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Alternatives to Orthodox Classroom Methods – 2009 November 13
Should we develop and promote unorthdox methods of learning and teaching among Open Educational Resources (OERs)?
- ◊ Good teachers use a variety of methods of teaching in the classroom, and set up contexts for a variety of learning modes for their students. That they use them might be an argument against calling them unorthodox, but for this rant, unorthodox means alternatives to the standard pattern: teacher in the front of the class, students sitting in rows facing the teacher, teacher making a verbal presentation of the content, students allowed to ask questions of clarification after the presentation.
- ◊ Here are a few examples for illustration. The list is in no way comprehensive, but may stimulate you to think up others.
- ◊ An important learning method alternative, described more elsewhere, is the aural method of learning an oral language. No notes, no text books, no memorizing grammar rules. It works well even for languages that are written.
- ◊ Many different kinds of role playing can be set up. Perhaps the best is where the students take on specific roles and are asked to invent their own dialogue. This can be used for acting out an historical situation or event, a case study of a topic within one of many classes, a possible future event. A more complex role play to set up, and a bit more restrictive in terms of student creativity, is where the dialogue, or some of it, is prepared by the teacher. Here, though, specific quotations can be used out of an historical text book or a text of case studies. A role play can be any length from a few minutes to longer. Shorter is perhaps best. There should be time for the participants and non participants to comment on and analyze the role play.
- ◊ Simulation games differ from role play in that the participants are not seen to be acting out parts, but are set tasks and goals, individually and/or in groups, that they attempt to achieve to play the game. One of the most useful simulation game is Starpower, which I used in the late sixties and early seventies to teach about class and caste systems, with a focus on Apartheid. It is described in the inequality section of my sociology modules. When done well a simulation game can instill feelings and perspectives in the participants, often at odds with each other, and the huge energy created requires lots of time and guidance in debriefing afterwards.
- ◊ Puppets, flannel cloth and magnetic boards. Puppets can be a lot of fun because of their entertainment function. They go way back into history and are used in many societies. It is important however, that the students do not simply watch them passively, as we are wont to do in this television age. Making the puppets, and writing a play for them is far more productive. Here they are similar to role playing noted above. Flannel boards are like puppets but more appropriate when you need less action among the players. They are good for non animate props, and a cardboard "puppet" on a stick can be used over them to add action where needed. Magnetic boards can be played the same way, but usually need commercially manufactured figures, unlike flannel which lends itself better to making the props and characters in class. If you can get some generic fridge magnets, cardboard characters and props can be pasted onto the magnets and you then are less dependent upon commercial ones, and the students can make them.
- ◊ Song, dance and culture groups. In many communities, or nearby, local amateur performer groups can be found. Sometimes they are part of ethnic group associations. In some places this might be a choir. In others it could be a group that stages plays, music, drumming and singing. Usually a donation is expected so your school might have to budget that. Now, while the entertainment value is great, they can become teachers. Many of them are willing to put on a play or sing a song, then take your students in to their group to get them to put on a simplified version. That is where the learning lies. As for content, they often can be given an assignment to put forth a specific message. If they are given enough time, they will come up with something good. That message can be one related to your curriculum.
- ◊ Putting on a play, concert or operetta. Many schools put on plays, concerts and operettas, and this is valuable in itself. To make such activities part of the curricula, however, something must be added. The topic of the entertainment should be closely related to the subject of the course. The participants should do something more than memorize lines or stanzas and act or sing them out on a stage. Any play can be edited, and the students can modify it, for example, to use local environment as ambience, and local individuals as characters. Remember that West Side Story is a modern derivative of Shakespeare. A big challenge would be to create a play that illustrates an entry or topic in a course of study.
