Implications of the student learning journey for teaching
1. Implications of the student learning
journey for teaching
Tansy Jessop
L&T Conference, USW
@tansyjtweets
30 June 2016
2. Session outline
1. What is the student learning journey?
2. One dominant model (Biggs)
3. Two theories (Perry and Baxter Magolda)
4. The central problem
5. Implications and strategies for teaching:
⢠Curriculum Design
⢠Knowing and knowledge
⢠Engaging students
⢠A paradigm shift.
4. Deep and Surface Learning (Marton
and Saljo (1976)
Deep Learning
⢠Meaning
⢠Concepts
⢠Active learning
⢠Evaluate evidence
⢠Make connections
⢠Relationship new and
previous knowledge
⢠Real-world learning
Surface Learning
⢠Formulaic
⢠Content
⢠Passive process
⢠Inability to distinguish
principles from examples
⢠Treating modules as silos
⢠Not seeing connections
⢠Artificial learning
6. It all began with Perryâs Module
EvaluationsâŚ
âThis course has changed my whole outlook on life.
Superbly taught!â
âThis course is falsely taught and dishonest. You
have cheated me of my tuitionâ
7. This has been the most sloppy,
disorganised course Iâve ever taken.
Of course Iâve made some improvement,
but this has been due entirely to my own efforts!â
8.
9. The reliance on traditional instruction is not simply a
choice made by individual facultyâstudents often
prefer it. This resistance to active learning may have
more to do with their epistemological development
than a true preference for passivity.
William Perry 1981
10. The journey: move over dualism
By confronting students with uncertainty, ambiguity,
and conflicting perspectives, instructors help them
develop more mature mental models that coincide
with the problem-solving approaches used by experts.
William Perry 1981
11. Intellectual Development of Students
Third Year
Commitment Teacher as endorser
Second Year
Relativism Teacher as enigma
First Year
Dualism Teacher as expert
13. Four stages of knowing
Four Stages
Absolute Knowing Authorities know the answers
Transitional Knowing Authorities donât know all the
answers, need to search for answers
with the guidance of teachers
Independent Knowing Most knowledge uncertain, people
choose what they feel is best
Contextual Knowing Knowledge relative to context;
knowledge claims need to be tested
against evidence.
14. Three key assumptions
1. Knowledge is complex and socially constructed.
2. Self is central to knowledge construction.
3. Interdependence of knowledge construction.
Mutuality.
16. The Central Problem
Collegiate Learning Assessment
2,300 students.
45% showed no significant gains
in critical thinking, complex
reasoning and writing.
Wabash Study (2005-11)
3,000 students from 19
institutions. No measurable
improvement in critical thinking.
17. How much are students actually
learning in contemporary higher
education? The answer, for many
undergraduates, is not much.
Do universities reproduce or
reduce inequality among students
from different family
backgrounds?
[There is ] evidence of limited
learning and persistent
inequalityâŚ
18. Take Five
⢠Your gut responses to
student intellectual
journey theories.
⢠What evidence do we
have of studentsâ growth
in complex thinking?
⢠What helps students to
grow in complex
learning?
19.
20. Common things that get in the way of
the student learning journey
1. Disconnected curriculum design
2. Over-emphasis on content knowledge
3. Absence of active and routine student
engagement in intellectual pursuits
23. ⢠A lot of people donât do wider reading. You just focus
on your essay question.
⢠In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our
lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to
get the assignment done.
⢠Itâs been non-stop assignments, and Iâm now free of
assignments until the exams â Iâve had to rush every
piece of work Iâve done.
What students sayâŚ
25. What students sayâŚ
The feedback is generally focused on the module.
Itâs difficult because your assignments are so
detached from the next one you do for that subject.
They donât relate to each other.
Because itâs at the end of the module, it doesnât feed
into our future work.
I read it and think âWell, thatâs fine but Iâve already
handed it in now and got the mark. Itâs too lateâ.
26. Strategies to address disconnection
⢠Team approach to curriculum design
⢠Smart structural ways to connect curriculum
⢠Longitudinal student research journey
⢠Planned iterative cycles of feedback
⢠Feedback as conversation â who starts the
dialogue?
⢠Synthesis level-tasks related to feedback
⢠From feedback as âtellingââŚ
⢠⌠to feedback as asking questions
29. The best approach from the studentâs perspective is to focus
on concepts. Iâm sorry to break it to you, but your students are
not going to remember 90 per cent â possibly 99 per cent â of
what you teach them unless itâs conceptualâŚ. when broad,
over-arching connections are made, education occurs. Most
details are only a necessary means to that end.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-students-
lecture-to-rofessors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter
A studentâs lecture to her professor
30. What students sayâŚ.
We just have to kind of regurgitate it ⌠thereâs no time for us
to really fiddle around with it, thereâs so much to cover.
The scope of information that you need to know for that
module is hugeâŚso youâre having to revise everything - at the
same time, you want to write an in-depth answer.
In an exam it's really like diving in and out of books all the
time and not really getting very deep into them.
