Following lecture & Tute 7

The Lecture

The focus for the day was pedagogical content knowledge, but I'm going to start by talking about transmissive teaching (because it came up as pretty much being the opposite teaching style).

Here's a question. If the lecture we attended was a transmissive style of teaching, and transmissive teaching = 'comparatively poor' teaching, how can we (as learners) have gained so much from it? What has sparked that question in my mind particularly is one of the students in my tute explaining that she loves sitting in lectures to learn - transmissive teaching works for her as a learner.

I can tell you when I think lectures work for me. Firstly, Mandi's deliberate pauses for us to discuss thoughts amongst ourselves was brilliant as a medium to express the inevitable questions that pop into my head during hour-long listening sessions. I often forget these thoughts, except this time I didn't because of the opportunities to discuss them and write them down. Incidentally, the usual lack of pauses is why I get frustrated by lectures that are designed around students copying notes down, as personally I don't have time to write notes + thoughts and I struggle to let go of the former (which I probably should) to make sure I record the latter. The pauses was very powerful & I will make a point of doing this if I ever use powerpoints in my own classrooms. Mandi, if you do read this journal entry, can I ask how terrifying as a lecturer it is, handing over to students to discuss their thoughts independently of you? How do you know they are on task properly, given the volume was so loud I could barely hear the person I was talking to (so I assume you were in the same boat)?

Secondly, lectures are like reading very directed books to me. They give me the opportunity to hear expert opinions on a topic that is 100% relevant to what I am learning at that time. In honesty though, it depends on my mood & what else is happening in my life as to whether I then go away and properly think about them, or if I need a task to consolidate the content. This journal, for example, forces me to do that even in my busiest moments of time. But, I have heard enough students complain about the journal to know that it doesn't work for everyone. I also know not everyone is actually doing them, so they miss out on the potential benefit. These are thought provoking concepts - if some of what we must teach is transmissive (because it would seem sometimes inescapable) how do we best overcome the problems associated with it? Pedagogy, by the way, is probably going to be the key theme in my meta-reflection!!!

OK - PCK. What a clever trick, linking two words to be deliberately uncoordinated to say, so that people will have to think about them to remember it. Another cool thing to remember.

I liked Mandi's comment that 'the essence of PCK is active teaching'. Somehow, this came through in the readings and in everything that was discussed throughout the lecture & it really resonates with me as something to strive towards. When you break it down, there is SO much knowledge over and above the content that is needed to teach students really well (Kate and I jotted down 12 different points, but I'm certain there's hundreds). To me, PCK = excellent teaching, and it is going to require an enormous amount of thought before each and every lesson to make sure I do the best job I can. Will I ever be satisfied that the best job I can do at that time is the same as the best job I will ever be capable of? Will I ever master it to my satisfaction? Sounds a bit tormenting :-)

Tute

Speaking of enormous thought, I foolishly thought that the table Mandi popped up, detailing 'big ideas' vs. teaching & learning factors would be pretty straightforward to fill in, if a little time consuming. However, it turned out to be a terrific activity that highlighted just how difficult it is to even work out the big ideas, let along the teaching and learning aspects. Erin & I didn't finish it, but we both wanted to so I'll try to do it before next Thursday to share with her. It would seem a very good tool for distilling your thoughts on teaching & I can see it being useful when topic planning with other teachers.

However, this is discussing the tute in reverse, so I shall go back to the beginning.

I agree with Deb - I don't at all look like the photo on my student card, but I blame the *high quality* webcam that took it :-) Hehe. Her comments on who looked like their photos, and how many Jessicas there are in the class really remind me of how I feel when I am coming to grips with who is in my class on placement. It takes me ages to work students out, and after 2 weeks at Fintona I can't say I know every student from any of my 4 classes (less than 5 hours total exposure to each class), which bothers me. How many students did Deb feel she knew by the end of the tute? I'll wager more than I would've in her shoes. How am I going to get better at that initial student assessment?

In an over-simplified summary of lecturer's teaching styles in tutes, I'd say Mandi likes to create discussions, Deb likes to have a good debate and Keasty likes to put students on the spot (they all get a chance of the spotlight). They are all really effective, but incredibly different teaching styles which absolutely highlights for me why this course cannot spoon feed the students with a 'right' way to teach. I think I'm just getting tired, but my patience is wearing thin on how many times I've heard other students complaining that they're not getting 'answers' - there honestly isn't one answer, there's hundreds. Best practice is an open ended activity - there's loads of different but equally correct outcomes. I might've grumped at one of the other students in tute a little b/c of these thoughts (I'm vowing to keep my mouth shut tight next week!).