- ◊ Videos and films with a twist. All too often videos or films are shown to a class without comment and without time reserved for the class to discuss it. In this age of television, we have increasingly become passive viewers, putting nothing into the presentation of the film. Yet videos and films offer a big potential for participatory methods of learning. The simplest one would be an assignment, perhaps best in small groups of four or five, to write a review of a video, or analyze the various ways which it cross cuts the current topic of a class. In more complex assignments, students would be given editing tools, eg. on computers, to re arrange a video and make a shorter but relevant statement related to the current topic.
- ◊ Making power point presentations. We usually think of power point presentations (or similar programs) as a good way to present a topic, with illustrations, sound, colour and animation options. Good as they are, the students become a passive audience. What is more effective is to ask the students to prepare a power point presentation. You can even give them some of the pages and illustrations that you once used when you prepared one, but do not give them everything. This works well with small work groups.
- ◊ Building a model, map or construction. When students build a map or a model, it is not the final product that is so valuable as the doing of it. A model of the Bastille to illustrate the fourteenth of July. A three dimensional map of a district, province or even a small country, laid out on a table, could be a long term project, where mountains are made from paper mache. When students build such a map or model, they identify with it, and it becomes more easy to get them interested in characteristics of it. Important here to not insist on too precise a replica; the building of it is more educational than the final product.
- ◊ Class or group projects, when done well, are very good learning experiences. When done poorly they can be disasters. In our functional literacy module we describe where the classroom is converted to a board room or planning room, the participants choose and design a project, such as collecting fish prices in a fishing community, go on a field trip to collect the information, then return to make pamphlets and/or signs. The literacy they learn is almost seen as a secondary objective. There is a wide range of group or class projects that can be used in this way. They are most effective when the participants themselves design each project. Many of the activities listed here can be well adapted to doing them in small groups.
- ◊ Work groups and assignment groups. An easy way to break up the monotony of everyone sitting in rows and listening to the same presentation, is to divide the students into work groups. Mine found it interesting that their first task as a group was to choose an animal as their totem, and that, of course, stimulated discussions of what totems were. While work groups can encourage cooperation and a communal attitude, that is not the most important feature here. A teacher must have a high tolerance for students talking in class, and multiple things happening at the same time. When students have an assignment, they discuss doing it, and that "doing" is a valuable contributor to their learning. One assignment is that they create a multiple choice quiz or exam. Often they do not know what the purpose of tests are, and may suggest questions that are so easy that everyone gets them all right, and I ask, what does that test? Sometimes it is possible, when appropriate, to set up a minor competition between groups; who finishes first, who gets the most or least of something. Play with it.
- ◊ One of my favorite small group assignments was the mobius strip. I brought the materials – scissors, tape and long strips of newsprint. They were told to tape the strips into a circle, with one flip so the ends met but not with the same sides of the paper touching. Then I asked them to cut the strip in two, right down the middle. As they did it I asked what they expected to get, and most said two circular strips. This was a lesson at the beginning of sociology, where I wanted to demonstrate that common sense does not always prevail. What you see is not what you get. Of course if they did it right they got one larger but thinner strip in a circle.
- ◊ Students teaching a topic. Most teachers know that when they have to teach a subject, they end up knowing much more about it than they would without having to teach it. Some forget this phenomenon when they look for ways to encourage their students to learn. Do not overlook it. This works if you give a small teaching assignment to a student to prepare overnight or over a weekend, and present it later in class. That preparation creates an investment that the student puts into the assignment. You can also ask a work group to prepare the lesson as a group, then choose one of its members to present it. Do not confuse this with asking a student to get up in front of the class and read a passage out of a text book. That serves little purpose. They must feel responsible for the other students learning what they teach, and the investment they put into preparing it helps that.
- ◊ Do not make the mistake of thinking that these alternatives are appropriate only for younger students. I have successfully used all of them at undergraduate and post graduate seminar levels.
- ◊ A good teacher will come up with others, appropriate to the community, to the students, and to the topic. A better teacher will work with the students to come up with even more.
