The Times

From the NY Times Education Section (11/7/04) this Sunday. How to measure teaching effectiveness? The best correlation is teacher expertise accounts for more difference in student performance (40%) than any other factor. What is expertise? A constellation of factors = catagories such as subject knowledge, pedagogy, relationship between students and teachers. Effective teachers know their subject and have high expectations, do whatever it takes to help children learn the material and don't give up.

Also a web site on how to do sentence diagraming - would this be worth checking out? webster.commnet.edu/grammar/diagrams/diagrams.htm

last of best teachers

“I will do everything possible to help you learn and develop your abilities, but you must decide if you want to engage in this experience. If you do decide to join this enterprise, there are some things you must resolve to do to make worthwhile for you and others in the group.”
Trust again – little worry that students might try to trick them, take home tests, talking about own intellectual journey

Assessment – the question is not about the performance exactly, the test score but what kind of intellectual and personal development do I want my students to enjoy in this class and what evidence do I need to collect about the nature and progress of their development? Focus on the learning, not the score. This brings up counting off late papers – the rationale = need to learn to meet a deadline? Or how it impacts the community of learners? Do the students read each other’s papers? What are the standards for the “real world” and for professors? Counting off more often this relates to performance than learning. Another approach is to help students with time. Provide a 24/7 grid and identify when sleeping, eating etc. Need to have two hours of homework time or won’t have the time for this course. “If you finish each task by the appointed day, you will make orderly progress toward the goals of the semester.” Grades are to represent an assessment of students’ thinking not meeting some arbitrary rule – an emphasis upon learning. Another technique – using cumulative tests, the first test covers material from the beginning of the course and so do all subsequent tests to make learning permanent, not just something to get through in a single test

Does the teaching help and encourage students to learn in ways that make a sustained, substantial and positive difference in the way they think, act, or feel –without doing them any major harm. (1) Is the material worth learning? (2) Are my students learning what the course is supposedly teaching? (3) Am I helping and encouraging the students to learn (or do they learn despite me)? (4) Have I harmed my students (perhaps fostering short-term, strategic or bulimic learning)?

“Teaching with your mouth shut.”

summary: importance of focus on the student, understanding and dialoguing about the desire outcomes (goals), use of assessment to determine "performance vs. learning"

best college teachers

How do they conduct class? (1) An intriguing question or problem (2) helping to see the significance of the question (embed the disciplines issues in broader concerns) (3) higher-order intellectual activity - not only listen and remember but compare, apply, evaluate, analyze, synthesize (4) an enviroment that helps students answer the question (5) leaving students with a question "what's the next question?" (at the end of class - what conclusion did you draw? what questions remain in your mind?)
seek commitment - the decision to take the class is a decision to attend every class each time it meets and my commitment is offer sessions worth attending (let me know if it is not happening) Ask for a show of hands of students willing to be on time each day and participate intellectually, the decision to take the course is yours, but once you make that decision, you have responsibilities to everyone else in this community of learners.
emphasize basic concepts and then add more complexity, use everyday examples - good explanations are not necessarily the most accurate or detailed but allow for the beginning of constructing understanding
creating heterogenous communities - ask the most experienced person to stand in one place and match with less experienced
group work system = individually collect thoughts on paper, then with someone else (think then pair), then pairs pair up with other pairs (think/pair/square), then full class (think/pair/square/share)
Burgess minute around - each student gets one minute to make initial contribution to discussion, the longer students sit without saying anything, the harder it is to bring them into the discussion
- ask "before we get started" questions to avoid the "playing student" responses

Summary: present choice and expect commitment (personal responsibility), learning through "essences" and layers of increasing complexity, expect engagement and contribution (build community)

Trust

This seems to be an important point in What the Best Teachers Do - trust. The need for assignments to flow, not from school or grade, but something that is of benefit personally and intellectually. Also from teacher's rejection of power over them, try to leave control over education to the students. And set standards where you are incapable of imagining students not thinking and acting on the highest level.
The promising syllabus (1) what opportunities will this course hold for intellectual and emotional growth (2) what will be done to realize these promises, if they decide to stay with the class what will they need to achieve (3) and a summary of what we understand learning to be - beginning a dialogue with the students
How to teach critical thinking - pit great thinkers (plato vs. aristotle) against each other and make students chose, enter great controversies, take a stand and defend it, careful questioning and structured assignments that allow for practice and feedback before evaluation, teach how to read material and critically think about it
to engage in meaningful learning (that allows re-examination of thinking in some fundamental ways) (1) need to care about the issue (2) ample opportunity to apply learning to meaningful problems
nonjudgemental responsiveness = challenging work and an environment that constantly tells them that intelligence can be expanded, "you don't teach a class, you teach a student"

