Learning for Understanding

1. Learning for Understanding Week 3

2. Announcements • Project guidelines available • No class on Monday, Columbus day • Project PRE-proposals due next Tuesday • Sample projects soon on line • Section meetings scheduled (see next slide) • Submitting your pre-proposal digitally: info coming • Further questions about course, projects, etc., after class.

3. Section meetings, rooms to be decided • Wednesday, October 18 at 11:30 AM • Thursday, October 19 at 2:00 PM • Wednesday, November 1 at 11:30 AM • Thursday, November 2 at 2:00 PM • Wednesday, November 15 at 11:30 AM • Thursday, November 16 at 2:00 PM

4. Review and preview

5. Seeing how the Pandora questions help to organize ideas about creating learning • Avoiding ‘aboutitis’, thinking of learning as a matter of always getting better at some rich activity. • Some skill in looking at learning through the lens of Theory One • A feel for creating learning guided by the Pandora questions and Theory One

6. Avoid aboutitis! Play the whole game! • Getting better at something of scope and richness… • And more engaged by it… • And more alert to opportunities for it.

7. Field of action Knowledge base

8. Preview • Adding to Pandora • What is understanding • Teaching for Understanding • Water balloon bungee jumping • The art of TfU • Rapid review and looking ahead

9. Learning goals • Sharp sense of what understanding is and how it can be developed. • Initial familiarity with the Teaching for Understanding framework (TfU) as a way of describing and planning learning • Continuing exploration of how to avoid ‘aboutitis’ in favor of learning ‘whole games’

10. 1 Adding to Pandora Goal: Refresh on the readings and Pandora questions

11. What’s worth learning? • What’s hard about learning that? • So how is it best learned? • How is the learning going?

12. 2 What is understanding? Goal: Get a better sense of what understanding is through an example and activity

13. The tower problem 10 kg 100 m

14. The hole problem 10 kg 100 m

15. Personal stories of understanding • What’s something you understand really well? • How did you come to understand it? • How do you know you understand it?

16. From stories to theory… • Very active knowledge. • Fewer academic topics. • Getting understanding requires thinking and doing. • Assessing understanding requires thinking and doing too.

17. Have an understanding Possess an understanding Grasp something, apprehend something Getting it “Either you get it or you don’t” Being able to think and act flexibly with what you know. A theory of understanding… Understanding as possession Understanding as performance Wilder

18. 3 Teaching for understanding Goal: Get acquainted with the Teaching for Understanding framework through an explanation

19. ‘Aboutitis’ versus the skating principle • Learning for understanding is more like learning to skate than learning about skating.

20. Learning to skate with… • Newton’s laws • Contrasts between U.S. and European legal systems • “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date” (Sonnet 19) • The law of supply and demand

21. Understanding performances… • Ask learners to think and act with what they know so far… • showing understanding so far… • and building understanding further. An understanding performance“Goes beyond the information given”

22. Teaching for Understanding (TfU) What is the generative topic,a phrasing of or spin on or selection of a topic that makes it generative? Understanding Performances What do people do to learn to think and act flexibly? What are the understanding goals,the things about the topic that people should understand? How is ongoing assessment arranged to provide frequent informative feedback throughout? What images or mental models that I provide or that they articulate or construct can support the activity system and the target understanding performances?

23. What is TfU? – Useful sources • ALPS, Active Learning Practices for Schools http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu/index.cfm • ENT, Education with New Technologies http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/ • The Teaching for Understanding Guide, Tina Blythe and others, Jossey-Bass, 1998. • Teaching for Understanding, Martha Stone Wiske, Ed., Jossey-Bass, 1998.

24. TfU findings… • Teachers like it and find it allows them plenty of elbow room to express their own style. • Learners like it, feel it makes learning more interesting. • Learners achieve good understanding, greater than one would normally expect. • Learners’ conceptions of understanding shift from a possession view toward a performance view. • Learners with more of a performance view show greater understanding. From Teaching for Understanding, Martha Stone Wiske, Ed., Jossey-Bass, 1998.

25. 4 Water balloon bungee jumping Goal: Understanding the TfU framework better by analyzing an example

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27. Teaching for Understanding (TfU) What is the generative topic,a phrasing of or spin on or selection of a topic that makes it generative? Understanding Performances What do people do to learn to think and act flexibly? What are the understanding goals,the things about the topic that people should understand? How is ongoing assessment arranged to provide frequent informative feedback throughout? What images or mental models that I provide or that they articulate or construct can support the activity system and the target understanding performances?

28. 5 The art of TfU Goal: Get sharper about TfU through quick design

29. From activities / lessons Read books about RF Write a report about the RF Draw pictures of the RF Write poems about the RF Build a RF in the classroom To understanding performances Make a list of all of the things that your life, livelihood, and enjoyment depend on over the course of a given day. Explain why and compare and contrast with a similar list for a rainforest organism Rain forest ruminations Wilder

30. From activities / lessons Read books about RF Write a report about the RF Draw pictures of the RF Write poems about the RF Build a RF in the classroom To understanding performances Write an essay comparing the rainforest to a Calder mobile, a mathematical equation, and a tight-rope walker. Explain which of these makes for the best analogy. Rain forest ruminations Wilder

31. Teaching for Understanding (TfU) What is the generative topic,a phrasing of or spin on or selection of a topic that makes it generative? Understanding Performances What do people do to learn to think and act flexibly? What are the understanding goals,the things about the topic that people should understand? How is ongoing assessment arranged to provide frequent informative feedback throughout? What images or mental models that I provide or that they articulate or construct can support the activity system and the target understanding performances?

32. 6 Rapid review and looking ahead Goal: Consolidation and mental preparation

33. Learning goals • Sharp sense of what understanding is and how it can be developed. • Initial familiarity with the Teaching for Understanding framework (TfU) as a way of describing and planning learning • Continuing exploration of how to avoid ‘aboutitis’ in favor of learning ‘whole games’

34. Back to Pandora • What’s worth learning? • What topics are worth learning? • What inside a topic is worth learning? • Beyond knowing stuff, what games are learners getting better at? (Avoid ‘aboutitis’!) • Can we have generative topics (TfU)? • What’s hard about learning that? • Where should we watch out for fragile knowledge: missing, inert, naïve, ritual • So how is it best learned? • What’s the source’s share? / What’s the learner’s share • Can we keep all four sides of Theory One in play? – clear information, thoughtful practice, informative feedback, strong intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. • Can we mobilize TfU: Generative topics, understanding goals, understanding performances, ongoing assessment, mental models? • How is the learning going? • Can we arrange for truly informative feedback (from Theory one)? • How can we organize ongoing assessment (TfU)?

35. Out in the world of GSE and beyond… • Think about your learning experiences. Where are you playing the whole game with performances of understanding?