I am free-styling – thoughts generated by my reflections as I attempted to address this week’s prompts!
I will be teaching a course next semester, a course I taught as an intensive one month class this past summer. In all honesty, it would have been much better for those students if I had had this class (COMM 702) before I taught that course! One piece I was really missing was thinking about students’ needs and strengths through a developmental lens, such as the stages of intellectual development offered by Perry (cited in both the Lang and Davis texts). Whether or not Perry’s stages are truly developmental or are more a result of the way school has been done unto students in the US over the past several hundred years may be a moot point. In any case, none of my prior training -- as an elementary teacher, as a special education teacher, or as an adult group facilitator had prepared me for the unique presentation of college students in their early 20’s.
Nor had my nearly 20 years of experience as a consulting teacher and teacher study group facilitator. I have facilitated or co-facilitated seminars with teachers and community members each school year for most of my teaching career. The seminars, held monthly from September through May, were designed as continuing education courses for career k-12 teachers and were based on the national Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) Program. Through the years I have sometimes been asked to teach the seminar as a college class for teachers-in-training (pre-service teachers). I had done so on a couple of occasions but ended up believing that the format of a one semester college course was too restrictive to do justice to the program. The one month intensive course had addressed a number (though not all) of the concerns I had experienced in my earlier attempts, but I was still left with significant questions about the full semester format.
My current belief is that, previous to this class, I did not have "the right stuff" when it came to teaching young college students. There were two key areas in which I had gone astray with my previous attempts at teaching an introductory level college course. One, I did not even consider stages of intellectual development. This seems rather odd to me given that an understanding of developmental stages was at the center of my teaching with k-12 students… Huh (shaking my head a bit here). Two, I had adapted the course syllabus only slightly from the syllabus provided to me by the department chair. Whereas it is of course important to keep to the priorities of the department, as I look now on the manner in which the learning objectives were articulated I see that in large measure my goals for the course had not mapped on very well to those objectives. I fully expect that this opportunity to re-write that syllabus with my new expanded vision will much improve the course – for students as well as for me!
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ReplyDeleteI am not sure that it is a moot point, though it probably is for the purposes of this assignment. However, I think that this point is a big issue in this country. I do not know if Perry’s stages are truly developmental in the sense of “aging” or “growing up”, but it should reflect a “way of thinking” that is developed, over and over again, subject by subject.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your second paragraph, unfortunately, this seems to be the way our system is set up. I am not exactly sure how the education department works here, but at SCSU, there seems to be a structural set up. So, they have like “Human Relations for Teachers I” then they take “Human Relations for Teachers II” and so on. That way it is a constant progression. If the instructor does not have enough time in the semester to teach all that needs to be said, the next class will pick up where s/he left off. It appears as if it is one class over numerous semesters. I know this because I minored in Human Relations and I felt like I was slowly “developing” my knowledge of human rights and activism over time.
In regards to your third paragraph, I do not think you should blame yourself for not considering the developmental stages of intellectual development. I did not really hear much about it till now either. I have read up a bit more about his theory recently, because I fell in love with it, and the way I view it is a constant fluctuation that happens throughout a person’s life, until they find a way to understand the world that works for them. I see myself as being in different stages depending on what I am talking about, but I now tend to come to understand the world through an empiricist lens. Now that you are going to incorporate these ideas into your course objectives, you can frame your class as an exercise to help them progress through intellectual development. I got pretty excited when I realized that I can frame my objectives and teaching philosophy around intellectual development, because it really fits with my pedagogical style.
Cali, I am completely with you on this! During the course of this semester I have often shaken my head and declared “that seems so obvious, why didn’t I think of it like that?” Although I teach almost every day, my classes are usually 60-minute, single session lessons, so I have little knowledge or experience with curriculum structure and development. As I went through this week’s reading assignments, I discovered some basic, but helpful tips and tools for writing a good syllabus that reflects the needs of the students, as well as the objectives of the instructor.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first lines in Lang’s chapter on syllabus writing states that you should begin the syllabus-writing process by thinking about the end of the semester. What do you want the students to have accomplished or learned when they walk out the door on the last day? Starting with this idea helps you to focus the learning objectives and determine the most beneficial methods to meet those objectives through various assignments. I also think it is extremely important to explain (in the syllabus and on the first day of class) why the knowledge and skills that will be learned in the class will help the students to be better counselors/dietitians/public speakers, etc. As an undergrad, I don’t remember any class syllabus that included this information and it seems like a vital part of the learning process!
Cali and Adam, perhaps I’m beating a dead horse, but I believe that the developmental stages that Perry outlines (as applied to college students) are not really “developmental” but a “result of the way school has been done unto students”. In other words, I think most college students (even freshmen) have the capability to think pluralistically. If we want students to think dualistically, we set up a course in which we simply feed students knowledge they should know. If we want students to think pluralistically, we set up a course in which we present multiple and/or conflicting points of view and require students to think critically. Although I don’t think Perry’s “stages” are developmental, understanding these different epistemic strategies is useful for instructors.
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