Summary: ask and perform higher thinking skills that has personal relevance, creation of meaning must have some meaning to begin with

November, best teachers continued

I didn't fully appreciate the study cited in What the Best College Teachers Do about issues of racism and stereotypes at first. It seemed a little obvious but after awhile it became clear how this relates to Landmark students. First of all there is the obvious problem of facing repeated messages of being inferior and how this leads to dropping out and building a life in another area. But what about those who are well prepared and successful, who still as African Americans still lag behind similar groups on European American students. Is it possible that even as we, as targets, consciously reject negative images, these stereotypes still exert a strong influence upon our selfconcept. This is the theory, that we cannot escape the shadow of beliefs around us. In the very least there is this ongoing awareness of this prejudice adding a level of anxiety that others don't have to face. For those without the stereotypes they have to deal with the stress of the work itself, while those with the stereotypes (another example is females and math) have an additonal burdon, triggers of reminders. This is called "stereotype vulnerability." It's a matter of "vigilant worry about the future". The solution, as far as developed so far, seems to be if we can keep people from thinking that someone else is viewing them through the lens of a negative stereotype. This idea is simple enough but enacting it appears more difficult. It becomes a matter of explanation and expectation. Effective teaching appears to mean to "expect more and to get students to produce it with great satisfaction." It's a web, of which the individual strands seem a little superficial but put them together... here they are listed below.
1) look for and appreciate the individual value of each student
2) have great faith in students ability to achieve (this seems to be a critical step for working at Landmark. I am always alarmed when I hear faculty badmouth students, not in a personal way but more subtly, as in making assumptions and shortchanging their motivations and not seeing the overall complexity within our students that, like all humans, they operate under). This sounds a lot like the self-fulfilling prophecy idea - impacting others with genuine, challenging but realistic, serious work. An important implication for this our methods of feedback for students. One study suggests that very different, opposite types of feedback (one with directives, the other with compliments then criticisms) does not really change how many students made changes. However, those with negative images did not do much at all. They did however, respond to a third method - to combine high standards and assurance - suggesting that they will be judge by standards rather than negative images (which they are carrying in their heads). Set the standards and communicate a strong trust in students ability to meet them. It is important that this trust be surrounded by an attitude of intellectual excitement and curiousity (rather than worry and doubt).

Summary: remember the individual (and our personal barriers) and basic assumption that people want to learn (innate curiousity)

Internet in the news 1

I like to use an Internet in the News feature to my CO217 course but that isn't until next spring semester. So here are some notes to use in the future. These come from the Sunday NY Times Oct. 31, 2004.

Christian Porn sites - a way for ministry to reach out to people about this issue. xxxchurch.com is one example. What's interesting is that they have set up a system that does not use filters to screen out porn. Instead you can download something called x3watch that they call "accountability software." If you visit a porn site it sends a message to your "accountability partner." They say "Filters don't work. Kids are smarter than that. Filters don't bring up conversation. A filter avoids the topic. Accountability forces you and another person to talk about what you are looking at. That's hard. We would have more downloads if it was a filter."

Internet and politics (current election) - The internet has been a source of vicious and half-baked rumors. However it has also been an effective watchdog on mainstream media, a direct route to candidate's records and checking of facts - one good source = FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Center. On the other hand all this fact checking has reduced information to its smallest elements and reduced its value. Facts become subject to endless spin and truth becomes harder to tell. Wikipedia has been suffering from thousands of edits about wording of Kerry-Bush biographies with partisan tit-for-tat - called "edit wars." Despite this there seems to be some value for large collection of individuals to operate in a peer review way. For example, the exposure of CBS in using fraudulent documents for a story, or advertisements that are doctored. James Surowiecki suggest that online squads of opposition researchers is mostly a plus. He compares it to "open source" software - collective judgement is usually very good. The important thing to remember is that these systems work best when "people are diverse in information and attitude and opinion" and work independently of each other. Once they start taking cues from each other the benefits diminish because judgement becomes clouded by bias. By and large this online development is like the founders idea of marketplace of ideas where good ideas generally win out. Of course, there are online scams and shoddy goods - it's not a "perfect market" as EBay calls itself but we need a healthy dose of skepticism. The point is that we need to be savvy consumers in the marketplace of ideas.