Tammy Jinkerson's Adventures in Education: 810 Module 5: Journal Part 2: Dialogue and Educate Professional Community

Journal Part 2:

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY- NEEDS ASSESSMENT

As toured around my chosen professional communities, I came to one major realization. Hiring within colleges is different than in many other educational institutions. College professors are chosen for their roles because of their expertise in their chosen professions. Their industry knowledge, skill and experience lends itself well to passing on the content that college graduates need to be credible candidates for entry level jobs within their chosen careers. This approach is neither right now wrong, but rather just shows the current profile of most college professors, as a group.

While there are highly effective teachers in the system, many will have had little formal training in the art and science of teaching. They either have natural gifts that allow them to instruct and dialogue about content. They can also be successful by developing their teaching competencies on-the-job. One of the most powerful tools available to professors are professional communities of practice. These communities offer a daily-dose of teacher training, ranging from tips that are proven in the classroom to learning technologies. In these communities they can dialogue and share, to the extent that they can share the complete curriculum that is needed to teach-on-the-fly. These communities strengthen teachers, both those who have a foundation in adult education and those who are learning as they go.

Professors who possess industry knowledge, but lack the foundational skills of curriculum may be more likely to question the logic of the curriculum means to a learning end. In contrast, they may also blindly follow curriculum given to them, being unable to argue a case with curriculum designers who approach design from a curriculum perspective, rather than an industry perspective This is an entirely different point of view.

Professors who have formal teaching education will likely have some idea about the origins of curriculum, leading to an understanding of the goals and paths that curriculum taken en route to student learning. But, often these trained teachers take classes in curriculum philosophy and design and never look back. Reflecting, revising and redesigning curriculum is important to ensure the best student learning. Remembering the underpinnings of curriculum theory helps to ensure alignment, outcomes and the best learning experience.

In my personal life, I have a living example. My husband is a Fire Prevention Officer and an important part of his job, but not all of it, is teaching. He teaches fire prevention at the elementary level and he also teaches courses for the local Fire Service. His specialty is fire prevention, but his task is teaching. His professional development courses are significant, but very much focus on delivery and not the foundations of teaching that ground those whose profession is teaching.

Often, his curriculum is handed to him from an official source. When designing his own curriculum, he often asks me about the teaching process, to enhance his work. It is interesting to engage in discussion about the means, the end and the learning experiences that will take his students to meaningful learning. Discussions about philosophy and conceptions do happen, but in a simplified manner, as he is usually pressed for time. In this way, he is like a college professor, who has vast knowledge about content but is less informed about designs, instruction and assessment. Most of the time, this curriculum resonates with his ideas about the subject matter, but sometimes he finds that it is not the way he would design it. When this happens, he finds it difficult to defend the curriculum, and support it in the way that he could if he understood the conceptions, philosophies and how they affect planning and delivery.

THE BIG IDEA

This leads me to my idea about creating a Curriculum Crash Course, to serve as a professional development tool for professors who have not had formal training in curriculum and as a refresher to keep trained teachers grounded in the philosophies that guide curriculum.

THE FORMAT

Reflecting on the effectiveness of discussion formats, like Twitter, I am inspired to take a “less is more” approach. This will not be easy, given the complexity of the content of PME 810!

THE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY SPACE

In my research about my chosen professional communities, I found a space at the Fleming Learning Hub in which faculty can post their blog sites. Given the current faculty strike, this area is not being moderated and so I am not able to achieve this as a goal, but what I can do is identify this is the forum and the discussion mechanism I would normally use. What I like about this method is that I can provide teasers through the chat areas that sends faculty to my own space, where I can provide a level of detail that I Tweets will not allow.

OBJECTIVES

1. Educate

Building upon the idea of having a quick tutorial on curriculum, I set out to create a 15-20 minute tutorial aimed at college professors who come from a specialty background that is not education or teaching.

I created an Adobe Spark video, in which I explored:

-conceptions

-philosophies

-designs

-planning

-instruction

-evaluation

-alignment

-continuous improvement

THE PME810 OUTPUT:
A CURRICULUM TUTORIAL FOR COLLEGE PROFESSOR

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO LINK TO THE PRESENTATION
A CRASH COURSE IN CURRICULUM THEORY-
A GUIDE FOR THE ON-THE-GO COLLEGE PROFESSOR

2. Sharing My Views

In light of the College Faculty strike, it was not possible to actually post and share my views, but below includes my steps, if I had access, or gain access in the near future.

Plan for Posting

Creating my own page on the

Fleming Learning Hub
College Curriculum Affinity Group

Posting would read:
“As a graduate student studying education, I believe that curriculum matters in education. How we conceive curriculum influences lessons and gives teaching directions and meaning. I believe in the power of curriculum to develop intellect, shape society, engage with technology and motivate and inspire individuals to grow and become something wonderful. Visit my page on the Learning Hub, and my blog for more tips, tidbits and teaching about curriculum and what it means for college-level learning.

