Our inquiry book study has made it to week three!
Be sure to check out the conversations still happening on weeks
one and
two.
Thanks to Allison Home for this weeks great blog post - as always - please share your thoughts and comments below!
Chapter Three: Work on the Hard Parts
Allison Hone is a Calgary native (which she continually regrets every winter) and completed her B.A. Honours in History, and B.Ed. from the University of Calgary. After teaching 15 years with the Calgary Board of Education, she decided to embark on a Master's of Arts in Learning and Technology from Royal Roads University in Victoria. Her thesis on the use of mobile learning to enhance historical thinking skills will hopefully be finished by late 2011 (added emphasis on "hopefully"). Her interest in technology enhanced education is both a blessing and a curse, as it means far too many books read on the iPad, and an astonishing number of apps bought in the hopes of finding that one that will encourage her high school students to develop greater critical thinking skills. The other problem is the fact that she must compete for use of the iPad with her 3 year old son, Silas...
A teaching career affords many opportunities for reflection. In fact, it is difficult to think of other careers that provide such opportunity for reflection on a daily basis, as every day is certainly unique for an educator. For some of us, it almost becomes an obsession. I spent many an hour (when I should have been marking) reviewing the latest book on increasing student involvement, or scaffolding for the reluctant reader. My bookshelf grows heavier, and alas, so does my bag of marking.
Making Learning Whole fits my obsession just perfectly. In my limitless quest to find the ultimate resource for the high school Social Studies teacher, I had hoped I had found my educational equivalent of the holy grail. And to this point, it has not disappointed.
Chapter Three is entitled, “Work on the Hard Parts”. Perkins suggests that we are all often guilty of “practicing your mistakes” (Perkins, 2009, p. 79). In the classroom, we know this to be true, as time and time again, we comment on an area for improvement that a student, in the very next assignment, completely ignores. For me, it is a probably most evident in essays. “Remember to include some proof that backs up this statement,” I write in the margins on an essay about the effects of imperialism. Yet on the next essay on economic globalization, the same problem rears its ugly head. Sometimes I have thought to get a number of rubber stamps with comments on them, as I seem to write the same thing over and over again.
Perkins calls this the “hearts and minds theory” – we hope that the student will take our comments to heart, keep it in mind, and make the necessary changes. In doing so, we may be incorrectly assuming that the student’s heart was actually in it in the first place, or that they even understand our often brief feedback. Often the feedback is not that informative, and even when it is informative, there is no guarantee that the student will understand it.
The cognitive psychologist K. Anders Ericsson suggests that truly successful individuals are often not naturally gifted; in fact, talent played a negligible role compared to deliberate practice (Ericsson, 1993). Malcolm Gladwell found similar evidence in his book, Outliers, suggesting that natural talent does not matter as much as hard work and practice. What is interesting in this is that a cognitive psychologist is involved. Cognitivism is a learning theory that focuses on how the brain accepts new information. The brain is often compared to a computer in that it accepts information, processes that information, and then outcomes are generated. Cognitivism suggests that learning occurs best when the content is broken down into smaller chunks. This seems to be the basis of Perkin’s argument as well – practice the hard parts.
But how does one know what the hard parts are? Perkins spends much of Chapter Three discussing assessment, for in assessment we will be able to determine where the hard parts exist, and provide accurate and well timed feedback to students. He suggests several types of assessment – actionable assessment, peer and self-assessment, and implicit assessment. Perkins suggests that the key to working on the hard parts is to isolate and reintegrate these trouble spots – find out what the trouble is through the various assessments, isolate it and provide opportunities to try it again in the setting of the whole game.
But just how do you know when the hard parts will pop up? For every teacher, I think there is an innate ability to anticipate what students will struggle with. Still, I am often surprised to find that what I had considered quite easy is posing a challenge with a class. Perkins suggests that there are different types of knowledge: ritual, inert, foreign, tacit, skilled, and conceptually difficult. For each of these types of knowledge, Perkins has suggestions on how best to attack the difficulty the students are facing (pages 89 – 99). He cautions teachers to avoid the blame game – in which all we do is sigh, shrug our shoulders, drink even more coffee, and carry on the status quo.
His final advice in Chapter Three is to think about creating études – specific exercises that strengthen certain skills and sensitivities. “It’s a holistic mission with a technical agenda” (Perkins, 2009, p. 105).
I am currently midway through a M.A. in Learning and Technology. For me, this book hits some familiar notes, particularly in regards to learning theories and models. But the technology side of me is forever hopeful to find a way to make learning whole that deals with the rapid influx of technology in the educational world. Maybe it will be up to me to make those connections. Perhaps it is time that I work on the hard parts…
References
Andersson, K.A., Krampe, R.T., and Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Pyschological Review, 100(3), 363-406.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Perkins, D. (2009). Making learning whole: how seven principles of teaching can transform education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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