Chapter 2: Reflection for Action

Chapter 2: Reflection for Action

Recall the scenario presented in your text:

You are in your first year of teaching and things are going pretty well. Your colleague is also a new teacher but is having great difficulty. He has not planned well and does not have clear instructional goals. He also does not seem to have a strategic approach to teaching or a general approach to teaching. Your colleague has come to you for assistance.

What key elements of effective teaching and the process of teaching does your colleague seem to lack? How could you help him become a more effective teacher?

Now think about how you would approach this problem using the RIDE ACRONYM.

Reflection

In order to answer this question, reflect on some of the topics we have explored in this chapter including teacher development, planning, approaches to teaching, teaching tactics, and promoting learning through homework.

Lets brainstorm!

In all likelihood, your colleague will have to submit his plans for review to the administration on a weekly or bi-monthly schedule. However, given his disorganization in the classroom, either he is failing to plan appropriately or has difficulty enacting his plans in the classroom. Reflect on what you know about planning. What is planning and why is it important?
Your colleague also seems to have difficulty setting clear instructional goals. Reflect on what you know about instructional goals, what are instructional goals and why are they important?
Finally, what other resources are available within or outside the school to help your colleague become a more effective teacher?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

It is important that teachers plan. Planning involves identifying objectives, choosing a way to achieve those objectives, making decisions concerning the details of the approach, making changes to the plan as it is carried out, and evaluating the plan after it has been carried out to be better prepared next time.Research suggests that more expert teachers plan at the whole class level as well as at the individual level rather than assume a one-size fits all approach to student learning. To help your colleague you may offer to observe his class for a day, or organize a group of teachers who teach the same grade to work together on developing lesson plans collaboratively. The type of assistance your colleague requires depends on which part of the planning process he is having most difficulty with (e.g., long term planning, linking plans to objectives, and executing plans, and so on.). You may also suggest a number of websites for him to visit for lesson plans ideas or have him consult other veteran teachers for plans they have used in their classroom over the years. Above all, you should remind your colleague that planning is imperative to effective teaching and requires flexibility.
Instructional goals (aka: objectives, achievement targets, desired outcomes, standards, learning intentions) state the desired outcomes of instruction. As such, they are a necessary component of the educational process and have been the focus of a lot of educational research and theory. Instructional goals are defined by your state’s curriculum standards. Usually, these standards are quite broad, such as “All students will write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes.” These broader standards are generally followed by more specific performance indictors, such as “Write stories with multiple paragraphs that develop a situation or plot, describe the setting, and include an ending” that dictates specific techniques teachers can use to achieve their broader instructional goals.
There are a number of resources you can suggest to help your colleague become a more effective teacher. For example, the Internet offers extensive resources, such as a variety of lesson plans, teaching ideas, and online teacher communities, that are available to assist teachers.Many of the online teacher communities provide discussion boards specifically for new teachers. Many of them also deal with the kinds of concerns that beginning teachers have about classroom management, discipline, motivating students, and teaching children with special needs.

Information Gathering

You realize that you will need more information to help your colleague improve his teaching. You decide to seek advice from some more experienced teachers in the school and refer him to some online resources for help. To assist you in your information gathering activities consider:

What kinds of questions would you ask a more experienced teacher? What do you expect to learn from a more experienced teacher?
What kinds of advice or resources do online teacher communities or professional journals offer that would help improve your colleague’s teaching?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

You may consider asking a more experienced teacher about strategies he/she uses to plan. How does he/she balance long term planning with more daily planning? Why kind of resources does he/she rely on for lesson plan ideas or strategies for developing students’ higher order thinking skills? How does he/she link lesson plans to standards and long-term goals? These are just some of the questions you may ask a more experienced teacher. Answers to these questions will vary so consulting more than one experienced teacher is advised. In your text, the authors suggest that expert teachers 1) focus on both long-term and short-term planning, with more loosely structured plans, 2) have more complex views of instructional process and are better able to shift among methods, and 3) attribute success or failure to planning, organization, and so on.

