– a Singaporean teacher's storeroom 🖖
this piece of prezi presentation turned up in my fb history this morning. it was an item from my timeline 3 yrs ago. the presentation captured thought leaders’ ideas on what teaching and learning is about in the 21st century classroom:
the ideas are from 2010, and 5 yrs later, how much has our (CL) classroom changed?
thank you fb for having this neat, surprising history feature (:
during last week’s meeting, some discussions on course offerings for teachers based on what they need took place. having read this article on a History professor reflecting on whether the teaching of history should focus on content (“历史学什么”), or should it be how to learn history (“历史怎么学”), i can’t help but to analyse the discourse through the above lens.
(personally) sadly, the perspective taken still adopted an empty-container-to-be-filled metaphor. for example, if teachers have needs in grammar knowledge, we should conduct course(s) to fill the container(s) with the needed knowledge. there’s no right or wrong since different learning theories may apply, but the perspective taken would affect the way a course is designed. how different would it be if the “enabling teachers on how to learn” perspective is adopted instead?
we always say teachers teach the way they are taught (citation needed), or teachers teach the way they learnt (citation needed). if teachers are not allowed to become self-directed learner, but instead the assumption is empty vessels to be filled, how could s/he teaches his/her students to be a true self-directed, lifelong learner of the 21st century?
in this internet/knowledge age, there’s no lack of contents especially online. but the skill of understanding/applying/synthesising & creating new knowledge based on what turns up from the internet is what our students should be empowered with. but if a teacher does not learn this way, will s/he believe that learning takes place as such, and in turn design his/her learning activities where students learn ‘how-tos’ instead of downloading of (overloaded) data? there’s no lack of literature on how teachers’ beliefs affect his/her teaching.
this week marks the 6th week into our course. next Wed (15/7), we’re meeting up for our last f2f discourse. 好事多磨, the final lesson originally planned for 14/7 crashes with at least 4 participants who are also oral examiners performing their last day of duty for the GCE O-level exams. as such we’ve agreed to shift the date to 15/7, and hopefully more teachers can turn up.
taking a glance at the discussion forum, we are seeing record-low number of participation in the online discussion in the 帖子B posting. only 3 out of 6 expected posts came in. why did this happen? perhaps i wasn’t clear enough in the explanations of the requirements, as such teachers do not know what to do? possible, but i did not receive any clarification email/fb pm/sms/whatsapp, which i should if any of the SDLearner needs help. or, perhaps the course ‘cut across’ june holidays, and other plans take priority? or, any other reason(s)? perhaps my participant friends could let me know 😉
after our 2nd f2f, to date, only 1 帖子C posting came in before school reopens. this morning we see another posting sharing some good work carried out since school reopens for term 3 🙂 so once again, why is the qty so low? it will be interesting to hear the reason(s) too.
a tally of weekly reflection pieces, 4 contributions by 2 participants (out of max. 6 pax). yes, it’s definitely on the low side too. perhaps like what Sean twice mentioned “you made a great assumption that your learners are all highly motivated.” 🙂 yes, i do take that as a basic assumption as i believe that a teacher is a daily role model to our students. if we want our students to love learning, we have to embrace learning ourselves. students don’t just learn the ‘contents’ that we gonna push to them (assuming pushing = learning). there’s more to learning a subject per se 🙂
while planning next week’s meet up, i am toying with an idea of setting aside 15 mins for some personal quiet moment to do a consolidation of the past 6-7 weeks’ experience. will not reveal the title, if there’s one, for now (:
while browsing through the NMC Horizon report K-12 2015 report released just two days ago, another report “Reimagining Teaching in a Blended Classroom” prepared by TNTP mentioned on pg.20 grabbed my attention instead.
as my current work led me into exploring blended learning for teachers’ PD, i put on a teachers’ PD lens too while reading. i think “REIMAGINING” is appropriately chosen. the very conception of learning, teaching, and even classroom needs to be re-visited.