I was very, very happy to have a group discussion that had such a focus on VCE. It bothers me enormously that it is usually taught in such a transmissive way, but hearing Deborah agree that it shouldn't be is really liberating. The challenge for me is to find a way to teach it differently, when I have had no example of how to do this either from my own learning background, or in any placement situation. I feel like I'm going to be making it up, which is really scary because the consequences of me getting it wrong are huge for the students & there's no time to backtrack at this level of education. The other influence is that students, parents and colleagues may not like me approaching it differently to the 'usual way', which will be even harder to overcome as a beginning teacher. A comment that Helen Forgasz made last year w.r.t. maths was that we have to teach 'smarter' - activities that are well designed will produce learning outcomes that are superior and more engaging to traditional methods. I have seen examples of this at work for junior/middle level maths, but again, not for VCE, although I now think I understand how to apply those concepts at any level in maths. Not so with chem, but perhaps I'll gain skills next semester in this regard & hopefully the book I borrowed from Deb (THANK YOU) will give me some good ideas for context driven activities. I also need to look at PEEL more - maybe there's some good year 12 stuff there so I don't have to become some creative genius (which I am certainly not!!).

I also liked the concept that if you teach year 12 chem well & the students learn well, the exams will be straightforward - that is, you don't need to teach to the exams. However, I don't think everyone was so convinced of this - even me to an extent. I think there's a happy medium - explicitly pointing out what may be of relevance to the exam would surely be helpful for students, but I don't want it to be restricting my teaching methods too much. The exams are an unfortunate fact of life & regardless that only 30% of students go to Uni, the mark at the end of their year is very important to many students, as well as knowing the content. I think balance is the key word, and it might take me quite a while to work out what that actually means!

So it was another interesting, thought provoking lecture and tute that has left me with more questions and some answers. I'm getting an idea that this might be how I muddle my way through actual teaching!! Poor kids loool!

Following Tute 6

Well,

I finally made it to the journal before the next lecutre/tute session :-)

A different format for the tutes again. First up a debrief from practicum for our science specialism - mine being Chem. I have to admit that I think I gave my already sore neck (with mildly prolapsed disk) a workout carrying all my practicum work in as requested. We didn't (and clearly couldn't have, given time) look at the lesson plans or reports (as was mooted), but this doesn't really matter in the scheme of things.

The key focus of the class was to list the things we want to learn before our next teaching rounds and what we want to do better next time, which was a good idea. It got me thinking, and I suspect the answers I gave weren't as thorough as I would now like them to be for two reasons - firstly it was the first time I had been reunited with some classmates fng practicum which is somewhat distracting (sorry for talking so much Deborah!), and secondly I like to spend 'think time' on something that clearly has relevance to my future learning. So here goes the somewhat revised list, that I might improve on again as time goes by:

M's To-Do list - completion before next practicum/before I'm a fully fledged teacher...

• Go through the Chemistry course (using texts?) topic by topic and try to think up what students might query. They won't be the same things I did, and I need to be able to better anticipate the currently unexpected, as it's really hard to answer questions *well* on the fly. This is the "unpacking" and "reconstructing" process for teaching we were talking about in tute, and for me I think it will be very important to do in advance.
  
• To think up interesting ways to teach chem - not just the chalk and talk, with a few experiments in between to hopefully prove the theories. It annoys me that VCE (not just Chem) is so dull in this way...as though the only way to teach the "real" work is with a whiteboard, powerpoint and textbook (ugh). The word 'authentic' springs to mind - why will my students care about the trends in the periodic table? Why should they give a hoot about the construct of an atom? What about chemical reactions, etc etc - I need to find some meaningful and engaging contexts to place around at least most, if not all of the chemistry topics. I'll start with the topics I might be teaching the year 11's next time.
  
• Find some good software! For God's sake, this is the age of technology, and if I can imagine it, surely someone else has built it!! Try telling that to my Google search engine at 2am during practicum :(
  
• Learn if there are any current 'best practice' things I should know about Chemistry, that I haven't thought up yet.
• Look into common misconceptions for Chemistry in particular, but also for other 7 - 10 science units. Is there a recommended book? I found one reasonably comprehensive book, in the library, but would like one of my own for down the track (can't keep coming back to Monash!).
• Investigate Deb's three big ideas. I'll put down my guesstimate now, and compare with what I learn through the tutes (I'm hoping Deb will fess up the ideas before the end comes!) Idea 1 - atomic structure/intramolecular forces. Idea 2 - Intermolecular forces. Idea 3 - Reactions between molecules. I wonder how naive I'm being with these guesses...
• Resources, resources, resources - and good ones to use with students at that! I saw some brilliant polymer models at GTAC (electronic and physical), I love the magnetic molecules, and even the slightly boring Effex plastic molecule builders. What else is there to help students understand the abstract?
• Learn about Wiki and set one up in advance of practicum.... I want to try it out on the year 11s!