Online teacher communities and professional journals offer a myriad of advice and strategies for teaching content and tips for managing the classroom. For example, newteacher.com provides a number of published teacher-friendly articles for beginning teachers on a variety of subjects such as mentoring, time management, planning, and so on. Finally, teachers have created online communities where they can share information, techniques, and personal stories of their experiences in the classroom with other teachers. Because teachers can remain anonymous, websites such as TappedIn.com, espouse a comfortable environment in which teachers can ask questions and receive corrective feedback.

Decision Making

Next, decide how to help your colleague plan effectively in the future. Consider:

Your investigation so far has resulted in a wealth of knowledge and strategies that can be used to help your colleague plan effectively. You decide that you will work collaboratively to plan his next lesson. What steps do you suggest he take to ensure successful planning?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

You explain to Mr. Adams that every teacher develops his/her own technique for planning and that there are differences between teachers and even within a particular teacher’s planning techniques depending on the lesson. With this in mind you suggest that he

Choose a unit
Develop a list of end of the unit objectives or goals for his students. These should include broad objectives intended for the whole class and more specific goals for individual students.
Refer to your curriculum standards or other national content standards. Most of the time your teacher’s manual will provide explanations of how a particular unit relates to certain curriculum standards, however you may be able to alter the unit to address more standards. Moreover, revisiting the standards helps you remain familiar with what the district has identified as the important knowledge and skills your students are expected to possess.
Develop your own or review the assessments that accompany your textbook. Linking your assessments to your instructional goals helps you to identify the material that is important for students to take away from your lesson. This is different from teaching to the test. This means that you want to identify the important concepts/ skills you expect your students to demonstrate at the end of the unit so that your teaching allows students to practice these skills.
Get creative! What kinds of experiences, activities, explorations, explanations, group work, analogies, examples, or experiments might help students understand this material? What kinds of activities would ignite students’ interest in learning this content?
Make changes to the plan as it is carried out -- it is important to remain flexible.
Evaluate how your plan worked and make notes for changes to make for next year.

Evaluation

Finally, help your colleague evaluate his plans. Consider:

What are some things your colleague can do to evaluate whether his plans are improving conditions in his classroom?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

Your colleague can do a number of things to evaluate whether the increased effort at planning and more deliberate choice of teaching tactics are improving conditions in his classroom. For example:

Ask students to write comment cards on which they describe the goal of the class period. After the lesson, do students know what the intended goal was?
Keep records of how many students are turning in completed assignments and homework. Has the incidence of homework completion increased?
Evaluate whether students respond effectively to interesting questions that are framed at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy and whose answers simply do not require the production of rote answers.

Chapter 3: Reflection for Action

Recall the scenario presented in your text:

Mr. Heartland is a high school economics teacher who knows a lot about capitalism, interest rates, and how the economy works. His students, however, do not. By the end of the semester, he wants his students to understand complex concepts such as supply and demand, the stock market, and gross domestic product.

What might this teacher do? How can he help his students develop these concepts? In reflecting on how Mr.Heartland might best foster cognitive development, what approach would you recommend?

Now think about how you would approach this problem using the RIDE ACRONYM.

Reflection

In order to answer this question, reflect on some of the topics we have explored in this chapter.

Lets brainstorm!

Evaluate the information you learned on cognitive development, sociocognitive development, and language development. How does this information apply to Mr. Heartland’sdilemma?
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Vygotsky’s theory of sociocognitive development are applicable to this problem. How so?
Reflect on the information you learned about instructional conversations. Can Mr. Heartland use this technique to help students learn about supply and demand, the stock market, or the GDP?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

The information on cognitive development and sociocognitive development can help Mr. Heartland devise instructional techniques that will help his students learn economic concepts.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that students learn by exploring and interacting with their surroundings. When they encounter new information, they learn through processes of assimilation and accommodation. Vygotsky’s sociocognitive theory is also relevant to this problem. According to Vygotsky, students learn from interacting with more knowledgeable others in their culture. Based on an apprenticeship model, more knowledgeable others guide learners as they acquire theskills and knowledge they need to solve the problems that are most important in their culture.
Absolutely. Using instructional conversations to promote student learning is a logical extension of Vygotsky’s theories to the classroom.

