review of Hybrid Pedagogy's "LEARNING FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: HIGHER ED AND THE PROCESS OF BECOMINg"
This article, remarkably, touches on a lot of concepts that I've been thinking about as a teacher lately. These include issues like how to encourage a growth mindset, learning as risk taking (and how to encourage it), and how to bring aspects of affect into the classroom (i.e. how to care about students as whole learners, not just a set of skills- for of course skill growth and how one feels about oneself as a learner are deeply connected!). While the authors compare the way a pre-k teacher might give a gentle hug to a student, they list "other ways to 'hold'" students by talking to students about their own concerns, goals and intentions, and "In these ways we hope to separate our care for them as persons from assignment grades or other elements of class." Lovely.
Another section that struck me was in their section about respecting students as human equals, with the idea that setting ourselves up as holders of knowledge doesn't make room for knowing and learning to be a two way street, and takes away students' ability to influence a course:
It is almost as if we make a deal with students: we will give you information if you leave your self, who you are and what you otherwise care about, at the door (and we promise we’ll do the same). Learning will be better, we imply, if it’s not mixed up with actually being people.
Yikes. And yet....as much as I base my thinking about education on non-"banking" principles, I've come to run a very transfer-based course. My students need so much guidance around writing that I did not feel comfortable letting them "flounder" - pursuing the same old strategies that have led to failure in the past. At the same time, although my course doesn't leave a lot of room for students to choose their own topics, I'm trying hard to more explicitly create room for their responses and experiences in their writing. In the end, how the hell else can students have an opinion or form an argument if it's not based on some part of their own life experience?
[To deal with this problem,] teachers can minimize traditional forms of information transfer (lecture or videos). In their stead, we can create environments where students care about practicing, feel supported in practicing, and are challenged to practice both disciplinary and soft skills.
This to me is the real challenge. In my online courses, I have had experiences where I care about practicing. It is always where one of two things is happening: 1) a topic I feel passionately about or 2) knowledge that moves me forward in my profession (or both!). This week I'm excited to learn video software, read new articles, and work on a research paper on supporting neurodiversity in a writing classroom because I feel thankful to be learning these things! Anything that feels un-relevant immediately sparks up boredom, annoyance and resistance . In this way, I think being a student myself, and reflecting on that experience, has been the best guide for me as a teacher. Without empathy for their experience as learners, how can we design learning that makes sense to them!?
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