08. pedAgogy and educAtioN – Page 2

February 17, 2016

which level are you at?

no, this is not a RPG question, nor a rhetoric qn.

was reading and saw reference to John Biggs (1999)’s Levels of Teaching Competence in his other article ‘what the student does? teaching for enhanced learning‘.

so, using RPG-like language, i can probably ask a teacher “which teaching level are you at?”, or “which teacher level are you?” 😛

a quick list of the focus of the 3 levels of teaching competence:

level 1: focus on what the student IS
level 2: focus on what the teacher DOES
level 3: focus on what the STUDENT does

level 1’s focus is on knowledge transmission. teacher’s responsibility is to lecture, and assume students will ‘absorb’. if students do not learn, ‘blame the student’ (in terms of deficit in ability, attitude, study skills, motivation (Samuelowicz, 1987).

level 2’s focus is very much on what the teacher does to transmit knowledge (concepts and understanding) to students. a teacher will aim to work at equipping oneself with ‘an armoury of teaching skills’. PD is focused on ‘HOWTOs’. the deficit now lies with the teacher. ‘blame the teacher’ for being incompetent (teaching is a bag of competencies) if s/he doesnt transmit knowledge well.

level 3’s focus is on students learning. one may argue that this requires level 2’s competencies as a basis. perhaps so. but the focus is on what the student does, and the key qns for consideration is “what it means to understand those concepts and principles in the way we want them to be understood?”, and “what kind of teaching/learning activities are required to reach those kinds of understanding?” (p.63)

level 3 is ‘student-centered’ teaching. 1 & 2 are teacher-centered.

February 17, 2016February 17, 2016

writing, marking

saw this article via a fb post/link this morning:

Responding to Student Writing — and Writers

and i thought what the author pointed out are indeed in line with the spirit of social constructivism (meaning-making occurs in discourse/dialogue), and assessment for learning. 6 ideas to get it write:

Differentiate comments on drafts from those on final essays.
Give grammar lessons their own time and space.
Create a partnership with students across the drafts.
Extend these writing-based partnerships by having a class-wide conversation about commenting.
Establish a class language for comments.
Be encouraging.

the ideas assumed that composition writing is a process that involves drafts before finals. process writing is in the true spirit of developing writing competencies in our students. i must confess that i did not do this in the past. but if i were to be back in the classroom, this would be a must-do. otherwise, how can i expect my students to improve in their writings when (1) a one-off marked and return exercise may have too many issues to tackle (字、词、句、段、篇 all 5 areas add up is A LOT A LOT A LOT), not to mention this turns every essay into (2) a summative assessment in disguise.

development takes time for the learners. and in this case, it would most likely take up more time of the teachers. one thing that must definitely be looked into: the number of essays to be written as stated in the SOW. it would probably make a good experimental study to compare a class of students who completes only 4 (let’s say) ‘formative’ essays vs. a class of students who completes the usual 8 (let’s say) ‘summative’ essays.

September 30, 2015September 30, 2015

downward spirals, upward spirals

a second consecutive post on Benjamin Zander. below’s a video on Zander’s sharing his teaching philosophy “the art of possibility”. saw it many times in the past, and can’t help but to feel rekindled by Zander each time i watch this video 🙂

extending some thoughts from the video, our education system is built on the downward spirals, and how learning can be transformed if learning is built upon upward spirals. let’s take how (un)well students are learning CL as an example.

the downward spirals talks include:
“学生学不好华文因为他们没有兴趣。”
“学生学不好华文因为他们讨厌华文。”
“学生学不好华文因为他们在家里只讲英语，和朋友只讲英语。”
“学生学不好华文因为他们连字都不认得几个，还整天写错别字。”
“学生学不好华文因为他们…………”

how would the worldview change if we were to frame all these thoughts into one main sentence:

“学生都能学好华文，他们还未发现（这个可能性）罢了。”

similarly, all the above downward talks can be reframed:

“学生都能学好华文，他们还未发现如何对它产生兴趣罢了。”
“学生都能学好华文，他们还未发现如何爱上它罢了。”
“学生都能学好华语，他们还未发现如何能有机会多说罢了。”
“学生都能学好华文，他们还未发现如何能学习好华文的字词罢了。”

这里的共同语是“还未发现如何”，那下一步是什么？不正是教师的工作、教师的职责所在吗？去引导学生发现，去引导学生怎么学，让学生在我们不在的时候（也就是大多数时候）都能学；方法，学习的方法是至关重要的。21世纪的华文教师如果只是单纯的知识输出者，那机器应该可以作更好的输出，而且可以无时无刻地输出、反复地输出，24/7。

我们的学生都是华文成绩A的学生，他们还未发现（这个可能性）罢了。这里需要关注”A”的作用。它不是我们一般让学生去追求的目标。用Zander的话：

“We give students an A not as an expectation to live up to. We give students an A as a possibility to live into.”

这个思维的转变是非常关键的。不然又要落入downward spirals中，不得超生。

the video:

some other quotes that caught my attention are captured here:

“When you give an A, the relationship is transformed.”

“We don’t give children a name as an expectation to live up to. We give children a name as a possibility to live into… We give students an A not as an expectation to live up to. We give students an A as a possibility to live into.”

“it’s “cosmic laughter” … The A is invented, the 68 is invented. We might as well invent something that lights up our lives, and the people around us.”

“In Asia it is important to be right. The teacher is always right… and a young girl said ‘If you don’t say anything, you won’t ever be wrong.”

“You cannot learn anything unless you make a mistake. When you make a mistake, this is how you celebrate…”

“The downward spirals …”

“A Vision, is not something only a few can reach. A Vision, is something that everyone can reach.”

“Everybody loves classical music. They just haven’t found out about it yet.” (vs. Only 3% of pple love classical music. If only 4% of pple love classical music, all our problems would be over.)

“It’s all invented. Standing in possibilities. Rule #6. That’s it. Simple.”

🙂

August 27, 2015June 20, 2016

designing ICT-integrated lessons with TPACK

thanks to colleagues at CPDD, our article written for CL teachers, by CL teachers is now published (:

the Chinese title reads 《基于TPACK的华文资讯科技教学设计思路》. in essence, the short article promotes the idea of considering TPACK when designing ICT-integrated CL lessons. teachers may adopt any starting point in their design, whether it’s content, pedagogy, or technology. suggestions are given in the article so that TPACK, which is essential for the design to facilitate learning in students, is considered. teachers would also be constructing their own TPACK during this design process. the pdf can be downloaded from the local mirror:

陈育焕、张永慧 (2015). 基于TPACK的华文资讯科技教学设计思路。华文老师，59, 32-36.

it is also appropriate for us to express our thanks to Si Hui for her invaluable comments to our draft here. the acknowledgement wordings (本文承蒙林思慧老师（目前为西澳大学博士生）为初稿提出宝贵的批评与建议，谨此特致谢忱。) were removed when the article was published.

and last but not least, here’s the high-res translated TPACK in Chinese 中文/华文 diagram for download, in case any fellow CL teachers would like to use it in their work, there’s no need to recreate the wheel (:

thanks to tpack.org for making the original diagram for free distribution (:

August 23, 2015August 23, 2015

teaching in the 21st century video

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 (: