English 101- Essay Three

Teaching Methods: Using an Educator’s Lens to Reflect on Your Experiences

Composing Schedule:

Heuristics: see syllabus

First draft for peer review: Wed Nov 3

Second draft for peer review: Fri Nov 5

Polished draft for submission: Wed Nov 10

Assignment

Background

So far you have evaluated an author by testing his views against your own experience in assignment one. Next you applied what we have learned about the expectations college teachers have for academic literacies to your own experiences to talk about the transitions or changes you have made or are making (assignment two). Now you are going to use the arguments made by educator and writer Paulo Freire as a lens to evaluate your education to date.

This semester, you have read many articles about college education and one thing that we’ve discovered is that a number of writers feel that students are not as prepared for college education as they should be. However, many of the authors have pointed out that students are not entirely to blame. High schools don’t prepare students, in part because high school students are sometimes only required to memorize information rather than apply and question it. Is it the teaching method that is to blame?

Paulo Freire would argue that too often all we do is require that you merely memorize; we want you to sit back and just accept what we have to say and then regurgitate that material for a test. So can we blame students for believing that learning is just memorizing if that is all we have asked them to do?

How then should students be educated? How would you describe the major teaching strategies of your secondary education? What should the purposes of a college education be? In your next paper, you will continue to build on this knowledge by discussing what is wrong with some teaching methods employed either in high school or college and suggesting how they should be improved.

Your Task

Since you are a thoughtful, informed, and involved student, you have been invited by The Chronicle of Higher Education, a weekly publication for teachers and educators, to write an article about the problematic teaching methods used in high school or in college. The Chronicle of Higher Education, wants you to analyze specific teaching methods that you have encountered in your classes and suggest specific changes that would improve teaching and learning. To show your knowledge of the issue, beyond the anecdotal, you will use Freire as a lens.

Therefore, you will extract the fundamental principles from his argument and apply those key principles to your own experience in education (either at ASU if you are focusing on college or at your old high school if you want to focus on high school). You will also need to incorporate the views of other students to add weight to your discussion (for even if they did not attend the same high school as you, you may find that you share common experiences of teaching methods and common reactions). And you should try to add to your own credibility by using the other authors we have read as further proof for your judgments. Remember that when discussing ways to improve teaching you can use examples of successful strategies you have experienced. You do not have to focus solely on negative examples.

Your Audience

Your readers are teachers and administrators involved in high school and college education . So they are interested in hearing your perspective as a student. They will be especially impressed with your article as you are incorporating the views of a well-known educator (Freire). Since members of your audience are educators, you should not simply “bash” the current educational systems or teaching methods. Besides being sensitive to audience, we know that educational issues are more complex than “good” and “bad.”

Organization

You have many options for how to organize your paper. But as you did in the first assignment, you will need to include a good summary of Freire’s article before you focus on the specific points he makes that you then apply to your own education. Remember, you need to show this audience not only what is wrong, you also need to show them how to change what is wrong and you need to do this with detailed examples of individual classes and teaching methods.

Goals

  • To focus on a specific rhetorical purpose and audience (informing a school committee about aspects of education that could be improved or that are successful and need further incorporation and development)
  • To incorporate a theoretical lens (Freire)
  • To inform your writing with complex ideas from college-level prose
  • To substantiate your views with experiences of other students (your survey data)
  • To organize materials logically into a coherent, thoughtful paper
  • To use appropriate conventions of format, structure, and language as is appropriate for your audience

Format

  • Typed, double spaced, readable font in 11 or 12 point
  • At least 4-5 pages plus the Works Cited page
  • A title for your essay
  • Your name, my name and class time on each page
  • Numbered pages

Submission of Polished Draft

Your polished paper should be submitted in a manila folder 8 ½ by 11 on which you have written your name. Include the following working from top to bottom:

Reflection on your writing (written in class on the day the polished draft is due)

Final Draft

Early drafts and peer review sheets

Heuristics and other invention work

Heuristics for Assignment Three

  1. Write a reading response entry for Paulo Freire’s article “The Banking Concept of Education” available at this website:

This is a difficult and challenging reading, in part because some of the vocabulary is unfamiliar. However, it is readable and you can summarize it if you see the article in three parts. First Paulo Freire describes a theory of teaching (a pedagogy) that he calls “the banking concept of education.” This phrase is a metaphor for the kind of teaching where teachers deposit knowledge into pupils. He describes the negative features of this type of teaching and the effects it has on students. Next he suggests that this kind of teaching serves authoritarian governments by oppressing the people. Then he suggests an alternative theory of teaching which he defines as “problem-posing education. “ Again he describes the features of problem-posing education and shows why oppressive governments are opposed to this type of teaching.

So in your summary, try to follow that pattern of three parts. Don’t spend too much time on the middle part where he connects “the banking concept of education” to oppressive governments. Instead, focus on the two types of teaching he describes.

  1. Complete the questions on rhetorical situation for this assignment. Although you cannot read the articles without subscribing, you can see the front page of The Chronicle of Higher Education by clicking on this link:

If you would like to read articles in this publication, you can use EBSCO and put the title “Chronicle of Higher Education” in the search terms. You will not get the most current articles, but you will be able to read the articles without subscribing. You can also access articles from this publication by using another database we have at ASU called LexisNexis.

  1. Use Google to find explanations of the following three teaching methods: “Active and Cooperative Learning,” Lecturing, and “The Socratic Method.” Describe the teaching methods you have encountered in high school and in college. Think about lecturing, whole class discussion, small group discussion, group activities and so on.
  1. Make a table based on Freire’s article in which you identify the following:

General principles of Banking Concept of Education / Expectations of Teachers who use the banking concept of education / Expectations of Students when teachers use banking concept of education / General principles of Problem-Posing
  1. Using the information you generated in heuristic 3, now make a chart and on one side identify the core beliefs of Freire, and on the other side say what example from your experience would illustrate this core belief.

Core beliefs or fundamental principles
/
Example from my experience
Banking concept means that students who memorize and regurgitate information do well / Definitely true of my history class where the teacher dictated notes to us each class session and then all we had to do on exams was restate what was in those notes. We were never allowed to disagree. Once in a paper I tried to argue that Henry VIII was not such a bad king and I was told that what I thought was irrelevant. Now probably I was wrong—I didn’t have enough information to form my opinion. However, that’s not what I was being criticized for. I soon learned that I should just say what the teacher had told us to say.
  1. Now as you look at heuristic 3, you should see areas where it would be nice to have quotations from your peers that would add further proof to your ideas. So now devise a questionnaire that will give you answers you can use to add more proof to your experiences.