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Learning Matters. Reflections on Valuing Inquiry Into Teaching Anthony Ciccone Professor Emeritus, UW-Milwaukee President, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning The Teaching Academy 10 th Annual Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning
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Learning Matters Reflections on Valuing Inquiry Into Teaching Anthony Ciccone Professor Emeritus, UW-Milwaukee President, International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning The Teaching Academy 10th Annual Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning The Ohio State University
Value of Reflective Inquiry • Integrative epistemological stance toward all learning • A natural stance that precedes differences • Impetus for disciplinary scholarship • Expanded definition of exceptional teaching • Valued pedagogical strategy • Desired perspective on learning
Where do you find the consequential questions? • Inquiry into the student experience • International students • Transformative learning • Inquiry into changes to teaching practices • Technology: QM standards, social media • Personal Learning Plans and Student-directed learning • Problem-Based Learning • Backward design • Cooperative learning • Writing across the Curriculum • Inquiry into learning goals: change in knowledge and skills • Scientific literacy
Learning matters • “Success is defined by students not only as learning lots about a subject, but knowinghow they learned it and why what they learned matters to their understanding and interaction with the world around them.” • ““ the complexity of the task before us – studying how our students come to understand and value learning -- suggests the need for a new type of interdisciplinary, narrative inquiry that sees the field not as, an a priori set of problems, solutions, and tolerances, but as a site for action – a space in which to frame burning questions (and) to develop context-specific ways of addressing those questions…” -- CarolinKreber, The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries
Learning matters • Cerbin: “learning studies” • how students learn and develop specific concepts, skills, habits of mind, and sensibilities relevant to one’s discipline • Pace, Shopkow, Middendorf, Diaz: “Decoding the disciplines” • How faculty define and make explicit the kinds of thinking and acting that are required for success in courses in their fields (“bottlenecks” related to content, skills affect) • Meyer and Land: “Threshold Concepts Framework” • How students pass through portals that represent transformed ways of understanding, interpreting or viewing crucial concepts in the field
Types of inquiry • “instrumental” or “what works” • Will this intervention lead to better learning or help us reach currently defined goals? • Helps us “do things better.” • Limitations: • why does it work? • What does it tell us about the learner vis-à-vis ascribed value?
Types of inquiry (2) • “communicative,” or “what is” • “critical” or “visions of the possible” • Descriptive, interpretive, hermeneutical • Subject to subject • Metacognition • Multi-disciplinary • Helps us “do better things” • Draw on theories of knowledge and learning from different fields.
Your interests • What have you always wondered about student learning in your course? • How would you gather information to answer your question? (What information might you already have?) • How will you make sense of the information you gather? • Who else would care about or benefit from an an answer to the question you are posing?
Communicative inquiry • Formulate interesting and consequential questions arising from classroom interaction/observation • Gather information or evidence using methods appropriate to the discipline, the question, and the context • Make sense of that information by finding its broader significance through connections with existing knowledge
Reflect on what was learned, why, and how, with colleagues from similar and different disciplines • Apply the results to practice • Share the new knowledge with others • Reflect again • Ask the next set of questions
Impetus for inquiry • “ How do you go on, Ciccone?” “All I know is that I wouldn’t want to have to teach me.” -- freshman seminar students, circa 2005
What next? • Instrumental inquiry • Immediate solution, perhaps • Question deserved more attention • Communicative inquiry • What did I know about my students as learners? • How could I find out more? • Why was this course worth it – to me and to them?
Freshman seminar on comedy • Explicit learning goal: Articulate your own “theory” or explanation of what is essential for understanding comedy, humor and laughter. • Less obvious goal: begin to think like a humanist (problematize, complicate; reach provisional understanding; accept ambiguity) • Structure: inductive • Pedagogy: constant complication • Assignments: daily writing assignments; papers; reflection
Simplify, simplify, simplify… • Dewey: “the spontaneous (unreflected) ‘interpretation’ of experience” • “Funny is what we laugh at and vice versa.” • “Why do people laugh. Seems like a simple question. People laugh every day. It’s a natural reaction.”
Reflection prompts • Pre-course assignment What is comedy? What does it mean to have a sense of humor? Why do you think people laugh? What types of comedy do you enjoy? What are your favorite shows and comedians? • After first class What ideas did you find interesting in class today? What questions would you like to explore this semester? What are your expectations for the course? What would you like to learn this semester in this class? After 10 weeks Please spend some time reflecting on what you’ve learned so far about comedy, laughter and humor, how your thinking may have changed , the questions that have become (or remain) interesting to you, and what remains unclear.Your will want to review your pre-course and first day assignments. • As part of course evaluation: In a paragraph or two, write some advice for next year’s students.
Categories of thinking I. Recognition of one level of meaning, mainly surface II. Recognition of two levels of meaning A. Content might mean something for self or other B. Possibility that content has larger meaning III. Recognition of what it means to learn A. What have I learned? B. How do I learn? C. Curiosity D. Judgment/expertise IV. Developing appreciation of second-level meaning and content value A. What is the value of comedy? B. What is the larger value of thinking about comedy? V. Experiencing change in the complexity of one’s thinking A. Articulation of an awareness of change in thinking B. Articulation of how I now think differently
More than we expected… • “I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.” • “I don’t accept things as just simple ideas any more. I engage myself to reflect more now and not just accept what is given to me as right and wrong.”
Reflection prompts (2) • Addition to 10 – week reflection Based on your experiences in this class and others, how has your thinking changed about what learning is and what it is for? • Final paper The purpose of your final paper is to demonstrate what you’ve come to understand about laughter, humor, and comedy through the evidence and examples we’ve examined over the past months. In it, I’d like you to formulate your personal understanding of laughter, comedy, and humor. How have you come to understand these concepts and their connections? What do you believe are the most important parts of a good understanding of these concepts? Throughout your paper, I’d like you to spend some time reflecting on the changes in your understanding of comedy, humor and laughter. How has your thinking evolved?
Threshold Concepts Framework “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view.” (Meyer and Land)
Experiencing complexity as aThreshold Concept in understanding comedy and laughter • “I was very surprised to learn that people have written books and even developed theories of why we laugh.”(significant shift in perception) • “Humor is a much broader subject than I expected, and I didn’t realize that it crosses into philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other subjects.”(integrative) • “I’m cannot watch any form of comedy now without analyzing it. Even when I laugh at one of my friends, I still think in terms of techniques and theories.”(irreversible) • “I didn’t know how to answer what I thought was a simple question.”(troublesome)
Entering the “liminal space” • “People tend to laugh at things when they find something funny.” • “When completing the first assignment I remember having feelings of confusion and aggravation when I was trying to respond to the seemingly simple questions.” • “Laughter is very ambiguous in its nature. Simply, we laugh because we find something funny, but that in and of itself is very subjective.” • “In all honesty I cannot think of a reason why we laugh. I could take a guess and say it’s to relieve stress or make us feel happy, but I feel like that’s just a safe answer.” • “I thought it was a simple topic but this class is already making it seem very complex and it’s only the first day.”
Getting through… • “Laughter, comedy, and humor are three things that I never thought much about before taking this class…. never asking myself what is going on that is making me laugh. • “Before coming to this class I had never heard of the superiority theory. Looking back on things that have happened to my friends, I can say that I laughed at their misfortunes. I guess I did it all the time and I didn’t even know it.” • “I would come into class with your mind ready to think in ways it never has before.
Looking back: transitions and transformations • “I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.” • “Now I realize that comedy usually seems to be addressing the larger issues at hand. Is comedy shaping how society views important issues? Does comedy help us deal with our daily lives.” • “The class has made anything and everything sufficiently less funny. It’s hard to get pleasure from a skit or joke without now analyzing it mentally…. How did (a class on comedy) make everything less funny? Because I’m thinking too much about what is happening to me more that what I am watching. I am engaged in myself and to enjoy comedy you have to be disengaged.” • “Now I feel like I get it. “Getting it” makes you laugh and I like how I “get” why I laugh.”
Value of the learning process • Although to outsiders, comedy seems as simply a source of entertainment, to the insiders, comedy is a little insight as to what life really is.” • “Learned a lot about comedy and what it is over this semester. I think I learned a little too much. I hope that the trend of my saying “Oh, there’s a cognitive shift” doesn’t stay for too much longer. I liked it when I just watched and laughed. It was such a simple thing to do. • “As we begin to think more critically (about comedy, humor and laughter), we come to ask ourselves ‘why does any of this matter?’ Humor allows us to deal with life, and stress, and social scenarios that we are otherwise unprepared for… Humor allows us to just step back for a moment, and think and analyze, …” • “Studying comedy has helped me look beyond what other people see as funny and to think about why it’s funny, why it was said in the first place, and what values it has….hopefully, knowing how to analyze comedy and what it says about society will help me in situations I may come across later on in life.”
The most interesting types of inquiry involve… : • Epistemological change: value of topic, value of studying the topic; what it means to understand • Ontological change: knowing and appreciating; acting differently because of what one now knows; being differently in the world. • Who am I and how am I different because of what I’ve just done?
Full circle • How do you go on, Ciccone? • I wouldn’t want to have to teach me. • “I have learned that you can never discuss, analyze, listen, comprehend and reflect enough to really understand the meaning of something.” • “As we begin to think more critically, we come to ask ourselves ‘why does any of this matter?’ Or, ‘what value does humor possess’?” • “I don’t accept things as just simple ideas any more. I engage myself to reflect more now and not to just accept what is given to me as right and wrong.”
Conclusion Teaching matters because learning matters. Teaching matters more when it is includes reflective inquiry into student learning. Reflective inquiry into teaching is part of a coherent professional life. Communicative or critical (what is?) inquiry is a crucial component of our work We need to study not only what learning is but more importantly what learning is for, and how those definitions change for students over time. How do students come to ascribe value to their learning? How can we study that process? (metacognitive practices and evidence) How do students grow in their learning and how do we grow in our ability to foster that?
