Notes for Tuesday evening's MA session on Understanding Learners and Learning 10^th October 2006.

5.00-7.00 1WN 3.8. You will find notes for our weekly sessions at:

http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/tuesday.shtml

After our first session in which we shared some insights about the contexts in which are working and the values and understandings that are focusing out attention on learners and learning I thought that I'd share some assumptions in the educational perspective that guides my pedagogy.

I am assuming that you are master educators in the sense that you already express in your practice with your pupils the embodied knowledge of master educators. I am also assuming that your embodied knowledge has yet to be made public in the way that Catherine Snow is suggesting in her 2001 Presidential Address to the American Educational Research Association:

"The .... challenge is to enhance the value of personal knowledge and personal experience for practice. Good teachers possess a wealth of knowledge about teaching that cannot currently be drawn upon effectively in the preparation of novice teachers or in debates about practice. The challenge here is not to ignore or downplay this personal knowledge, but to elevate it. The knowledge resources of excellent teachers constitute a rich resource, but one that is largely untapped because we have no procedures for systematizing it. Systematizing would require procedures for accumulating such knowledge and making it public, for connecting it to bodies of knowledge established through other methods, and for vetting it for correctness and consistency. If we had agreed-upon procedures for transforming knowledge based on personal experiences of practice into 'public' knowledge, analogous to the way a researcher's private knowledge is made public through peer-review and publication, the advantages would be great (my emphasis). For one, such knowledge might help us avoid drawing far-reaching conclusions about instructional practices from experimental studies carried out in rarified settings. Such systematized knowledge would certainly enrich the research-based knowledge being increasingly introduced into teacher preparation programs. And having standards for the systematization of personal knowledge would provide a basis for rejecting personal anecdotes as a basis for either policy or practice." (p.9)

I am excited about making public your embodied knowledge through your living educational theories flowing through webspace. This excitement is grounded in the belief that your living theories will help to form a professional knowledge-base for education that carries your values, skills and understandings with hope for the future of humanity. By a living educational theory I am meaning an explanation produced by an individual for their educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and/or in the learning of social formations. Hence my enthusiasm for our present focus on Understanding Learners and Learning from this educational perspective.

Another assumption in my educational perspective is that I cannot claim to have educated you. In my assumptions only you can claim to have educated yourself. I can also claim to have educated myself through my own learning. I can however claim to have had an educational influence in your learning when what I do with you has been mediated through your own value or creative experiencing and into your learning. This mediation of yours in your educational influence in your own learning is necessary before I can recognise the learning as educational and evidence of my educational influence. I am seeing your educational influence with your pupils and each other in a similar way and I'll open this assumption for questioning in our Tuesday evening's conversation.

Because of this assumption my idea of educational influence goes beyond any idea of 'pedagogy' I have yet come across.

I am using pedagogy from Basil Bernstein's meanings"

Pedagogy is a sustained process whereby somebody(s) acquires new forms or develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria from somebody(s) or something deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator - appropriate either from the point of view of the acquirer or by some other body(s) or both. (Bernstein, 2000, p.78).

I like Bernstein's distinction between explicit, implicit and tacit pedagogies and want to make my pedagogy as explicit as possible:

Explicit or implicit refers to the visibility of the transmitter's intention as to what is to be acquired from the point of view of the acquirer. In the case of explicit pedagogy the intention is highly visible, whereas in the case of implicit pedagogy the intention from the point of view of the acquirer is invisible. The tacit is a pegadogic relation where initiation, modification, development of change of knowledge, conduct or practice occurs, where neither of the members may be aware of it. Here the meanings are non-linguistic, condensed and context dependent; a pure restricted code relay. An example would be modelling, perhaps the basic pedagogic mode; primary in the sense of time and primary in the sense of durability. The primary modelling where both transmitter and acquirer are unaware of a pedagogic relation must be distinguished from secondary modelling which is a deliberate and purpose relation only for the acquirer. (ibid, p.200).

In our sessions on Understanding Learners and Learning, as part of my explicit pedagogy, I shall be offering the following insights about learners and learning, for your evaluation. From my educational perspective I begin with a focus on our learning about ourselves as learners in our classrooms with our pupils and students as we engage with enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' As part of the evaluation of our developing understandings of learners and learning I am assuming that we will need to understand some of our educational influences in the learning of our students. To develop this understanding I believe we will need to show how our receptive-responsiveness to our students in our educational conversations and other responses with them, influences their learning.

