While planning for tomorrow's class, this was part of the view from my office window.

great questions to ask

How do you know?

How did you decide?

Why do you believe that?

more info on overcoming misconceptions

Hah. no sooner had I noted that I wanted more information on dealing with students' misconceptions that a ran across useful tips.

In How People Learn, Ch 7, p179, two strategies are discusses, bridging and interactive lecture demonstrations.
bridging - use series of intermediate analogous situations to bridge distance between their misconcepttions and correct belief, called the anchoring conception. is a dynamic probing of students' beliefs.

interactive lecture demonstrations
before conducting demonstration, ask students to discuss upcoming demo and predict outcome. then do demo, and typcially students have predicted incorrectly But through discussion following demo students can move from their previous conceptions to more accurate ones.

Impt to note that timely feedback is essential here. "delays of only 20-30 minutes in displaying graphical data after seeing a demo has negative effect on correctly learning the concept.

areas to investigate further

1. clarifying what misconceptions students tend to have in Ped2,
2. and then figure out how to best address them.

4th of July

4th of July
Originally uploaded by themexican.

being patriotic?

students' mental blocks

But what happens or any ideas to help a student who is experiencing a mental block akin to writers block snap out of it and begin to think more critically and begin uncovering the realities?

Mark, you wrote this in response to some of Brookfield's thoughts, but I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. In the situation you are thinking about, when does this mental block appear? Or how does it manifest? Could you clarify a bit more?

aruba_marriott.JPG

aruba_marriott.JPG
Originally uploaded by lainey.

if you have to be working, this is not a bad place to be doing it.

aruba_bry_swing.JPG

aruba_bry_swing.JPG
Originally uploaded by lainey.

This was Bryna testing the rope swing on the Jolly Pirate before she got a gash on her leg while snorkeling around a partially sunken WWII vessel which required 4 hours at the local hospital, fours stiches, and teh dictum to stay out of the water for 7-10 days.

We'll see how long that lasts;-)

Pedagogical Assumptions

Sherley asked what kind of assumptions can get uncovered with reflection. Some examples of assumption that Brookfield gives are:

1. Assumption: it's common sense to reduce lecturing because lecturing stymies critical thinking and student engagement.
BUT: students may need time to get familiar with a topic or subject area before feeling ready to engage critically. The teacher could lecture in a way that stimulated critical thinking as the first step.

2. Assumption: its common sense to use learning contracts because they give students a sense of control.
BUT: Students could view learning contracts as a device that the teacher is using because s/he is lazy and doesn't want to take the time to figure out what the students should be raged on.

It is through thinking about one's course from a variety of perspectives that one can uncover other realities that we may not be aware of.

Head

Head
Originally uploaded by cdevo.

hmmm, this is emblemmatic of the lack of clarity I sometimes feel when trying to balance needs of students in the class with the original structure and intent of the course as designed.

Making the switch from instructivist teaching to learner-centered teaching is a process and definitely not a linear upwards progression.

One of the texts I have been referring to is Brookfield's, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (1995). It is from Brookfield that I took the CIQ that I am using for the first time. Brookfield goes on to talk about the purposes of reflection: "The first is to understand how considerations of power undergird, frame and distort educational processes and interactions. The second is to question assumptions and practices that seem to make our teaching lives easier but actually work against our own best long-term interests" (p. 8).

4 polaroids

4 polaroids
Originally uploaded by themexican.

I love this idea! I bet it could be used as part of an assignment in a K-12 classroom in any number of ways.
The guy who took the photos talks about the realization that things change so quickly and are transitory, so he thought it would be an interesting project to record images of himself every day over a period of time (a year?). Then he would be able to go back and notice changes. You will want to click on the image itself and read his words to get his original thinking because he explains it much better than I.