Category Archives: academics

Another school year coming to an end in teacher education

academics, celebrations, education, Reflections, Teacher education, teaching

Many universities have their last week of classes this week. The message I (Yiola) end my courses with and what I hope resonates with my student teachers is the message that, at the end of the day,  teaching is ultimately a relational act.  Teaching is about building relationships and fostering a sense of care — having students build a love, respect and belief in themselves and a concern for and desire to learn and achieve. As teachers, we play a significant role in that belief.

In my courses we explore instructional methods: lesson planning, learning environment, creative teaching, and so many curriculum areas. We frame these practices in critical pedagogy and a pedagogy of care. I do my best, in the weekly / bi-weekly class structure of the university, to model what I outline above.

inspiring

I came across this ad on social media and it caught my attention. It made me think of all those  I work with, teach, and care about.

To you I encourage: question thoughtfully, think critically, read intently, and teach confidently.

Wishing everyone a happy end of the school year.

Lin Goodwin Video Now Available: Experts Speaking about Teacher Education

academics, Literacy teacher educators, Teacher education, teacher educators, , , ,

Last year I (Clare) received a grant for the project: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education Lin Goodwinfor the Digital Era: Teacher Educators, Literacy Educators, and Digital Technology Experts Working Together. One of the main activities of the project was to bring together 16 experts from three fields and 4 countries (Canada, US, UK, and Australia) to address the following questions.
• How is our understanding of literacy evolving in light of the new ways we communicate?
• How can literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) prepare student teachers to develop and implement literacy programs that capitalize on digital technology (DT)?
• What teacher education curriculum changes are required to better prepare future teachers to integrate technology in their own teaching?
• What professional learning support do LTEs need to develop courses that will integrate and make greater use of DT?

We held a Symposium in London England in June. Click on the link https://literacyteaching.net/connection-grant/ for more info on the Symposium and for some photos.

At the Symposium we interviewed the participants which we video taped. These videos are now available. They are incredibly interesting, informative, and short. Teacher educators can use these in their courses/presentations. Click on https://literacyteaching.net/connection-grant/powerpoint-presentations-and-videos/

(or the box to the right of this post).

I want to bring your attention to the second video which is of Lin Goodwin from Teachers College, Columbia University. She addresses:

First video: A key insight she has had about education

Second video: Recommendation to improve teacher education

Lin’s powerpoint presentations are also included. Lin is the Vice President of Division K Teaching and Teacher Education for AERA. She is an outstanding researcher who has recently conducted systematic research on teacher educators. Attached is a recent article she co-authored: What Should Teacher Educators Know and Be Able to Do? Perspectives From Practicing Teacher Educators Goodwin_-_WhatShouldTeacherEducatorsKnowandBeAbletoDoPerspec[retrieved_2015-03-28]

Enjoy!

Three Minute Thesis Competition

academics, university, , , ,

Today I (Clare) will be a judge for the 3M 3 Minute Thesis Competition. This competition is found in many universities.

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition is a University-wide competition for doctoral students, in which participants have three minutes or less to present their doctoral research to a panel of non-specialist judges. The challenge is to present complex research information in an engaging, accessible, and compelling way. ​​

This competition is a unique opportunity for graduate students to showcase their innovative and significant research to a wider audience, across disciplines within the University, and to the broader public. It is open to the public and adver​tised within the community.​ 

Graduate students must summarize their thesis (topic, methodology, findings) in 3 minutes. They must present their research in accessible language so that others not familiar with the field can understand it. They can only have 1 ppt slide (which is static), no props, no notes ….

