11 January: Welcome back!

This week is the introduction to Unit 2: Bases for Learning and Teaching.

After the submission debacle (for which I apologise on behalf of the university--the problems have apparently now been resolved) we started by going through the unit outcomes. Some points emerging:

• 2.1  "Inclusive practice" is (I think we agreed) a Good Thing, but it is not a panacea. Discussion identified issues around assessment standards, but we also touched on other areas which need to be addressed.
• 2.2 and 2.3  "inclusive" is a gratuitous qualifier; the outcomes make more sense without it*.
• 2.4 is principally assessed in the unit 4 submission.
• 2.5: we discussed how the evidence will emerge from describing your practice and then digging down into the factors which shape it.
• The remaining outcomes are standard.

So we moved on to a consideration of the content of the Unit.

This was the "menu": items in bold are the chosen ones.

	What is learning?	Forms of learning
Learning and the brain	Motivation	Memory
Conditioning (behavioural approaches)	Cognitive approaches—developmental etc.	Gestalt
“Intelligence”	Mindset	Social and humanistic approaches
Experiential learning	Resistance to learning	Emotion and learning
Imitation	Work-based learning	Situated learning
Educational technology	Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge	Inclusivity and its dilemmas
Learning difficulties	Communication theory	What works best
Learning “styles”	Fads and myths	Tutorials
Tacit learning/knowledge

to which we added:

"Inclusivity" and Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge


Schedule

	Date	Topic
1	11 Jan	Introduction: What is learning? (i)
2	18 Jan (1)	What is learning? (concluded) Forms and factors of learning.
3	18 Jan (2)	Motivation
4	25 Jan	Memory: the physical basis of learning (inc. intro to learning difficulties and "neurodiversity")
5	1 Feb	Behavioural approaches to learning (and teaching)
6	8 Feb	Cognitive/constructive approaches 1: (inc. Gestalt)
	15 Feb	(1/2 term)
	22 Feb	(Unit 3)
7	29 Feb	Cognitive/constructive approaches 2: “Intelligence” and individual differences
8	7 March	Social and humanistic approaches, including andragogy and situated learning
9	14 March	Inclusivity and its dilemmas in practice, including cultural issues
10	21 March	(Unit 3)
11	28 March (1)	Loose ends (although of course we can always carry on after Easter...)
12	28 March (2)	Group tutorial on tackling the assessment

This programe leaves us without specific slots for communication theory or for the emotional aspects or resistance to learning, but I think I know where those will feed in anyway. And we probably won't stick to the scheme anyway, which leads me to an important caveat about this Unit...

Teaching strategy

I am decidedly not recommending that you teach your classes with the approach I am taking with you! That approach is informed by what I know of you from teaching you last term, by your experience and background, by your level of motivation, and by the size of the group, and of course the kind of learning we all want you to engage in--not just teaching to the test.

• Of course we digressed and I talked a bit about the approach adopted on some FE courses, where simply accumulating little disconnected gobbets of allegedly relevant knowledge substitutes for any more demanding --or indeed interesting--engagement with the subject. I blogged about that here and here 
• And that linked in to the notion of threshold concepts, which we'll get into later.
• Another way of putting it is to say that we want to promote deep rather than surface learning. Again more later.
• This led on to a discussion of what you had to know about "theory", initiated by Lucy. I commented that it does not matter much to me whether you can name theorists and attribute ideas to them--but what does matter is whether you can use them to illuminate and help you to further develop your practice.

So in the light of that, we agreed that I would recommend some reading each week which you could do in advance, and that the session would kick off from your questions about it. It's a good idea if you've have all read some of the same stuff, but it is also great--for students of your degree of maturity--if you've also read different matterial as well, so that you can share the ideas between you, and get the benefit of what your colleagues have been reading (and thinking about and experimenting with...) as well as your own.

So for next week-- please read ch 4 of Zull (2002) --available here:


(The full reference is in the handbook.)

Here is the presentation which followed after the break (with a few bits we didn't get round to):

Introduction to Learning

Points

• We briefly discussed "tacit knowledge". This portrait of Robert Hooke, Newton's great rival, is constructed from contemporary descriptions, like a police photofit. Not sure I'd recognise him in the street (wig and garb aside, of course).
• And that raised the issue of expertise-- the TED talk I referred to on the expert in medical diagnosis (not Gregory House) is here: the anecdote starts at 4:30 in.

* ...the issue is similar to that discussed here.

(I'll probably recall more to add, but I thought I ought not to delay posting too long.)