What will I improve on next practicum?

• All things related to above research lol! Seriously though...
  
• Improve communication with the year 11 group - there aren't enough lessons per week to actually feel connected with their level of understanding (I only got to teach 5 classes in the fortnight I was there). Try this via a Wiki, plus up-front establish a tute-group time.
• Better focus on assessment for year 11. Why do I feel I was I noticeably better at this with the junior levels?
• Difficult to gauge prior knowledge (I assumed too much & had to backtrack) for senior chem - start with a very brief pre-test to get a better handle on their current understanding & let that guide the lessons. Also, go in to observe the chem classes for a week prior (I'm sure Ruth wouldn't mind).
• Think of relevant contexts and links when teaching chem. I feel I did well with this for year 7 and 8, but not quite as well with y11.
• Find some good resources to introduce students to (general science and chem). What resources do Fintona have that I didn't notice? I know their slogan is 'technology doesn't teach students, teachers do', but I'm sure they must have more tech. than I noticed!
  

It was interesting to see other students' responses to what they wanted to get out of next semester (my 'to do list' is effectively this). It was also interesting how many people were pushing Deborah for the list of her three big issues in Chem - don't they want to have a think? I would've thought it was a prerequisite to being a teacher that you purposely don't want to be spoon fed, because it sure ain't going to happen in the workforce!

After the tute, there was around half an hour to kill....one of the sessions was cancelled (the discussion group on the course) and it was too late to gate crash general science. Time to catch up some more with Kate, since we didn't finish our yammer in chem tute ;-)

OK - next session with Eryn O'Mahony

IT in science - WOW! This was really really great. Unfortunately, I haven't found the promised presentation on blackboard yet, that contains the wonderful links to websites, and overview of what was talked about. The key technology that I thought I would use well, was:

• webcam/stillcam/200x microscope-cam attachment to the p.c. What a versatile tool, that I can see having so many applications within the science classroom. If the school doesn't have one that I go to, I'm going to have to buy one myself. It's that good.
• Wiki - duh! Why didn't I think of that? I'm on the 'net all the time, but setting up a Wiki for my students to chat to each other about a topic, with me (teacher) moderating is such a beautiful use of an often maligned technology that I simply never thought about before.
  
• The pH meters were good - I wonder how many schools have these.
• Inspiration looked like a nice piece of software, but really just reminded me of html web links. If the school I go to doesn't have it, that's what I could do to create more interactive presentations. It looked useful for 'mind mapping'.
  
• PodCasts. A while ago I thought podcasts could be a great way to give students prac. instructions in science, but since the girls at Fintona don't have the mp3 players, I can't test it out. I still think this has potential. e.g. for a dissection.
• I loved the photostory idea - get students to think of the process as much as the endgame. In a way, that's what this journal is doing too (I wonder if everyone's actually doing it each week....).
• Other things to look at, that were mentioned in the presentation include:
  -Learning Federation Software (www.thelearningfederation.edu.au)
  -SEAR (good for writing assessments)
  - The science continuum (already mentioned in lectures)
  - http://del.icio.us/
  - mbarlow blog (gross science)
  - Tain Lab (data logging device) cost
  - pH probe cost (around $30??)
• for anyone reading the blog that wants Eryn's email for the genetics/electrophoresis presentation, she wrote it up as being omahonye@colomba.vic.edu.au.

Final session, back to Mandi

A really good chance to debrief on the assignment and discuss misconceptions with other students. We hadn't really done this properly before, so I found it really great to hear other people's experiences and the misconceptions they identified. As usual, I talk too much - I hope nobody minds (it's coming to something when one of the students in the Chem tute said "Oh you're Meredith" - hmmmmm). I hope the other students all agree to put their assignment 2a up on blackboard, b/c I know how long it took me to research acids and bases, and the thoughts of doing that over and over and over every time I teach a new topic is, well, actually just not possible & I'll resort to the high level stuff on that handout from a few weeks back. Sharing info would be great (it worked well in Maths last year).

BTW - thanks to the student who passed on the link for making a $100 interactive whiteboard (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/) with a Wii remote, bluetooth, laptop and IR pen. I'll be doing this over the holidays for fun (my kids have a Wii so I'll borrow one of their remotes...even better!).

The extension on the assignment was a welcome relief, btw. It had been a busy few weeks, and it gave me a couple of night's peace before it was due :-) It occurred to me that there was a huge similarity between the assignment for EDF4113 and EDF4004 (make up 2 lesson plans in our specialism area). I wonder if anyone actually copied their assignment from one unit to the other? It would seem possible to me for both units to combine forces, and review the same lesson plans, each with a different focus (4004 for assessment procedures, 4113 for science education rigor and misconception busting). It might be a bit difficult to coordinate though....

That's all for now folks.

See you next time!