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!