Education involves vision and choices and I believe that both require a solid grounding in philosophy and curricular concepts to be effective.

Teaching, especially in today’s modern world of exponential change, is an awesome social responsibility. To do this responsibility justice, we need to understand the underpinnings of curriculum to ensure that no time is wasted.

#whatscurriculumgottodowithit

#curriculummatters

#curriculumideasbecometomorrowssociety "

3. Stimulate Dialogue

Going with the less is more approach, I would use Twitter and the chat rooms to ask some provocative questions:

What is curriculum?

Why does curriculum matter?

How does curriculum effect students?

Who cares about curriculum?
How does curriculum help college graduates get good jobs?

4. Invite Others

I would then invite dialogue by pointing to my blog, my educational video and my Twitter feeds.

5. Journal

Given that this is my 6^th PME course, I am quite accustomed to connecting with professional communities. My previous experience will have to serve to inform this assignment, as actual experience in my chosen community is not possible, due to the current faculty strike.

My reflections and observations are that effective and important dialogue does happen in professional communities, but doesn’t always do so in a timely fashion. However, membership in professional communities is more about ongoing learning day-by-day and not a large cluster of learning that happens as it does with assignments at the end of a course.

My other experience with professional communities is that the more they are moderated, the less likely it is that you will have dialogue. For this, I find social media (or social media assisted communities) to be the most interactive. While this dialogue sometimes comes at the expense of quality, it does help professionals to grow and stimulate more thought on a given subject, together with other professionals. Open minds that are receptive to dialogue, but also critical thought and professional inquiry are guiding principles for engaging in professional communities.

A Note to Self:

In every PME course, I challenge myself to learn about new teaching and learning technologies. Experimenting with these technologies is one of my learning goals, but it often mean that I am learning the technical aspects of software, as I engage with PME curriculum. Navigating technical learning curves is one thing, but when you can't learn your way out of a technical issue, it is a blood-boiling experience.

This was my experience, as I used Adobe Spark for my output. I was at the stage of uploading the last few pictures and the Adobe servers would not let me back into the system for 16 hours! This meant that I couldn't finish my presentation, nor upload it for that time and was left wondering if all of my work crashed, along with the technology. What can I learn from this?

This is a reminder to not rely on this technology again. And, to always allow extra time in case of technology issues! But, beyond ranting about my experience, I connect my frustrations to the content of PME810.

The idea of relying on technology is an interesting modern curriculum dilemma to consider. This is particularly true of the Technology Conceptions and the philosophies that are based in efficiency. With one technical glitch, we can find ourselves unable to access our presentations, our content and means of standardized assessments and the results of those assessments. We freely give our control up to technology in the name of efficiency. I read a book once called Outliners, by Malcom Gladwell, in which he described the success that teachers in struggling inner city schools when they not only captured learning data, but how they purposefully took the data offline, so that they could interact with it. The researchers and teachers reported that it was this approach that informed their assessments and lead to teaching supports and adjustments that made a great difference for individual students. Being online supports learning, without a doubt. But, we need to have the courage, also, to inquiry if and when going offline makes sense for curriculum design, delivery and assessment.

(Source: Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

Technology offers so much to the curriculum experience, but can be a crutch. Professionals can still plan, deliver and assess curriculum when servers crash temporarily, like they did during my assignment. Teachers matter in curriculum. This experience leads me to say that teachers should use technology and that technology shouldn't, instead, use teachers.

Thank you for reading my blog.

I am seeking feedback, so please be sure to comment and mingle your thoughts and learning about what curriculum is and why it matters and how our understanding of curriculum theory can lead to deep and meaningful learning for students.

Sources:

Eisner, E., & Vallance, E. (Eds.). (1974). Five conceptions of the curriculum: Their roots and implications for curriculum planning. In

E. Eisner & E. Vallance (Eds.), Conflicting conceptions of curriculum (pp. 1-18). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing.

Hill, A. M. (1994). Perspectives on philosophical shifts in vocational education: From realism to pragmatism and reconstructionism. Journal of Vocational and Technical Education, 10(2), 37-45.

McNeil, J. D. (2006). Contemporary curriculum in thought and action (6th ed., pp. 1-13, 24-34, 44-51, 60-73). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Ornstein, A. C. (1990/1991). Philosophy as a basis for curriculum decisions. The High School Journal, 74, 102-109.

Ornstein, A. C., & Hunkins, F. P. (2013). Curriculum: Foundations, principles, and issues (6^th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Pratt, D. (1994). Curriculum perspectives. In

D. Pratt, Curriculum planning: A handbook for professionals(pp. 8-22). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publisher.

