come full-time because  most work to supplement the family's meager public assistance allowances. These students are often those who are in the lowest-level remedial classes, who may have GEDs because they dropped out of day school to work to support the household and who are now being excluded from an opportunity to get ahead. If we only wish to help those who don't need remedial work and don't need to work to help their families, aren't we making an economic choice to help only those who will provide the biggest pay-off to the college? Can we and should we be doing more?

Margot

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.

Reading assignment from Estela Rojas

Here are links to the two articles that Estala Rojas suggested we read:

A Transition for Community Colleges: Teaching Institutions to Learning Institutions. by Jim Reynolds and Stuart Werner

Maturana's Biology and some Possible Implications for Education. by Joy Murray.

Background for Frances Lucerna's talk

Frances Lucerna did not assign any reading associated with her talk but she identified the following topics that would provide background for the work they are doing at El Puente and for her lecture. Arancha has located some websites associated with these topics, which you should look at in preparation for the next seminar.

Paolo Freire (and Popular Education, Education for Liberation):

http://www.edb.utexas.edu/faculty/scheurich/proj3/freire1.html

http://www.paulofreire.org/

http://mingo.infoscience.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/linksfreire.htm

CBO schools:

http://www.cydjournal.org/2001Summer/CBO.html

http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/CBOHighSchools.pdf

Project Based Learning:

http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_884&key=037

Small School Movement:

http://www.ccsdistrict.org/McKinley/smallschools.html