Information Gathering

You realize that you will need more information to help Mr. Heartland design activities that will help his students learn various economics concepts. To assist you in your information gathering activities consider the following questions.

Upon reflecting, you remember that according to Piaget’s cognitive theory students learn new information through assimilation and accommodation processes. Using your text as a reference describe these processes in more detail?
How can Mr. Heartland apply Piaget’s theory in the classroom?
Using your text as a reference, how do students learn according to Vygotsky’s sociocogntive theory?
How can Mr. Heartland apply Vygotsky’s theory in the classroom?

Ok, lets consult the experts!

When a learner encounters information in the environment that conflicts with his/her current understanding—this is referred to asdisequilibrium.When it occurs disequilibrium typically yields an openness to experience, as in “I wantand need more information to make sense of this.” As the learner acquires information, one of several processes may occur. For instance, the learner may assimilate the new information into their existing cognitive structure. Here some outside event (e.g., a fractions activity) is brought (or incorporated) into a person’s way of thinking.Through assimilation, schemas grow—in number and in complexity. Another process learners use to deal with new information is accommodation. Accommodationis a process of change in which an existing schema ischanged or modified to make sense of something that is new and different. Examples of accommodation processes include a lower level schema (i.e. cat) being transformed into a higher level one (e.g. leopard, lion, tiger) or replacing a schema all together. While, assimilation results in an improved schema, accommodation leads to a completely new schema. Finally, the learner can ignore the new information and his existing schemas will remain the same.
There are numerous ways Mr. Heartland can apply Piaget’s theories in his classroom. First, to be sensitive to individual differences, he can plan individualized learning activities that take advantage of learners’ strengths and personalized interests. Alternatively, he could design learning activities that stimulate curiosity and interest such as starting a new business or tracking a favorite stock.
According to sociocognitive theory, individuals learn by interacting with more knowledgeable others (in this case usually a teacher or more skilled peer) in the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The ZPD refers to the difference between a learner’s potential development (what they can do with assistance) and their actual development (what they can do alone).Essentially, more knowledgeable others provide instruction that moves ahead of what students can currently do while simultaneously providing the support they need to do so (Vygotsky, 1987). They do this through scaffolding. Scaffoldingis the guidance, support, and assistance a teacher provides to students during social interaction that allows students to gain skill and understanding. Examples of scaffolding include providing hints, tips, reminders, examples, directions, challenges, explanations, prompts, and well-timed questions and suggestions. Briefly, scaffolding is the teacher’s effort to support learning in the zone of proximal development by providing what the student needs most but cannot provide for himself. With practice and support, eventually the learner is able to carry out modeled activities independently.
Vygotsky’s approach offers several recommendations for instruction. First, the teacheracts as a guide, scaffolding students as they work within the zone of proximaldevelopment. For example, Mr. Heartland would assume a role as a facilitator rather than information dispenser, scaffolding students as they worked on projects related to key economic concepts. Second, because “two heads are better than one”, peers can act as guidesand mentors, as exemplified by cooperative learning and multi-age classrooms techniques.As such, peer learning or cooperative learning activities are also techniques Mr. Heartland could use in his classroom. Research suggests students benefit from these environments when they are structured effectively (Slavin, 1990). Finally, teachers can use scaffolding, the PQS discourse model, and instructionalconversations to soothe and support students’ motivation during potentiallyfrustrating episodes.Instructional conversations are two- way discussions in which a group of students attempt to make sense of the topic of conversation, often by debating with one another. PQS (probe, question, scaffold) begins as the teacher probes, or investigates what studentsthink—What do you think? Can you explain it to me?—questions the basis of that thinking—Why do you believe that? What is your evidence?—and scaffolds students toward adeeper understanding—What sort of evidence do we need to answer this question? In aninstructional conversation, the teacher typically encourages students to reflect on theirthinking, develop their logic or reasoning, and obtain the evidence they need to defend orjustify their thinking.When teachers use the conversational style of an instructional conversation,students participate more in their learning, and a community of learners is more likely to develop.

Decision Making

Next, help Mr. Heartland make some decisions on which methods to employ in his classroom. Consider: