19 October; Session 5

Vielen Dank, Louise, für Ihre (deine?) Einführung in die deutsche Sprache...

We saw last week the importance of the rapport between the teacher and the class in creating a culture of learning, and this session reinforced that. Central to language teaching is having learners prepared to experiment, and potentially make fools of themselves. That calls for a safe environment and confidence in the teacher, which Louise clearly generated.

The prospect of "role-play" does make some people really nervous, as one of you said; but the reality, in terms of just asking one another simple questions and then answering them, was much less daunting.

Louise also made good use of the board, in terms of reinforcing new words and expressions, and giving value to the class contributions. As we discussed, there is something of a trade-off between just breaking off to jot down a word, without interrupting the flow of the conversation too much, and maximising the value of the note, by for example including the translation. One way of dealing with this is to make a habit, as part of the conclusion of the session, of spending five minutes re-visiting everything on the board, and adding in the translation. Obviously it doesn't apply to a one-off session, but when learners know what to expect of the shape of a session, they'll usually wait fairly happily for such a point.

Reflective Journal

The point of my session was simply to give you enough confidence to get started with the journal. It is not likely to come very naturally to begin with, but practice is an important component (together with feedback), and it does get easier and more fluent.

So for once I discouraged you from doing too much reading around at this stage of the game, because well-intentioned though the literature is, at the moment it is more likely to confuse than illuminate. You can revisit it when you have found your own voice, and you want to raise your game further.

So we looked at the simplest of all models of  reflection, that of Rolfe (ref. below):

• What happened? This is simple description of an event (which can concern any aspect of your practice, not just an actual face-to-face teaching session).
   
• So what? What is the significance or impact of it? In particular what does it mean to you, and/or your students, colleagues, mentor?
  
  
• Now what? How might you respond to it? What might you do differently if something similar happens again?

This is very basic, entry-level reflection, but it is enough to get you started, and we'll come back to it at the end of term and see how you are getting on. Knowing you, you're likely to have all kinds of ideas of your own by then.

In practical terms, there are notes about the pros and cons of notebooks and blogs etc. on pages 63 and 64 of the Handbook.

A useful way of getting started is what Jenny Moon calls the "double entry" methods: divide your page into two (or three) columns. Write your narrative in the first column, and your reflections (so what? and now what?) in the others. This helps you to take the step beyond simple description. In a few weeks, you'll probably find it a little restrictive, so you can then abandon it and move to a more fluent account integrating the narrative and the reflection.

Incidentally, we did get into something of a "Why don't you? Yes, but..." interchange at one point towards the end of the session (the link is to the discussion of the full-scale "game" version of this in Transactional Analysis--we didn't get to that stage!), but it did remind me to suggest that the "Now what?" stage does not have to have any answers, particularly at this stage. The questions and issues are what matter. Two points occur to me:

• One model of group processes suggests that initial solutions to problems ("There ought to be a law about it!") are often restrictive and ineffective, and it is important not to fall into their traps. Instead the debate needs to be kept open until you can get past to an enabling solution. An example of a knee-jerk restrictive but ineffective solution to a problem often cited was the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and the initial version of the Vetting and Barring Scheme for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults (now suspended as counter-productive).

• John Keats also wrote about the desirability of "Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” (Keats,1817) Reflection is a useful way of hanging on to such open-ness--although it has to be admitted that it can lead to dithering!

We'll return to this later. I also mentioned the associated issue of working with a mentor to reflect and get feedback on practice, and the issue of "opportunity cost"--the cost of the session you did have was all the other sessions you could have had in that time, but didn't. In that context I talked about an Action Maze on mentoring; there is an on-line version of it here. Sorry it's rather retro--it's 10 years old, but it works if you re-size the browser window.

References
Moon J (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development; theory and practice London; Kogan Page
Moon J (2006) Learning Journals; a handbook for reflective practice and professional development (2nd edn.) London; Routledge
Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (eds.) (2001) Critical Reflection for Nursing and the Helping Professions Palgrave; Basingstoke
Whitaker D S and Lieberman M A (1965) Psychotherapy through the Group Process London; Tavistock

And if you do want to follow up my reservations about reflection as a panacea, there's a paper on them here.

12 October: Session 4

(No blog relating to last week, because I was away.)

Many thanks to Rebecca for kicking off the micro-teaching, and for such a well-chosen topic which tuned into everyone's interest in one way or another, both those of you concerned with prison education, and those of you contemplating a visit. (And apologies that, having not yet got into the routine, I fogot to pass on the camera card with the recording on it--I'll burn it onto a DVD in time for next week's session.)

Incidentally, if you are going to bring in a card to record your session onto, it needs to be an SDHC card, class 4 or above, because the camera is HD; 2gb should be enough. If you don't bring your own card, I'll burn it onto DVD for you, but obviously there will be a delay before I can get it back to you.

Rebecca's session raised some interesting points, which we discussed. As I commented, it is testimony to the effectiveness of the session when it is difficult to concentrate afterwards on the actual teaching process, because you want to carry on talking about the subject matter!

• She used a sorting task to get over what can and what can't be taken into the prison. What came across clearly that relevant though such tasks are, their actual content is only half the story--it was the way in which it promoted discussion which was key to its effectiveness as a teaching activity. It would have been quite different if it had been set up as a quiz with items listed and alternative answers to tick; that would have been an individual activity initially and would probably have yielded a score, and might have led on to the discussion afterwards if permitted/encouraged by the teacher.
• ...which makes the important more general point that different teaching strategies lead to different kinds of learning, and are suited to different groups and students. This came up when we discussed Rebecca's use of the group to read out the text about the prison, in turn. The other Rebecca pointed out that the method would not have suited a group with literacy issues (and I mentioned dyslexia and inclusivity), whereas it was fine for this group. 
• I didn't mention at the time, because of time, that it might also not have suited a group of students with "baggage" about a poor experience of school, because it is also a fairly common classroom technique there.
• Rebecca explained that she chose that method partly because of its low-tech nature, but also because of the participation it elicited. Certainly the alternatives we talked about--a straightforward talk and a presentation, would have created a more passive audience.
• The sorting exercise, again, required and produced participation and engagement. It was highly appropriate to this class, because it--like the Is it Education exercise a couple of weeks ago--it used concrete objects to get at questions about general principles*. (See below.) But would it have been good on, say, a training course for prison officers on gate duty, for whom general principles are less important that a clear understanding of what it and is not contraband?** It is just possible that a presentation, although boring, might have been the most reliable way of getting the information into their heads (or would it?)
• Related to this is the issue of the appropriate use of technology. Rebecca had clear reasons for not using it on this occasion. The kind of technology you use also "sends messages" about learning and the role of the teacher and learner; if you are interested you can read about it here and here.

Hastily--we decided to amend the observation schedule to create more open questions and to add one concerning individual student support.

And in view of known absences, there will be just one micro-teaching session next week (sorry, I didn't make a note of who it would be, but you know who you are!), complemented by a session on the reflective journal and how to go about it.

*  The sorting exercise is an illustration of Bruner's "levels of experience" and also of the "principle of variation"--see David Perkins' paper on video here (it is over an hour and may presuppose more than you know at this stage of the game, so don't worry about it!). Pushed to the limit it is the basis of Personal Construct Psychology.

** And of course you will recognise this is a different level of Bloom's taxonomy.