I watched the winner from last year, Daiva Nielsen, and it was amazing. Her research in nutritional sciences examined a large number of participants who were given diet guidelines based on their DNA. There was a control group who just got regular diet info. The group with the specific diet guidelines made much bigger gains (or losses). I highly recommend you watch the video because it is fascinating research made accessible – both content and presentation are so interesting. For those of us who do doctoral supervision this process might beneficial. My thesis supervisor used to tell me that I should be able to summarize my research in 1 sentence, 1 paragraph, and 1 page. I tell my doc students you should be able to explain your research to my mother – no technical language and no jargon. Enjoy the video – here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvHqTgjCSu4&index=12&list=PLV7zOJyRGNPP2zAt6XFcQCV7hPNpElPFd

 

 

Videos Now Available: Experts Speaking about Teacher Education

academics, Conferences, Teacher education, , ,

Last year I (Clare) received a grant for the project: Rethinking Literacy Teacher Education for the Digital Era: Teacher Educators, Literacy Educators, and Digital Technology Experts Working Together. One of the main activities of the project was to bring together 16 experts from three fields and 4 countries (Canada, US, UK, and Australia) to address the following questions.
• How is our understanding of literacy evolving in light of the new ways we communicate?
• How can literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) prepare student teachers to develop and implement literacy programs that capitalize on digital technology (DT)?
• What teacher education curriculum changes are required to better prepare future teachers to integrate technology in their own teaching?
• What professional learning support do LTEs need to develop courses that will integrate and make greater use of DT?

We held a Symposium in London England in June. Click on the link https://literacyteaching.net/connection-grant/ for more info on the Symposium and for some photos.

At the Symposium we interviewed the participants which we video taped. These videos are now available. They are incredibly interesting, informative, and short. Teacher educators can use these in their courses/presentations. Click on  https://literacyteaching.net/IMG_2599 (the box to the right of this post). I want to bring your attention to the first video which is of Bethan Marshall from King’s College London. She addresses:

First video: A key insight she has had about education

Second video: Recommendation to improve teacher education

Enjoy!

Henry Giroux Named 1st Paulo Freire Chair at McMaster University

academics, critical literacy, education, Social Justice, university, , ,

mcmaster

Henry Giroux was recently named the first Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University. The McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning established the chair position to honour scholars who have made a significant advancements in studies of education.

The McMaster website describes Giroux’s work:

Giroux has been a celebrated scholar, author and cultural critic for more than three decades. He currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest, and is a professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies.

His life’s work has been central to the development of critical pedagogy as a field — exploring intersections between the role of education in schools and universities, the role of educators and academics as public intellectuals, as well as topics related to public pedagogy and the educational force of the wider culture.

(http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/henry-giroux-named-paulo-freire-chair-in-critical-pedagogy/#sthash.Qen0HP02.dpuf)

Giroux speaks about his recent appointment. He answers questions such as:

  • What does critical pedagogy have to say about education?
  • Why is critical pedagogy significant to the important work of teaching and learning centres?

Watch the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUAGZEMl9rg

‘Shadiowing’ through Critical Reflection

academics, critical literacy, education, Events, journals, literacy, Reflections, Social Justice, teaching, university, , , , , , ,

I (Cathy) am currently working my way through a book on critical reflection.  ‘Working’ is the operative word, as this book, What Our Stories Teach Us, is set up as a guide to take us ( the teacher, professor, etc.) through an active critical analysis of our lives as educators using storying and  critical incidence.  The author, Linda Shadiow, loves to share stories herself.  Below is one of her favourites.  Apparently she has told it often and she uses it in her  book to illustrate how our stories can impact our lives.

A graduate student is attending a lecture being given by one of her intellectual heroes, the Brazilian educator and theorist Paulo Freire. She takes notes furiously, trying to capture as many of his words as possible. Seeing that she is keenly interested in what Freire had to say, his translator asks if she would like to meet him. Of course! She is introduced and he begins by inquiring about her work. Then he graciously agrees to respond to a set of questions she and her colleagues hoped they would get the chance to ask him. She is impressed beyond belief, but time prevents her from asking one last, difficult question. They meet accidentally once more at the event and he wonders if she asked all her questions? No, there is one more. “Given your work, we want to know ‘where is the hope’?” Without hesitating he moves toward her, takes her face in his hands, looks into her eyes, and replies, “You tell them, ‘you are the hope, because theory needs to be reinvented, not replicated … it is a guide. We make history as we move through it and that is the hope.”