Shiro, M. S. (2008). Introduction to the curriculum ideologies. In M. S. Shiro, Curriculum theory: Conflicting visions and enduring concerns (pp. 1-12). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sowell, E. J. (2005). Curriculum: An integrative introduction (3rd ed.,). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Vallance. (1986). A second look at conflicting conceptions of the curriculum. Theory into Practice, 25(1), 24-30.

LEARNING FROM OTHER PME STUDENTS

Comparisons and Contrasts:

I have chosen to reflect on Nicole Mackie’s work in Modules 4 and 5 in a comparison to my own work and experience in my chosen communities. I chose Nicole’s work because her community was an ESL community, which offers a very different look at how curriculum is designed, instructed and assessed. I have also been considering entering into this field, once I have completed the PME program, and so Nicole’s work offered me an opportunity to sample one professional community and what it offers to participants.

When I began reading Nicole’s blog responses and visited the ESL Teacher’s Google+ website, I began to realize how different the issues and dilemmas involved in ESL curriculum. In my professional communities of Ontario College Curriculum Affinity group and the Fleming Learning Hub, English proficiency is clearly assumed. To gain entry into college programs, there is a minimum English proficiency that is required and if the students don’t meet this level, they must plan to continue further proficiency in English in order to proceed. College professors’ focus is different than ESL teachers. The focus of college professors is on industry literacy- the skills and language involved with professional industries. This can involve something of an “industry second language”, but this does not lead to any commonality in what I noticed within the professional communities. ESL is completely different in that there are few language skills and so nothing can be assumed. This may be why there seems a greater tolerance within Nicole’s community to change their approaches to ESL learning. This community seems to be noticing that doing so will lead to stronger outcomes for ESL students. The learner focus seems less tolerated within the college focused community.

There are also different levels of language learning, which make ESL communities different from communities of college professors. For example, a student studying business at college does not have the option to study marketing at a beginner, intermediate or advanced level. This means that curriculum in college programs is more standardized for the average student performance level. I believe this makes for better opportunities for sharing industry curriculum within the communities. It might also lead to less frustration in the communities with sharing curriculum or dialogue that is interesting, but does not fit due to reasons associated with levels of study, language or even culture. If you have ever spent a great deal of time in a professional community, you will know the experience of playing with great ideas that lead to no clear pathway or solid action plan. Getting lost in thought in a professional community is not a bad thing, except when you are pressed for time or when you teach most of the day and have little time to tolerate offshoots of thought.

Another contrast one that Nicole Makie in "A Professional Journey" website pointed out when she said, “ What I have come to realize as an ELS teacher and a post-graduate student is that our teaching practices don’t always match up with our educational philosophies” (Nicole Mackie Website). I think this is quit true of college professors and their educational communities. In these communities, college professors tend to profess a desire for student motivation and deeper learning, but then offer the same passive listening, subject-centred, teacher as expert learning opportunities. Nicole was fortunate to have a member of her professional community engage with her to share a very thoughtful video about how ESL learning should be student-driven. In this video, Chris Lonsdale describes a process in which, he claims, that any student can learn a language in just 6 months. He talked about modelling and a learner centered concept of “comprehensible input” in which there are 5 principle and 7 actions to be taken in the process (Lonsdale Youtube). This was a fascinating video that fully rejected subject-centred learning and embraced student-centred learning approach from design to delivery. According to Nicole Mackie, “for learning to become more personalized, efficient and absolutely student-led, curriculum needs to be learner-based”(Nicole Mackie Blog).

Within the ESL community, Chris Lonsdale’s video also explained that, with a repertoire of just 3,000 words, new language learners then know approximately 98 per cent of the language (Lonsdale, Youtube). If this were posted, instead in the College Professor’s Affinity group, I would think that this same message would be filtered through a subject-matter lens and would be translated through that dominant school of thought. What I mean is that I think the same message would translate as a good case for more subject-matter design in vocabulary. I am really curious what Nicole would think about that contrast. Would she have some creative thought as how one would make the process of gaining more vocabulary a student-focused design and implementation process? How could students identify the vocabulary that is important to their own communication to have the relevance, meaning, memory and attention that Chris Lonsdale said was important in a learner centred approach? I also wonder how this could inform college professors to also bend more in the direction of student-focused learning but from a career-oriented perspective?

Another important point that Nicole identified from involvement with her community is the ineffectiveness of multiple-choice testing as an assessment method. Her ESL community seemed to advocate for a more conversational assessment, which seems obviously well aligned to the desired outcomes of an ESL program. This is where the two communities do not share commonalities. In my chosen communities, verbal assessment would not be possible, due to efficiency issues.

