There are stranger things in this world than in all your philosophies, Horatio
If we had a “post of the month” award, Autono Blogger would win hands down for questioning his approaches when faced with inconvenient facts. The whole post is a must-read, but here are the lines that grabbed me:
It’s whether I’m too attached to my teaching philosophy that I might be overlooking evidence that it isn’t working….would I be so enamoured of my belief that learners construct their own knowledge that I would doggedly pursue my chosen course regardless?
It’s wonderful how Autono Blogger questions the learner autonomy/authentic material/teacher-as-facilitator paradigm that we all revel in (and if you browse through the English360 site you’ll see that I’m deep in the autonomy camp as well). But what happens when the actual results get in the way? In my experience, most of us ignore reality and cling to the group buzz associated with exciting concepts and shared enlightenment. Who suffers from that? Our students, of course.
I was taking a really interesting online course earlier this year and a funny thing happened. Here’s the story: The course format was great - community-focused, forums, a wiki, both synchronous and asynchronous activities - and I learned a lot from some really bright people. Of course a dominant theme was the poverty of the “sage-on-a-stage” teacher-as-authority model in favor of the more enlightened constructivist teacher-as-facilitator model.
About the third week in we had a synchronous e-learning activity held on a webconferencing application, where about 20 of us from around the world signed in and saw a great presentation by an expert on education and RSS/blogging. He spoke for about 30 minutes as we watched his powerpoint slides roll by, then had several minutes for questions. The next morning the course forum was abuzz with praise for how much we all learned from this activity, until one guy (bless him) said “Hey - how could we have possibly learned anything? That was an archtypical teacher-centered sage-on-the-stage event…we didn’t learn anything! We just had a control-based hierarchical power structure re-inforced, that’s all”.
Forum silence. Then some forum muttering about “clinging to old ideas”. Then slowly the party got back to speed as the community antibodies ejected the intruder.
At the excellent EuroCALL conference in August we attended about a dozen 30-minute presentations every day; some had a few minutes for questions, many didn’t. I learned a lot there as well, and I didn’t construct a thing - just sat there passively and had knowledge poured down my throat. And of course the topic of many of the presentations, either implicitly or explicitly, was that that very teaching mode doesn’t work (as they used it to teach the session).
And if you want a truly frightening example of educator groupthink, check out Project Follow Through.
Anyway, back to the ESL classroom and how to do the best we can by our students. Here are a few quick thoughts on Autono Blogger’s points:
+ We need to maintain the eclectic approach. What “learner-centered” truly means is that as teachers (or trajectory managers) we recognize the individuality of each student’s learning style and needs, identify what will work with each learner, and within our limited resources provide that, whether or not it fits in with current philosophies (easy for me, as my groups max out at about 6 students!).
+ We need to differentiate between our approach and classroom management. We can be in control of the classroom and at the same time focus on learner autonomy. We should demand autonomy and be rigorous with helping learners achieve it. Sometimes teachers think that “giving up control” means abdicating from getting things done in the classroom. Telling learners that they’re in charge doesn’t mean they get to slack off - quite the contrary.
+ Action research rules! Discliplined action research prevents teacher groupthink. All teachers should be action researchers.
Action Research Rules! Absolutely. Students have an extremely annoying trait of not doing what our theories tell us they should do!
Comment by AJ Hoge — October 20, 2005 @ 5:34 am
If we had a “post of the month” award, Autono Blogger would win hands down Hear, hear! So, wadda I win, eh?
Forum silence…. LOL. What a great example. “Holy s***!! We’ve become the new orthodoxy!!”
I learned a lot there as well, and I didn’t construct a thing - just sat there passively and had knowledge poured down my throat. But of course, you did construct, as people everywhere do when listening to lectures (assuming they’re awake and paying attention). Humans seem very good at learning, regardless of the circumstances or delivery method. Perhaps what allowed you to learn was the fact that you (knew you) weren’t going to be tested on it later. I.e., you were free to learn whatever you felt was valuable to you, not what someone else felt was valuable.
And of course the topic of many of the presentations, either implicitly or explicitly, was that that very teaching mode doesn’t work (as they used it to teach the session)LOL x 2!!
We need to differentiate between our approach and classroom management. We can be in control of the classroom and at the same time focus on learner autonomy. We should demand autonomy and be rigorous with helping learners achieve it. Sometimes teachers think that “giving up control” means abdicating from getting things done in the classroom. Telling learners that they’re in charge doesn’t mean they get to slack off - quite the contrary.
Brilliant. Obvious, really. I knew that. Really, I did. I’d just…you know…forgotten…
While Philips’ book has glaring weaknesses, she spots how people’s beliefs can insidiously affect their judgement; for instance, how trainee teachers were always told of the glories of project work and letting kids find their own way, etc., but only a few were honest enough to point out what crap many of these “projects” actually were, or how few students were on task during these sessions. She draws pretty much a straight line between the fluffed thinking that “giving up control” means abdicating from getting things done in the classroom and declining academic standards. She lays a lot of blame at the feet of those who advocate “giving up control”, not because of anything bad in the idea itself, but because of its practical and often unintended consequences, which she sees (perhaps a little hysterically) as very far-reaching.
And while I’m at it, is it really a simple dichotomy between teacher-centred and learner-centred? Perhaps it’s a weakness of the human brain to split things into convenient (but often completely unrealistic) two sides. Philips falls into this trap herself, while at the same time ruthlessly targetting this very tendency.
This is getting bloody long! I shall shut up and go post on my own blog. Thanks for listening.
Comment by Marco Polo — October 20, 2005 @ 6:02 am
Thanks for the link to Follow Through (where did you find it?!?) I see that phonics is an issue in there, just as Philips wants to know why phonics is so consistently not given a fair chance when its results are so consistently good (in the UK). This blogging lark seems to support the idea that crowds can be wiser than the smartest people in them. I now belatedly realize that what All Must Have Prizes is about can be summed up in that one word groupthink
Comment by Marco Polo — October 20, 2005 @ 6:18 am
Regarding the Follow Through source - I have no idea where I found it! Probably one of those browsing marathons where you bookmark a few things.
I think you’re right to point out that the dichotomy is simplistic. Maybe one way out is to get rid of the (too big) word “learning” and look at things from a more managable level, that of the activity or task. At this level it’s clear that teacher-centric stuff is good to have for a number of reasons (which is why there was nothing wrong with the sage-on-stage activities I related in my post…)
Comment by Cleve — October 20, 2005 @ 9:18 am
While we’re challenging groupthink (which we should) let’s take another look at the idea of learning styles.
Also, here’s a great article about taking the eclectic approach.
Comment by daniel — October 31, 2005 @ 7:48 am
Sorry Daniel for the delayed acknowledgement but we’re still recovering from Wilma down here.
The Gabrielatos article looks pretty good - looking forward to reading it in depth.
Comment by Cleve — November 2, 2005 @ 4:17 pm
Hey, I was just trying to find something on Action Research when I fortunately found this blog site! It rules! I´m Brazilian and I´m finishing my monograph for my post graduation course on Eglish - and as I´m writing about Action Research and Students Autonomy I had a blast reading the posts and comments. I would like to make part of it too. May I post an article or something? Who´s in charge of this blog?
I´m a teacher of English down here in Brazil and it would be really cool if I could have my things shared with you guys.
Fell free to email me
best regards
Dani
Comment by Daniela Jost Guimarães — April 6, 2006 @ 10:10 am