(Taken from  http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/reflections-on-teaching-learning-from-our-stories/ )

The graduate student is, of course, Shadiow.  She explains in her book that her experience with Freire never left her.  It energized and motivated her.  She had to “give back “.  She invites us as both reader and participant to rediscover our incidences of profound learning and let them move us.

shadoiw_

The Next Generation of Academics: An Uncertain Future

academics, graduate students, university, , , , , , , ,

The Teaching Assistants in Toronto’s two largest universities are on strike. The issue is not simply one of money. I (Clare) read with interest an article about the strike in the Globe and Mail today. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/for-10000-of-canadas-young-academics-on-the-picket-lines-theres-a-lot-more-at-stake-than-42-an-hour/article23346532/

One of their major concerns is future employment. The article by Simona Chiose provides some startling statistics re: supply and demand. In 2012 there were 6,393 PhD graduates yet between 2008-2011 there were only 3,030 new full-time faculty positions. Graduates are being hired to limited term or part-time positions, not full-time tenure stream positions. And those of us in universities know that more and more courses are being taught by part-time faculty and that trying to survive on a salary of course stipends (which tend to be abysmally low) is nearly impossible. The Teaching Assistants with whom I have worked over the years have been hard-working, smart, keen, and committed yet their future is dim. The life of a grad student is hard. Let’s try to make their future more secure.

Children’s Role in Human History: Implications for Schooling

academics, Reflections, , , , , , ,

On February 26, I (Clive) read Ivan Semeniuk’s interview in the Toronto Globe & Mail with anthropologist Niobe Thompson, producer of the CBC TV series The Great Human Odyssey. According to Thompson, human life has been quite tenuous over the millennia and only the ingenious have survived. “Our closest call came about 150,000 years ago when…there were fewer than 1,000 breeding adults left” due to “punishing volatility” in Africa’s climate (sounds like Canada today!).

Thompson goes on to talk about key pockets of humans that have survived through incredible ingenuity, involving their “inventing technology to solve the challenges of their world.” This has required creating a whole culture in which everyone participates, including the children. “Whenever I am living with traditional cultures I have the experience of being overwhelmed with the skills my hosts have for living in their environment.” Thompson goes on to talk about the key role of children’s learning in this:

A person cannot become a hunter or a free-diving gatherer or a reindeer nomad as an adult. This is an immense package of skills that one must begin mastering as a child.

This set me thinking. To what extent are children in schools today learning “inert ideas” and “remote matters” (John Dewey) rather than things fundamental to surviving and thriving in the real world? Dewey would agree that one cannot master (and reconstruct) the requisite “immense package of skills” as an adult. The process must occur in earnest from the first day of school (and prior to that in the home). Unfortunately, however, as Nel Noddings says in Education and Democracy in the 21st Century (2013), schooling today is going in the opposite direction.

I do not foresee dramatic changes in the basic structure of curriculum…. Indeed, if we continue in the direction we are now headed, the curriculum will become even more isolated from real life…. It is this tendency that we should resist. (p. 11)

Children do learn a lot of useful things in school: we and our societies are much better off than we would be without schooling. But at present we seem to be headed in the wrong direction. So resist we must. Even in the right direction, we have a very long way to go. Perhaps human survival is not a stake, but human well-being around the planet certainly is.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Meets the Digital World

academics, digital technology, , , , , , ,

One of the students in my (Clare’s) graduate course shared a version of Bloom’s Taxonomy which is linked to Web 2.0 tools. Although I have long had concerns about Bloom’s Taxonomy (using it like a checklist) I found this model interesting.

 

Bloom's Taxonomy

If you go to this site you can click on each tool:

http://digitallearningworld.com/tag/blooms-digital-taxonomy

I found this interesting and it got me thinking about how Web 2.0 tools range from glorified paper and pencil tasks to far more intellectually challenging work. Take a minute to click on the link above and then click on the programs. The pyramid was created by Samantha Penney: samantha.penney@gmail.com.

Neil Selwyn Raises Thoughtful Questions About Digital Technology in Education

academics, digital technology, , , ,

I (Clare) have found Neil Selwyn’s writing about digital technology very helpful. In my Neil Selwyngraduate course we watched a talk by Selwyn (at Monash university). My students and I discussed his perspective on the place of digital technology and the consensus was – his perspective is valuable and educators need to consider the questions he raises. His stance is so sensible and balanced because he asks us to consider issues around digital technology that are often not part of the conversation. The video is about 1 hour and it is so worth the time. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q6bk3RVD9k

Below are some of the notes I made from the video. As you can see he is asking us to think carefully and deeply about technology (and he is a real techie!) I know you will never think of technology in the same way after watching his talk.

  •  We should not get carried away by digital technology because there are wider societal issues
  • Digital technology in higher education is very messy
  • Way we talk about digital technology is overly simplistic – the talk has been hijacked by other groups. Those in higher education need to be part of the conversation
  • place of digital technology is not inevitable – we have choices, need to activate our choices
  •  need to be critical and not just welcome digital technology as inevitable
  • what are the dominant arguments – need to understand the assumptions –

Assumptions

  1. Living in an information age
  2. Death of the institution is inevitable
  3. Crisis in Higher Education – HE fundamentally broken
  4. Period of Inevitable change for institutions

– RHETORIC IS CRISIS TONE – easy to get carried away by rhetoric

  • Need to be less extreme – neither hyper optimistic or hyper critical
  • Lots of change has been superficial – don’t believe the hype
  • digital technology talked about in radical ways
  • Selwyn wants us to think more carefully – why do we talk about digital technology in such extreme terms?
  • Term – disruption – heard again and again
  • What is actually being disrupted?
  • Blame is put on educators – deserve to be disrupted
  • Way digital technology is talked about – whole bunch of values attached to the talk and these things
  • Way we actually use digital technology is mundane and prosaic
  • So what has actually changed?
  • Complaints about universities – “googleized” environment –
  • Bleed of your professional life into your personal life – realities of technology –  intensification of work – not the smart office
  • Survey of professors – tend to use ppt and Moodles mainly
  • How does digital technology enhance teaching and learning?
  • So why do we buy into the myth that digital technology will change everything?
  • Commercialization of education – Silicon Valley mentality – think entrepreneurial – education is broken need Silicon Valley to fix it
  • Profound distrust of educators – need outsiders to fix education
  • Cannot see technologies as neutral — What values are missing?
  • Education is communal – Education is about human contact – something about being in the presence of the teacher and with fellow students
  • What is going on when doing virtual learning? What values are there or not there? Do online courses force artificial discussion?
  • Does ppt dumb down teaching?
  • Working conditions – over 1,000 unread mailboxes – cc: everyone – bringing work home e.g., check emails on Sunday – work seeps into our life
  • Digital bill of rights – set up on-line learning differently – issues of privacy, use of data …
  • Issue of trust – not talked about in elearning
  • Online learning should be about innovation, creativity …. Passion, curiosity – not heard about in elearning
  • Could we teach without ppt?– Ppt designed for business – bullet points – students want bullet points – how does that change learning?
  • Instead of dumping content into virtual learning get students to create own reading lists
  • Have digital technology match our own pedagogy
  • Would it be possible to switch off email for the weekend?
  • Placard — WE ARE STUDENTS: NOT CUSTOMERS
  • Think about digital technology as questions not answers – what are we gaining? What are we losing? What are the second order effects? What is the real problem we are trying to address through use of DT? What are the values underlying DT? Whose values are being promoted?