Hi Mackinley and Emma,
I assume that you all enjoy reading about LC as we love the fundamental concept. However, for some reason, I have tried to find some points in LC that we can critique about in order to better construct our meaning about this ideology in dynamic ways.
1. Evaluation in LC.
Schiro pointed out that LC prefers "authentic evaluation" that "describes students' performance during typical instructional activities" (p. 146). I like the richness of authentic evaluation (through portfolio or journal logs) than traditionally numbered or alphabetized grading, as the former can facilitate learners' development and growth more authentically. However, LC proponents' basic assumption seems too ideal in this society. They oppose to standardized testing because to them it "fails to describe children's growth....provide no information to individualize and improve instruction....emphasize lower order thinking" (p. 145). But, the reality in our society is that there are numerous standardized tests waiting for our students, such as SAT, GRE, BAR exam, and others. What do you think about this gap between LC's ideal aim and practices (development of individual growth) vs. standardized testing's expectations (social needs)? Have you incorporated this ideal LC curriculum in your school, really ideally? Have you encountered any conflicts? What is your stance about this LC's one of the fundamental assumptiosn that encourage us, teachers, to incorporate authentic evaluation, no grading, but long and rich narrative evaluation?
2. Children's Own Decision Making
Another basic assumption in LC is that children (learners at any age) will decide what they will learn. In LC, adult's intervention is regarded negatively as Schiro cited Johnson in p. 106, "children should not be conscious of [or subjected to] adult expectancy. This is a source of self-consciousness and waste in childhood." Children make their own decision - based on the age and development level. One question to ponder here would be, what if parents (or other curriculum makers) argue that the students are too young to make right decision? The pond water example was awesome, but what if students decided to not to progress further learning, for example what if they decided not to move up the the points of writing booklet of the poisonous ivy (going against the teachers' suggestion/direction)? We see that there was a teacher's suggestion/direction at every point in the pond water example, that is, giving books about dragon and letting them read and write using them. What if the students decide to not to follow the teachers' suggestions based on their decision? Rather, what if they vote to play more days in the pond? Should the teacher accept that decision made by the students? In LC, any decisions children made should be accepted (as the decision is their "interests" at that time)? Or would a teacher at that time intervene to say "no, we should do that"? If she intervenes, it loses the fundamental philosophy of LC? (We may recall that the W&S's book in its appendix illustrated the drawbacks of having too much freedom given to students in curriculum making - some students just play outside, taking music classes only...and eventually many parents and even students complain about the "freedom" given to the students.) What do you think?
3. LA incorporating SA
To me, LC seems ideal. Interesting things in its details are that I can see some instructional aspects deriving from SA and even from SE. For example, in the pond water story, giving the students books about dragon and have them read (expecting them to construct meaning (reading skills and others) while they read) seems tied with SA, because the teacher's goal/intention/expectation (by giving the books) would teach the students the ways of scholarly thinking - I see that the learning here will occur from learners actively, as they will read by themselves, however, still the fact is that the teacher gave the books (if the teacher didn't give the book, it (the chances of learning in that way) might have not happened, thus "giving the book" might refer to "teaching" in my opinion). This is not clear cut indeed...however, I think that SA concepts (not 100%, but in modified way) embedded in LC. What do you think?
Incorporating SE as well?
Also, LC teachers assess students' progress by "observing, recording, and documenting" (Cruz-Acosta, cited in Schiro, p. 144). We see that the aim of this assessment is to plan and adjust the learning environment so that which can better facilitate students' growth. Despite the different goal of this assessing, this whole procedure (monitoring - changing environment - monitoring again...) recalls me the SE ideology's recording not mastering students' progress and adjusting the task level. I see the different nuances here between the word choices (mastering vs. growing, planning environment vs. adjusting task level). Nonetheless the recurring big cycle seems to align with SE. What do you think?
4. Reflection in Your Real Life
In Korea, at least to the best of my experience, LC-based school is very rare. Although this ideology was developed in early 1900s, I don't know why Korean education system seems not consider this ideology. What about in the US or France? Have you seen or experienced any LC-oriented school curriculum? How does it look like?
5. Dewey - Self-realization and Now or never
Reading Dewey's article, I kept nodding my head saying "ah....yeah....ah...wow..." He is phenomenal and I can see his stance to the old education and mere teaching that lead everything easily will be forgotten. Among many many great notions here, I would like to point out two concepts: "not knowledge or information, but self-realization, is the goal" (p.4) and "it [learning] is perhaps a matter of now or never" (p.5). From the constructivism viewpoint, Dewey pointed out that learning occurs through self-meaning-making through self-realization. He went, "to possess all the world of knowledge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion" (p. 4). This notion ties with the "now or never" concept, as if arbitrary external subject-matters led one to lose one's self, according to Dewey, the "now" moment may vanish and will not come again. This notion is fascinating to me, as it underlies the LC's foundational thoughts; however, I carefully want to critique the "never" part here. Is it really "now or never" type of thing? Can't learner recall the learning moment? Dewey said, "an opportunity goes, never to be recalled" (p. 5). Really? Is there any chance that a student tries to recall the moment as a process of self-realization even later? Again Dewey's article is very compelling to me as a whole, I try to be critical to construct better meaning. Any thoughts on this? And, what other notions in Dewey resonates with you?
5. Noddings - Shelter for thinking
In Noddings' chapter 6, one concept resonates with me is the home for "shelter for thinking and daydreaming" (p. 70). Her argument was very compelling as I agree with that we need private and public places at home, and the private place for daydreaming is essential in meaning-making, reflecting, and probably self-actualization as well. A quick thought to talk with you is that do we have this private "shelter for thinking" in our schools? What about your current or past schools? This notion reminds me of the Google's 20% free time for their employees; Google allow (or encourage) their employees to do nothing but anything they 'want' to do or think about for the 20% of their paid working time. Usually, coming with some unrealistic ideas, innovative ideas come up through the "shelter for thinking" time. What do you think? Have you experienced this as a teacher or a student? How may this notion be connected to the LC ideology?
6. Noddings - Spiritual but not religious
In ch. 9, her ideas for spiritual education just had my headache go away and wake up my brain while reading. What do you think about this concept of teaching "spiritual but not religious" aspects in our school? Specifically, questioning about God's omnipotent-ness, omniscient-ness, and all-goodness was very compelling to me (p. 128). One question about all-good-ness is here, to save our time, "if he is all good, why is there so much suffering in the world?" (p. 128) We know that her point was not leading believers to atheists, no. Rather she seems to help the whole human education, through discussion, not indoctrination. I may draw connections between this notion and LC in terms of helping "self-realization" (Dewey, p. 4), but honestly, the connections between the two seem subtle. So, two questions: (1) what do you think about this spiritual but not religious curriculum? (2) how do you think this notion relates to LC?
Any other questions and comments are welcome as always! Let's see how and where our human creative, simultaneous impulses led us to. Thanks! :)
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteThank you John for your post!
1. Evaluation in LC.
LC's ideal school has been around for some time, and I understand your reserve regarding evaluation and the expectations of society. Implementing LC's ideals takes a long time. It is gradual, but requires a drastic change in mentalities. In the ideal society, there are no standardized tests like the ones we have been exposed to. No SAT, no GRE...
When teaching social studies in France, I used a lot more individual/personal reflective assessment, helped them explore topics they were interested in (individually or in pairs), and students built the rubrics of the evaluations, just like what we are doing in Curriculum Theory, but I could not go far in that my students still had a standardized test in History and Geography at the end of the school year to determine if they were allowed to become hairstylists (it was a vocational school). This goes back to the idea that we need to operate a major shift in our way of perceiving evaluations, as the standardized aspects of tests and ranking remain prevalent in our communities. Families want them, because it is hard to decenter themselves and understand that things are changing, that we do not need to teach topics the way they (parents, for example) were taught 20-30 years earlier. Students want them because they are taught early on that ranking is important. Society as a whole likes to have standardized tests to know which schools are better than others, which ones are failing, where money should go, and where teachers with no experience should be sent (France has a very different system from here: once teachers are certified, they can be sent to teach anywhere in the country, especially in "difficult schools"...)
I think this class is a good example approaching LC ideology, in that we are given the choice to follow/investigate what we are interested in (theorists, build a curriculum...), we build the rubrics together, we discuss our understanding of the reading together, Dr. Beach wants us to "discover by [ourselves]" (p.107), we are given time to reflect alone... but again, in the end, we are given a grade because of external expectations and pressures.
Emma, I really like your thought here; yes, for some reason (could be the old education's humongous influence all around the generations in the world), our society seems to like ranking, grading, and maybe "labeling." Given the "fact", which seems quite natural to my opinion, what stance should we bear? For your hairstylist candidates for instance, how can we fulfill the two aims in our practices, realizing self-actializaiton (LC) and meeting the social expectations of standardized tests (SE probably)?
DeleteThat's the thing: I don't know if they can be compatible. Schiro says they're not...
DeleteAlso, I found this video, and I thought it was pretty relevant: https://www.facebook.com/viralthread/videos/569410533248648/
I found Prince Ea (who made this video) is kind of promoting this: https://www.neste.com/preorderthefuture/topics/renewable-learning-space/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=pof2016&utm_content=princeea_sw2
DeleteThanks for sharing the thought-provoking video Emma, I clicked "like" there haha.
DeleteOne resonating comment in the video was Frederick J Kelly's quote, "These tests (standardized tests) are too crude to be used, and it should be abondkanded." Hmm, still I'm in dilemma though, we see that standardization or qualification in the SE ideology is at some point necessary in our society, however, focusing on it too much may harm students' creativity, gifts, interests, and thus humanity. Yes..., we keep recurring around the topic, but I believe this is one of the fundamental questions we want to tackle though this course. What stance should teachers have between actualizing students' self vs. helping them prepare for the society...? The tests are waiting for our students, and for us too...
Ok, so I think that if you were to ask an in-practice, LC teacher the question "How can we fulfill the two aims in our practices, realizing self-actualization (LC) and meeting the social expectations of standardized tests (SE probably)?", they would likely all respond with a fairly similar response that would include something along the lines of "when done right, a child that is educated with a LC approach will have no problems passing the 'tests' that our current society/policy/framework insists that they take, as they will be adept problem solvers and thinkers." Now, this does not mean that they agree with the tests, like the tests, and/or feel that the tests give an accurate representation of their students abilities, and so on. But when one is forced to "conform" (for lack of a better word) to certain non-negotiables that do not align with their personal ideals and/or classroom practices (behind closed doors).
DeleteI've tried really hard to stay away from my personal experiences and thoughts as a practitioner and educator as we have been exploring the various ideologies. This particular proposition is one with which I am quite familiar though, and something I have wrestled with over the course of a developing identity and practice.
Thanks Mackinley, yes, I remember that lines and notions of LC - once students learns with the self-realization through LC they will handle the tests willingly because they are problem solvers. I see that because they learned "how to fish", not got the fish given from teachers. At this point, I'm thinking about one fundamental backgrounds of LC, the interestedness of learners. I mean in LC students learn actively once the target knowledge (or problems) have demonstrates their interests (the pond). With that in mind, what if any problems in their future do not interest them? What if the tests do not interest the students, so that the students do not want to take the tests at all? In that case, when students with self-realization has been willingly - with no retreat - decided to not to take the exams (SAT, GRE, BAR exams...), that would be fine as long as the students are satisfied with their choices. However, in reality, we have diverse "tests" waiting for them out there, and which are not likely appealing for our students "interests" authentically. I could be wrong, however, again how should teachers respond (or guide) to students, self-realized, who refuse to take any tests because the tests are not interesting to them?
DeleteHi again,
ReplyDeleteI did not get to finish my point in the previous point… So here it is: even though our class seems to be more in line with the Learner Centered ideology, it seems like it cannot escape other ideologies, and I keep trying to think if this comes from conflicting ideologies emerging from Dr. Beach – since she sees value in various (aspects of) ideologies – or from each one of us, through our contributions and conflicting positions. What are your thoughts on this? Do we need to frame ourselves in one ideology only? Is it contradicting ourselves to combine various aspects of ideologies that do not seem to work together, such as LC + the grades we receive after having built rubrics for our own evaluations?
Regarding your point on "children's Own Decision Making" and the place of teachers' suggestions, I particularly like your question on the actual role of the teacher when the students want to do something "unacademic". However, I do not think that it completely defeats the purpose of LC to have teachers suggest and guide. As explained p.104, the responsibility is shared between students, teachers and curriculum developers, but teachers are expected to "interact with students in ways that maximize their growth and self-actualization" (p.104). Even though this seems very nebulous, blurry and imprecise (which I think is the purpose because it requires to adapt to each situation/student/interest...), there is still a frame, and I cannot recall what page it was, but Schiro explains that children are given the choice between several options proposed by the teacher. Students do not get to do whatever they want, since teachers remain facilitators, providing for the interests and needs of the children via "relevant materials" (p. 107). Do you think in this case that if students do not want to learn things related to the pond, it is because the teacher is not providing them with an “intellectually rich, physically interesting, socially humane, emotionally joyous and aesthetically pleasing instructional environment”? Or is it the responsibility of the students, since “it is the task of the individuals in that environment to grow in their own natural self-actualizing ways” (p.110)?
