29 February: Gestalt and the Deep & Surface construct

Commentary

It was an interesting session yesterday, in which you illustrated some of the issues we have been trying to talk about. There was a palpable frustration that the whole thing is not coming together for several of you; the co-existence of different perspectives on learning is difficult to sort out--can they all be right at the same time?

Sort of. I'm not sure that "correctness" or "accuracy" is the best criterion to use. It is usefulness which matters. Learning and teaching is an activity too complex to be captured in just one model. Whether you adopt a behavioural perspective, or a neurological, cognitive, information-processing, humanistic or situated one, each will draw your attention to different aspects of the process and the task of teaching--and some will be more relevant to your own practice and context than others. (And you'll see from the list above that there are many more angles than we touch on...)

But your experience is normal--the picture is confusing, but you will bring it together. People do emerge at the other end (and for what it's worth, from a surface learning perspective, they do pass the assessment!) In the meantime cultivate what Keats called "negative capability":

Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

[Letter to George and Thomas Keats (21 Dec 1817).
in H. E. Rollins (ed.), (1958) Letters of John Keats, Vol. 1, p.193]

And of course your experience is just that kind of "liminality" which we discussed in relation to attempts to iron out the peaks and troughs of the learning curve, lest students be put off by their negative experiences and drop out of the course.


I brought that up in the discussion in relation to the idea of threshold concepts. The link is to a page introducing the idea, with lots more links at the end of it.

And here is a paper by Peter Hadfield and myself (2008) exploring how compliance and accountability, as the mantra of much PCE teaching, may be conspiring against genuine learning.

And for the last word see here.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Here are the slides from the presentation (annotated):

Some notes on Gestalt learning theory

(I've enabled down-loading of the slides: to get at them click on "View in SlideShare" (bottom-left corner) and then "Download" across the top of the display.)

My major Gestalt link is here.There's a more academic and informative one here, with more pointers to Wertheimer, Kohler and Koffka.

Specific points;

A number of the slides were concerned with visual illusions; R L Gregory is the chief authority on them, and some can be seen in video format at the following link (including the mask illusion--which is also here );

• http://www.richardgregory.org/experiments/index.htm and
• http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/brainmodels/illusions-and-brain-models_p1.htm
• See Gregory R L (1997) Eye and Brain; the psychology of seeing (5th edn.) Oxford; Oxford U.P.
• and lots more examples here although these are illusions for the sake of illusions and take us off track a little.

A fuller list of the movies on Betty the Crow's use of tools can be found here, and a write-up at here. More generally here's a TED talk on corvid intelligence:

 ...and here is a crow doing the same sequential tool process as the chimp in the presentation (mutatis mutandi):

One example of crows using stones to raise water level (which one of you referred to having seen elsewhere) is here.

The tendency of people to see patterns which are not there when they don't feel in control is discussed here 

Deep and surface learning.

This is almost the only work on "learning styles" which escaped unscathed from Coffield et al's review in 2004, introduced on the linked page.

The basic idea is introduced here, including Saljo's (1979) five conceptions of learning, which we looked at briefly.

And here is the SOLO taxonomy from John Biggs.

This is worth reading up about properly, especially if you work in more academic areas: see here for a potted account. And:

• Biggs J and Tang C (2007) Teaching for Quality Learning at University (3rd edn) Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press

• Prosser M and Trigwell K (1999) Understanding Learning and Teaching; the experience in higher education Buckingham; Open University Press: SRHE (They have a useful self-assessment tools which you can use to work out whether your teaching style promotes deep or surface learning--if you would like to try it let me know.)

Next week

I hope you will have given some thought to your "critical incident". Remember:

• For discussion purposes all you need is a few notes; there's no need to write it up, although if you do, you might find it works as a starting point for the submission.

• "Critical" just means that the fact that it happened was significant rather than routine. It does not imply something which went wrong, or that you have to be self-critical.

• Indeed, examining how something went right, or better than expected, is often more of a challenge!

We shall be moving on to:

• Experiential learning--dear old Kolb re-visited. The page is here 

• And you might find this adaptation of his model of interest. Or not.

• The Humanistic tradition. This page is merely a taster. Follow some links.

• In particular, Malcolm Knowles on andragogy. And given that you are an all-female class, do see the bottom part of the page.

• Beyond that, there are the theorists of transformative learning and critical reflection, with whom you may find it useful to have a nodding acquaintance, but they go rather beyond the scope of this course.

• And then the proponents of situated learning, for whom the whole idea of pretending that you learn anything useful in an educational institution is rubbish, as cogently argued in this classic article by Howard Becker.

That makes quite a load; so please do as much advance reading as you can, and make a note of your questions, which I'll try to answer!

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Also:

Pancakes: a bit late for this year. These are not traditional Shrove Tuesday tossed thin crepes but more robust, thicker (up to 6mm) but more compact (about 100mm) American-style pancakes… for about a dozen:

• A heaped tablespoon of self-raising flour. (Plain flour for Yorkshire puds, s-r for pancakes)
• A heaped dessert spoon of sugar
• A rounded tea spoon of baking powder
• Half a flat teaspoon of salt (or less, but some at least)
• One egg (this poses the tricky scaling issue; you can multiply all the other ingredients quite happily, but at what point do you need another egg? I think it is when you reach three times the above amounts, but in practice there appears to be no harm in using more eggs, so err on the side of generosity).
• Milk (or milk and water) to mix the batter to the consistency of double cream.

Put it in the fridge and it will thicken, so you may need to add more liquid (carefully–a little liquid makes a big difference) before cooking. You can use the batter at once, but letting it rest seems to produce better results.
Lightly oil a frying pan and pre-heat until a drop of water turns into a dancing ball when dropped in the pan. Pour in the batter, sufficient to spread to about four inches. When bubbles have formed and burst on the top surface, flip over and cook for about fifteen seconds or so until lightly browned. “Children are like pancakes–always throw the first one away” (Peter  Benchley) Once you have the hang of the process, do them in batches of three or four at a time.

Serve with butter and maple syrup.

We'll re-visit the pancake case new week, and see how it works with the Kolb cycle.
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