while some teachers are jumping (bravely? blindly?) onto the flipped classroom bandwagon, i believe this report may draw parallel lessons on why “flipping” works for some teachers, and not all, yet. for instance, the traditional roles of a teacher can be classified into 3 types: guide, integrator, researcher & developer (p.2-3). such a proposal of roles brings in the opportunity for teachers to collaborate, specialise, and/or develop professionally. as the report pointed out, for blended learning to work (or flipped learning if one prefers), the whole staffing needs is going to be different. in our system, i imagine the need to (re)develop teachers in various competencies to take on 1, 2, or all 3 roles concurrently. in order for blended/flipped learning to be sustainable, a whole-department (or even a whole school) approach is the way to go. as i draw on my short 1-year experience in introducing blended PD, i can imagine it could be overwhelming for many teachers, if one were to work alone. taking on all 3 roles at one go is going to be an extremely steep learning curve.
but before we could talk about getting it going, are teachers ready for the reimagined roles? it’s definitely not going to make life easier for any teacher (change itself is already a painful process; learning is a slow and time-consuming process; and coupled with the reality that ICT in teaching & learning is not just about efficiency). fundamental shift in a teacher’s beliefs (esp. epistemic) is needed. teachers need to reexamine their assumptions of their own teaching, and their students’ learning.
i would think this is a report that all teachers who intend to introduce flipped learning as part of their teaching & learning activities must read. it provides much food for thought.
how exciting (:
observing our current recruitment strategy, we appear to be recruiting teachers who have learnt well in a certain subject/field to teach that subject. from here, we could assume that teachers recruited to teach a subject is a successful learner of that subject.
we often hear “teachers teach the way they learn” (citation needed), it follows that a physics teacher will teach the way(s) s/he’ve learnt physics well, and students could model those method(s) and learn well too. likewise, a maths teacher will teach the way(s) s/he’ve learnt maths well, and students could model those method(s) to learn maths well. for such ‘wholesale’ teaching of a successful way to another, it assumes that the learner profile of the teacher when s/he was a student is similar to that of the students s/he is teaching right now. but often, our students are unique individuals with diverse backgrounds. such ‘wholesale’ teaching may not work, not to mention pedagogies advance with time.
pedagogy aside, the ‘content’ is another consideration. is “physics” or “maths” 15-20 years ago the same “physics” or “maths” we are referring to today? in other words, are teachers learning the same (or more or less the same) thing as their students when they were students? the nature of content affects how learning takes place too. and this in turn affects the idea of how a subject could be learnt well. self-examination of a teacher is important to raise self-awareness of this issue.
if we were to look at “maths” 15-20 years ago, we could perhaps observe some differences in topics to b taught/learnt at different levels over time. while pedagogies may advance, content-wise “maths” is still largely “maths”.
if we were to examine a CL teacher, i assume a teacher is recruited to teach CL because s/he learns CL well. a CL classroom >15 years ago is largely a teacher-centered classroom, with classroom discourse patterns largely limited to simple IRE. assuming a teacher learns CL well back then, is it appropriate for him/her to “teach the way they learn”? pedagogy aside, is the learner profile of the teacher when s/he was a student similar to that of students s/he is teaching right now? based on the trends of increasing English-speaking homes (around 60% in 2010), there is a higher chance that a present CL teacher grew up in a Chinese-speaking home. in other words, these teachers are learning CL as a first language. and the chance of them teaching students learning CL as a second language is on the rise, and ever increasing. from a language learning point of view, learning CFL and CSL require two entirely different approaches. before we ask if teachers are teaching these two groups of learners with distinct pedagogies, a lower level question to reflect on is, are teachers aware that their “CL” is not “CL” (cf. Maths)? in other words, not many, if not most, CL teachers can “teach the way they learn”?
i believe teachers know “time has changed; things are different”, but i’ve not had the chance to conduct a research on the awareness at this lower level. compared to his/her Maths colleague, a CL teacher is almost not teaching “CL” as s/he have learnt in the past. yes, there would be CL teachers who grew up learning CSL (cf. curriculum’s definition of second language), but at present, lack of official statistics, my guess is such number is few.
hence, the importance of developing reflective practitioners so that a CL teacher may always be aware of the different issues to be considered as s/he goes about designing his/her learning activities for students. fundamentally, “teachers teach the way they learn” has a minimal chance of working for CL teachers.
(photo credit: “Thank you” unsplash)