What qualifies as relevant of learning from the LC ideology?
I think a particularly important part here is the distinction between LC and traditional school in the place of "action" and "experience", and the rejection of banking education, passing on what others have discovered, while students receive passively through readings, and sometimes videos, when they could actually experience themselves and discover facts for themselves (p. 107).
Thanks Emma. I agree with you, when comparing to the traditional ones, LC is definitely fostering "active" leaning, authentic meaning-making, and self-actualizstion. And I see that this is one of the main points here.
DeleteOne thing I, as a devil's advocate here, want to bring up seems quite tied into what you said eariler. You said that you probably can't escape from the old ideologies to some extent, so am I. My point here is that LC seems also took or adapted several instructional aspects from the old ideologies as well, just like how we feel about our practices. What I mean is that the "teacher's interventions - providing books to read for example" seems to have implicit "objectives" given by the teacher, isn't it? To be really really honest, the teacher's intervene was there (of course the core themes are selected by the students). I really like the fact that teachers' guides are provided on the perfect facilitating timings in LC, however, that "facilitating" seems to be still influenced by the classic ideologies, SA and SE, not only from the teacher's side but also from the student's side. For example, although Dr. Beach gave us freedom to choose and negotiate for our own meaning-making, which is what I really like, we as students feel really good whenever Dr. Beach gave us specific prompts, guidelines, and comfirmation on our understanding.
Long story short, as we see that we are influenced by diverse ideologies for many different aspects, to me, LC also (even very minorly) shares SE, SA's aspects here and there, SE (teacher's guideline, as a teacher on the higher position in the academic hierarchy), SA ("observing" students progress and giving feedback).
I could be wrong though, and my discussion seems a bit chaotic here. But, for some reason, your comments and our discussion led me to this discussion (simultaneous impluse! :). What do you think?
I also agree with you regarding the overlaps or borrowing of SA and SE ideologies, even though LC constructs itself as a radical ideological change. The place of the teacher and her/his role is still difficult for me to really understand, and Schiro mentions this blurry limit as well: "There is always the question: To what extent is the teacher really a director of everything that goes on in the classroom, versus simply a facilitator of student growth, because of the way the teacher sets up and monitors the learning environment in which students learn and grow?".
DeleteOne thing I keep thinking about is the applicability in language learning. As long as we will have this over representation of grammar, I do not see how we can develop LC curricula. Bill VanPatten focuses on the communicative approach for this reason: what do students want to learn? and allows a larger space for culture, but he remains in the minority...
Emma, we know that the word "facilitating" is a metaphor of teaching here, and to the best of my memory, which term falls into the "structionalism" of the genealogy spectrum. To me, facilitating implies that teachers' intervention/guiding/"directing" is considered. To compare, "post"-structuralism's metaphor was empowering. Since constructivism is the framework for LC, facilitating (with implicit instructing embedded in the environment here and there) implies teachers delicately designed learning environment based on the students' interests, but still teachers do guide students' choices tapping to the "objectives" implicitly designed in a curriculum (the objectives could be both self-actualization and constructing knowledge through the self-actualization and active meaning-making). This is probably why LC proponents emphasize the "organic-ness" of education.
DeleteFor incorporating LC into language classes, I think that theme-based or task-based language learning (the themes and tasks are chosen by the students with teachers' guides) could be an example. We want to remember that one of the core elements of LC is to respect students' interests and activeness, experiencing, and meaning-making out of all of them. With that in mind, I think the aforementioned examples could be a good approach of LC into L2 classroom. In my case, I have students to create their own survey questions on a topic they choose, from a textbook we studied together, and go out to OU to interview people and make a presentation out of that experience. I tried to embedded LC components there, however, I do have SE and SA components as well (checking their sentence structures, pronunciations, and other component-level things). I could be wrong though, what do you think? I am curious about what VanPatten said as well. Could you let us know more about his idea in this topic?