In our enquiries we will be producing descriptions and explanations of our educational influences in our own learning and in the learning of our students in a way that will demonstrate the growth in our understandings of learners and learning. These living theories of your educational influences in learning will constitute your submissions for the unit. As we work together to extend and deepen your enquiries I am assuming that we will share ideas from the learning theories of others. For example, if you go into the following url you will find brief introductions to 12 different learning theories.

http://www.funderstanding.com/about_learning.cfm

* Constructivism

* Behaviorism

* Piaget's Developmental Theory

* Neuroscience

* Brain-Based Learning

* Learning Styles

* Multiple Intelligences

* Right Brain/Left Brain Thinking

* Communities of Practice

* Control Theory

* Observational Learning

* Vygotsky and Social Cognition

From my educational perspective none of these learning theories, either individually or in any combination can adequately explain our educational influences in our own learning or in the learning of another learner. This is because of the requirement of the creative experiencing of the learner in mediating what is being done into an educational influence in learning. I want to stress here that I do not want to be misunderstood as saying that because of this the learning theories have no use-value. Quite the opposite. I want us to be able to show that we have integrated insights from the learning theories of others, where these help the development of our own. I tend to stress the importance of the ideas of others in developing our own educational theories of learners and learning as we use the following criteria to improve the quality of our writings and ensure that our writings can more than meet the criteria:

Made critical use of literature, professional experience and, where appropriate, knowledge from other sources, to inform the focus and methodology of the study or enquiry.

Made appropriate critical use of the literature and, where appropriate, knowledge from other sources, in the development of the study or enquiry and its conclusions.

Demonstrated an ability to identify and categorise issues, and to undertake an educational study or enquiry in an appropriately critical, original, and balanced fashion.

Demonstrated an ability to analyse, interpret and critique findings and arguments and, where appropriate, to apply these in a reflective manner to the improvement of educational practices.

If you have just joined the group I do urge you to access my doctoral supervision section of http://www.actionresearch.net at http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/arsup.shtml and follow the instructions on how to access the e-journals in our library at the top of the page. I think the work of Elliot Eisner is of the highest importance in understanding ourselves as we learn to bring our embodied knowledge as educators into the public domain. So, I do urge you to follow the instructions on how to access his papers from the 1988, 1993 and 1997 issues of Educational Researcher.

To emphasise the importance of your contribution to the professional knowledge-base of education through enhancing the flow of living educational theories through web-space, do have a browse through Ros', Steve's, Meg's and Nina's research methods in education writings. I think they have shown how to work with an educational perspective that remains connected with their educational relationships with their pupils, while showing how they are strengthening the research methods they use in their enquiries of the kind, 'how do I improve what I am doing?'

You can access these at:

Hurford, R. (2006) If the development of an emotionally literate classroom is fundamental to my own values and philosophy of education, how can I show the impact of it on the well-being and learning of the children I teach? How do I research this in my classroom? Retrieved 4 October 2006 from

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rme06/roshurfordrme.htm

Bamford, S. (2006) The Creation of Quality Experience – How Do I Research This in My Classroom?

Retrieved 4 October 2006 from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rme06/stevebamford.htm

White, M. (2006) How do I research the relationships that are created within my primary classroom?

Retrieved 4 October 2006 from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rme06/margaretwhite.htm

Clayton, N. (2006) What am I learning as I seek to integrate a child with 'autistic spectrum disorder' (ASD) into my mainstream class? How can I research this in my classroom? Retrieved 4 October 2006 from http://www.jackwhitehead.com/rme06/ninaclayton.htm

I'd also like you to get into the habit of accurate and appropriate referencing in your writings! (Self interest being expressed here!!). Do please get into the habit of recording the page numbers of quotations, with the correct reference for the paper, book or internet reference. You will find that this will save you (and me!) hours of frustration when you come to referencing in your final submission.

References

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Lanham, Boulder, NewYork, Oxford; Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Snow, C. E. (2001) Knowing What We Know: Children, Teachers, Researchers. Presidential Address to AERA, 2001, in Seattle, in Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, No.7, pp. 3-9.