- ◊ Avoid "busywork." In all of the above, there is a danger of the assignments becoming what we call "busywork." Each assignment must be relative to the curriculum at hand, and not become meaningless drudge work for any student. These are not alternatives to working by the teacher, but in fact take more work.
- ◊ In all of the above, it is important for the teacher to find ways to maximize student participation in conceptualizing, planning, creating and setting up the alternative methods.
- ◊ This illustrates a need for a catalogue or WikiEd Page for anybody to contribute examples.
- ◊ Administrators and some school boards, based on corporate culture as they usually are, like standardization and orthodoxy. Among other reasons, they are easier for producing statistics. The methods listed here are not adapted to producing such statistics; grades. Many educators support the idea of encouraging creative initiatives, but are hindered by the orthodoxy of their administrations.
- ◊ What is needed is a movement, and a forum for sharing those ideas and building up a force for change. The "They said it could never be done," attitude was prevalent in the segregated areas of the USA at one time, in Apartheid South Africa at one time, in East Germany at one time. Now there is no Apartheid in South Africa, there is no East Germany, and segregation does not have so many local laws supporting it.
- ◊ "We can do it." It can be done, and that means more than voting for Obama. We need the collective will to make it happen, and WikiEducator is a good platform, among several, from which to urge the change. --Phil Bartle 22:46 13 nov 2009 (UTC)
- See and collaborate with the WikiEducator open educational resource, training methods.
earlier rants:
Education versus Socialization – 2009 November 2
Should OERs venture into socialization issues? Do we know where to draw the line?
- ◊ Both education and socialization are processes of learning. At one time in the past the difference between the two was very distinct, but as time passes that boundary becomes more blurred. Furthermore, as we shift to a "gardening" approach to education (as advocated in our community), we will pay more attention to the values we teach and the kinds of things that were historically left to socialization rather than included in the educational curricula.
- ◊ Socialization is the process of learning to become human. It is the way that society-culture perpetuates itself. It was originally distinguished from education in that it was ad hoc, informal, and unplanned. It focused more on values and acceptable behaviour than on information and knowledge. Then schools began spending more time on teaching little children basic life skills, like how to put on rain gear, paying attention in class, when and where to go to toilet, being nice to others. As time passes. topics once left only to informal methods are being taught as part of the educational curriculum, for increasingly older students.
- ◊ Life skills courses are now being taught for people of disadvantaged situations. These include prison inmates, and include aboriginals and other ethnic minorities (who often have statistically disproportionate representation in prisons). Apart from mechanical skills, such as opening a bank account, using a fork, and writing a cheque, they teach social skills.
- ◊ Eye contact, for example, can be one of those. In all other animals, including primates, making eye contact is a sign of aggression, and is avoided so as to avoid conflict. In most cultures and societies around the world, similar symbolism is or was practiced, ie avoiding eye contact as a sign of respect. In Western societies, in contrast, eye contact is seen as a sign of honesty and transparency. It is not biologically "natural" (instinctual), but is socialized into us. Many investigators, police officers, social workers, teachers, see the avoiding of eye contact by people of some ethnic minorities as a sign of dishonesty, when it is a sign of respect. Guilty by ethnocentric miscommunication.
- ◊ Socialization is (or historically was) distinguished from education by being informal, ad hoc and unplanned. It is the process of learning to be human. From birth to death. We can also distinguish between primary and secondary socialization. The first one starts at birth, the other whenever our social environment changes and we need to adjust. Anthropologists sometimes use the terms enculturation and acculturation.
- ◊ Today, many things that are not exactly academic are included in the curricula for pupils at the lowest levels, Some of those are for very practical reasons, such as when and where to defecate and urinate (not in the classroom, please). Others have to do with safety coming to school and going home. Dressing for snow or rain before returning home is included.
- ◊ Is there a place for such life style training for older students? It is increasing, whether we agree it should or not. Anyone who has had young men in the back of the class – full of their hormones and a desire to be macho, feet up, leaning back, arms folded across their chests – may well agree. But what about other topics? Is school a place to teach values, beliefs and social graces (or other aesthetics)?
- ◊ If so, should we in WikiEducator set up a course or topic in socialization, how at teach it, to whom to teach it, what to teach at different ages and educational levels? I think the answer would be yes, and if so we need to set up a collaboration page on which we can all contribute. --Phil Bartle 05:22 2 nov 2009 (UTC)
earlier rants:
Ageism, Sexism, Racism – 2009 October 16
What is the role of education in the struggle against prejudice, bigotry and discrimination? Is this a valid concern for Open Educational Resources (OERs)?
- ◊ We are biological creatures; animals, to be more specific. That means our bodies vary over time, and we are products of the genetic contributions of our parents and their predecessors. There are three biological characteristics that everybody has, and they each have social consequences – how we treat one another – our age, our sex, and our inherited physical characteristics.
- ◊ Socially, we tend to portray each of these as having distinct categories with identifiable boundaries between them. Biologically the characteristics are far less distinct. Socially, we think of only two genders, masculine and feminine. Biologically although we use two words, male and female, there is a range of sexes. Our population has far more than two sexes. We differ biologically in age very little from day to day, yet we use arbitrary calendar dates to make important distinctions between infants, children, adults and seniors. Socially, we think of races as distinct categories, yet we use variables that are inconsistent, are contradictory, and are ranges without boundaries, to create those arbitrary racial categories. Biologically, there is no such thing as race.
- ◊ What is important here is that we use these arbitrary and inconsistent social variables, age, gender and race, to label people differently, and to think of and treat people differently in an unfair way, based on those invalid distinctions.
- ◊ Most studies show that children are able to distinguish among these variables, but take them as given and natural, and do not make value judgements based on them. They have to be socialised to become prejudiced. To counteract that we need to use our educational institutions to teach values of acceptance, tolerance, flexibility and fairness. These need to be designed for the abilities and knowledge of the students, which are usually correlated with their ages.
- ◊ The analysis sketched above, which is a core part of first and second year university social science courses, may be too sophisticated for elementary school children, but is not for adults at any level of subject, and certainly can be included in middle and secondary school curricula. A simpler approach, one of acceptance of all of us (including our selves) as valuable no matter what we look like, might be more appropriate at elementary level. There is a wide range of approaches between those two.
- ◊ This is not the place for a "paint-by-numbers" prescription, for we want to encourage educators to create new and appropriate methods and topics. It is important, however, that teachers are aware of the arbitrariness and superficiality of racist, sexist and ageist ideas, and that they are not based on scientific (including biological) facts. (I had a secondary school biology teacher who expressed his opinion that Hitler was right).
- ◊ Treating people unfairly (eg access to education. to employment, to housing, to club membership, to voting) for any reason is unfortunate; when it is based on bigotry, it is criminal. Our whole educational system, orthodox and non orthodox, is a major tool for preventing and mitigating it.
- ◊ We need to have an answer to those who accuse us of destroying their traditional culture, where discrimination is practiced. Far from it. Culture is not static, and if we try to preserve it, we pickle it; kill it. Culture is a living organic entity, and must grow and change to live. What we are doing, then is helping to make it stronger by adapting to the evolving world social environment.
- ◊ As we develop Open Educational Resources, it is our responsibility to include this topic wherever appropriate throughout the whole range of subjects. Most obviously it should be included in social studies courses. Less obviously it should be included in science courses such as biology and zoology. Debunking the notions that there are distinct categories of race, sex and age is the responsibility of the biological sciences. A wide range of other subjects can easily have appropriate places for adding the topic. Taking the "Gardening" approach to education, where "the taught" should be considered before "what is taught," should encourage us to consider the needs of societies and communities when designing and presenting educational resources. --Phil Bartle 14:23 16 oct 2009 (UTC)
Earlier rants:
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