Haha I had the same thought when I read this term "facilitating", referring to Davis' ideologies. I think the meaning behind the definitions and terms is very lose, because both authors place different values under them.
DeleteRegarding Van Patten, his idea is that classroom time is for practice, whereas what happens at home is acquisition of the skills. He does not spend time explaining grammatical concepts in class. Students can read (about) them on their own. Classroom activities focus on practice based on the grammar learned, but also on students' interests. This requires a lot of collaboration, a ton of speaking and listening... We can talk more about it another time :)
Very interesting! I remember that Van Patten also mentioned about information processing, but I didn't know that he dealt with in that concept, sounds great to me! :) This discussion reminds me of the "outside the classroom learning time" that lots of current language researchers address. Outside the classroom learning time may align with LC as well, what do you think? Do the students in the pond water example put efforts on the outside classroom time? I guess so, but I will check it again. :)
DeleteHi there!
DeleteJohn in your original post, and again in your initial response above, you mention...
" 'teacher's interventions - providing books to read for example' seems to have implicit "objectives" given by the teacher, isn't it? To be really really honest, the teacher's intervene was there (of course the core themes are selected by the students)."
I was surprised that you view this as the presentation of implicit objectives. I would disagree and state that this is one way in which the teacher creates opportunity for learning by providing a variety of materials for the students to explore.
Now, if the teacher gives the students ONE book or ONE article, and tells them (or very strongly manipulates what they are supposed to walk away from it having learned, then I think that is different and you could then think more along the lines of implicit objectives.
However, remember that even though they aren't called 'objectives', LC teaching still involves goals that the teacher has for the students. Perhaps what makes them (SE 'objectives' and LC 'goals') different is the role that they play once they are enacted, as well as the significance that they play in the scope of mastery and progression?
Thoughts?
I think there is a very fine line that even Schiro had a hard time defining. I understand the conflicting stances you both have, and I still think this very fine line leaves space for a lot of ambiguity and interpretation of what makes facilitating from Schiro's perspective a learner-centered approach of teaching or a more adult-driven and traditional approach.
DeleteHi Emma.
DeleteI see how it could appear that way, however, I think that when you consider the "ideals" of each, they are much more easily distinguished. When we look at current instantiations of LC teaching and learning in an effort to see LC in its "ideal form" and uninfluenced by other factors, I do believe that there are some settings in which one is more likely to be able to observe true, "ideal" LC teaching and learning. It is in these more "pure" places that I believe the lines become less fuzzy.
Hi Mackinley, I carefully think that if SE people and LC people debate on their practices, the former may mention that "LC people, I understand your ideal approach, that is fantastic. However, I see that some of your practices are aligning with what we are doing. For example, to me you also have a specific "sequence" in your teaching, although which begins with finding students' interests, you still have a sequence (finding students' interests - going over the interests - finding how teachers can help giving authentic experiences (activities) to connect the interests with learning (reading/writing...etc) - observing progress and giving feedback - evaluation with rich narratives. See, you have a sequence, although this is organic, which is what I like. And, this existence of sequence is quite tieing with SE's basic principle."
DeleteWith that in mind, I, as a biased from the Davis book, the ideologies share some aspects from each as the branches share the same root in the bifurcation relations. I see the differences clearly, but also see the blurry, or fuzzy, sharing portions of the venn-diagram here. What do you think about this sharing aspects across the different ideologies?
Hi Mackinley, I would leave a thought for your additional question:
ReplyDelete"However, remember that even though they aren't called 'objectives', LC teaching still involves goals that the teacher has for the students. Perhaps what makes them (SE 'objectives' and LC 'goals') different is the role that they play once they are enacted, as well as the significance that they play in the scope of mastery and progression? Thoughts?"
I think you pointed out one of the important things when comparing the two ideologies, we see the differences between "objectives - goals" and "mastering - growing" (I remember that LC teachers hope their students to grow rather than master :). I totally agree with you that this distinction tell us the differences and line between the two. However, what I mean by the "objectives (implicit again)" was the fact that teachers gave, even though it was OPEN-choice based, a set of guided selection. (Again to take the devil's advocate), what if students purely are not interested in any of the given list and refuse to explore one of them? In that case, what response/guide/facilitation should the teacher make, to not to harm the students' self-realization and growing? I could be totally wrong, but for some reason this question is all in my brain when I see LC and other ideologies. Let's talk more about it tomorrow. Thanks! :)