32. Curriculum Design (Barnett & Coate 2005)
⢠Knowing is about content
⢠Acting is about becoming a
historian, engineer,
psychologist, or
philosopher
⢠Being is about
understanding yourself,
orienting yourself and
relating your knowledge
and action to the world
Knowing
Being
Acting
33. 3. Student engagement in intellectual
pursuits
Pedagogy must move beyond knowledge acquisition to
active knowledge construction
(Baxter Magolda 2001).
Life is not multiple choice (Anne, 2001).
Everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner.
(Boyer Commission 1995).
34. But there is an engagement vacuum
⢠Summative assessment is a âpedagogy of controlâ
driving student effort
⢠Culture-shift required to engender playful, curious,
authentic engagement in learning
⢠Symptom: the ratio formative to summative
assessment is 1:8 (TESTA data)
⢠Student research projects are often a belated
offering.
35. What students say about formative
⢠If there werenât loads of other assessments, Iâd do it.
⢠If there are no actual consequences of not doing it,
most students are going to sit in the bar.
⢠Itâs good to know youâre being graded because you take
it more seriously.
⢠The lecturers do formative assessment but we donât get
any feedback on it.
36. Formative Blogging Case Study
Problem
Are students reading academic texts?
Symptom
Silent Seminars
Cure
Weekly blogging on academic texts
Impacts
Growth in writing confidence, complex thinking, reading and
engagement
Challenge
Articulation with summative assessment
39. Out of the silent seminarâŚ
You have to evidence that you have read it compared to
a seminar reading. You are reading a lot more as well as
the set ones.
I go more in depth with the reading than with the
reading pack when Iâd just highlight. It helps.
We sit in blog groups, all talk about it. Discuss the
readings. I think the discussion is more focused.
40. Into engagementâŚ
Over the whole three years this is the most
engaged Iâve been in my readings. I really
liked doing this. I wish we had done it
more. Maybe start it in the first year.
.
âŚit is also a bit chatty and
informal. Even though Iâm putting
in readings, itâs different. Itâs a
nicer relaxed way of talking
about literature
41. Key principles of authentic learning and
assessmentâŚ
⢠Builds on personal knowledge and experience
⢠Creative, risky and challenging
⢠Students exercise choice and agency
⢠Linked to the real world
⢠In the public domain
⢠Collaborative
⢠Often digital
⢠Involves students doing research tasks
⢠Linked to summative
45. References
Arum, R. and Roska, J. 2011. Academically Adrift. Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago.
University of Chicago Press.
Baxter Magolda, M. 2001. Making Their Own Way: Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to
Promote Self-Development. Virgina. Stylus
Blaich, C., & Wise, K. 2011. From Gathering to Using Assessment Results: Lessons from the Wabash
National Study. Occasional Paper #8. University of Illinois: National Institution for Learning Outcomes
Assessment.
Boud, D. and Molloy, E. 2013. âRethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of
designâ, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698â712.
Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. 2014. âAn assessment arms race and its fallout:
High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarshipâ, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,
40(4), pp. 528â541. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2014.931927.
Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. 2014. The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a
comparative study. Studies in Higher Education.
Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. 2014. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale
study of studentsâ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in
Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.
Perry, William 1981. Cognitive and Ethical Growth: The Making of Meaning. In Chickering, A. (1981) The
Modern American College. San Francisco. Jossey Bass.
Nicol, D. 2010. From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher
education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 â 517.
Shulman, L. 2004. Pedagogies of Substance. Chapter 7 In Teaching as Community Property: essays on
Higher Education. 128-139. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.
Presage factors are, as the term suggests, those which exist prior to the time of learning, and comprise two broad types: the enduring personal characteristics brought to the learning situation by the student (e.g. prior knowledge, academic ability, personality) and situational characteristics which define the learning environment (e.g. teaching methods, workload, course structure) Gibbs Dimensions of Quality. The TEF
Presage factors are, as the term suggests, those which exist prior to the time of learning, and comprise two broad types: the enduring personal characteristics brought to the learning situation by the student (e.g. prior knowledge, academic ability, personality) and situational characteristics which define the learning environment (e.g. teaching methods, workload, course structure)
Harvard Professor, Classicist and psychologist
An enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by a mystery. Puzzled.
âThe best teacher never pleases everybody!â
Holy Spirit, instrumental learning. Just tell me what the Holy Sprit is!
Pedagogy of discomfort. Many students react to uncertainty with profound anxiety. Authentic learning exercises expose the messiness of real-life decision making, where there may not be a right or a wrong answer per se.
101 students, 39 in their twenties, longitudinal study
68% absolute knowing during first year46% second year
2% 3rd year
(multiple interpretations, ambiguity, negotiation, growth, wise choices from alternatives)
â bringing yourself into learning
peers â the ability to function interdependently
Exeter economics/
Hard to make connections, difficult to see the joins between assessments, much more assessment, much more assessment to accredit each little box. Multiplier effect. Less challenge, less integration. Lots of little neo-liberal tasks. The Assessment Arms Race.
Language of âcovering materialâ Should we be surprised? Facts first approach. Traditional pedagogies.
Read small section from Shulman
Read more from Lee Shulman. Leading theory connecting with prior knowledge â students heads are rich, full variegated