My observation about Nicole’s community is that it is more similar to the Fleming College Learning Hub, than the College Curriculum Affinity group in that the conversations are quicker, more interactive and based on learning needs of the moment. These benefits offer immediate gratification for the teacher engaged in the community because their curiosities and thoughts meet with an immediate responses. This is a very rewarding feature of Nicole’s chosen community and the Fleming Learning Hub. This reward structure seems to better match the learn-centred approach that was seen in the group itself- given that the ESL teachers are working like students within this professional development based learning environment. To an outsider, like me, it comes across as well aligned and congruent to the dominant vision of the group. By contrast, the College Curriculum Affinity Group tends to have longer and more involved conversations on a given subject, which is different, but also congruent with their own dominant vision.

Nicole’s comments about assessment and error correction of students were very interesting against the backdrop of her chosen community. If I understood her meaning, she was advocating a student-focused process that made the assessment more of a low-stakes feedback that maintained student motivation. This dovetailed with Lonsdale’s video in that people learning new languages need to give up some control and certainty in order to achieve the outcome of better learning. This kind of comment seemed well received in Nicole’s chosen community. I think this is, again, because it aligns to the common vision of where the field of ESL is going. I thought about how this might be different in my chosen communities and came to the conclusion that college communities might not be as open and flexible, given that they are entrenched in subject-matter thinking. While this makes sense for an ESL community, it might not translate as well to a college community, in which industry mastery driven curriculum dominates. Having said that, I know that this community is, at the very least, wrestling with the issues of how they can maintain their reputation for mastery, while enhancing student motivation through self-directed activity. Perhaps this was the same fork in the road that the ESL community faced. It might also be that the larger the organization, the less nimble it becomes and perhaps ESL is nimble and ready for student-focused and able to tolerate a little less mastery, given that language does not require complete mastery. These are the themes that jump out when observing the professional communities, side-by-side.

Analysis and Synthesis of Complexities:

The curricular complexities, as you look across different curriculum communities, are numerous. I will pose a number of questions to illustrate this complexity synthesis:

-What are you teaching? (is subject matter or the learning experience itself most important)

-How important is mastery? (when learning how to safely operate machinery, mastery is important, but in learning a language you need enough knowledge to communicate and not mastery).

-At what complexity is the curriculum? (will practice and practical application be important, or a theoretical understanding of a subject area).

-Would technology enhance or hinder learning? (will technology be the means or the end (or both) of the learning?

-What flexibility will the funder of your service allow in design, delivery and assessment of curriculum? (if there are benchmarks and requirements, then the means and the end must align within the funders conception of curriculum).

-What is the most important knowledge for students to have to cope and integrate into society and how is this best taught? (teaching students cognitive skills to use in other situations or giving real world problems to contribute to learning).

-Should students be change-agents in society or should they simply learn to adapt to the ill-structuredness of society and what can students gain from different approaches? (different opportunities motivate students differently).

-What is the role of standardized assessment or other assessment in funding models? (how can professionals in communities align to expected outcomes while still ensuring a learning experience that is truly impactful?)

Each of these questions would be answered differently by individuals and collectives of individuals, like in professional communities, would be different again. Professional communities determine the what is appropriate according to their desired means and ends. But, professional communities do no remain static. This is the wonderful thing that online professional communities offer professionals; a challenge to the status quo that offers new ideas and solutions.

I began this assignment with questions and curiosities about how professional communities factor into curriculum design, delivery and assessment. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to notice differences, given so much variation within individuals within professional communities. By comparing and contrasting Nicole Mackie’s chosen community versus my own, I was able to detect that each community has a flavour. I found that the flavour is enhanced when mixed with other views and visions. While the views in Nicole’s communities were very different than those in my chosen communities, I gained refreshing ideas about how things in subject-matter designs and conceptions might change, if we can learn from one another and share our experiences in professional communities.

Acknowledgement

Thank you, Nicole, for your keen observations.

Your understanding of curriculum philosophy, conceptions and designs shows in the way you have though about planning, delivery and assessment.

Your hard work in these modules is evident, and greatly appreciated for their support of my learning.

Sources:

Nicole Mackie’s Community, for Comparison

Mackie, Nicole. (2017, Nov). A Professional Journey: Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. [Web Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://nicolemackie.wixsite.com/aprofessionaljourney/single-post/2017/11/19/Teacher-vs-Student-Centred-ESL-Classrooms-Module-5-Output

Lonsdale, Chris. (2013, Nov. 20). How to learn any language in six months. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

Compared to Tammy Jinkerson’s Community, for Comparison

The Teaching Hub. Fleming College Learning Design and Support Team Blog. [Web Blog Posts]. Retrieved from: https://fleminglds.wordpress.com

Curriculum Developer’s Affinity Group. Exchange. [Website] Retrieved from:

http://gototheexchange.ca/index.php/about-cdag

Replies and Dialogue Generated from My Blog and Output

I was absolutely thrilled to get dialogue going with other students, who replied to my Journal, output and inquiry. Here is the dialogue from two students and my replies to them.

NOTE: to see a larger version of these posts, just click on the post and it will get bigger!