Assignment 1 for Pedagogy Ed4236

ED 4236 – Planning, Pedagogy & Assessment
Lecture: Mr Tony McArthur

Assignment 1: Personal Reflection – Diary Entry: “Why do you bother?”

Stephen J. Stoneham

Diary Entry for Friday 23rd March

Even though I have been teaching for a long time, a day like today makes me realise just how hard it is to be a teacher without turning into Charles Dickens’s Mr Gradgrind.

It is the last week of term and today I had taught every period before lunch and had had recess playground supervision. You can imagine my reaction when the Director of Studies, at short notice, asked me to take an extra after lunch for a colleague away on a PD course! I was given a hastily devised worksheet for a Year 9 History class. To make matters worse, it had been a wet-weather lunch so the classroom was littered with lunch remnants around a bin that resembled a cornu copia for vermin. The classroom furniture was in shock – chairs on their sides and tables forming barricades between the students and any intrepid soul who dared to intrude upon an alien province. Unfortunately, I was that intrepid soul.

The students were already in the room and that meant I entered their territory. I was in a bad mood and had not really thought things through (Fetherston, 2006, on Behaviourists’ importance of program design and planning, p. 121) when I tried to make myself heard above the general hubbub and asked students to clean up. Most students made no attempt to move. When I asked again, those who heard me made some feeble attempts at picking up litter. And then there was the question of distributing their worksheets that were largely ignored. One student I knew from one of my other classes, looked up, momentarily disassociating herself from the mob mentality that infected the students’ behaviour and asked, “Why do you bother, sir?” Her question was just what I needed.

My teacher’s instinct took over. This was a situation for some quick behaviour modification (Fetherston on Skinner, p. 113). At times a very stern, loud voice is the right initial strategy to gain attention in a situation that is out of hand. Sharply I raised my voice, “Ok, everyone outside!” They looked up surprised, and I repeated, “Outside…right now and line-up…and I mean without one word!” They did so. I knew I would not have to raise my voice again. Their mob behaviour had been broken, and it had been broken by the necessity of reminding students that teachers and students are not equal – at least in one particular way at school. A teacher’s responsibility for the many gives him priority over students responsible just for themselves. The students know this and, in a strange kind of way, like to be reminded. Freedom to learn only thrives in a structure that allows focus (Killen, p.1 – “the first principle is clarity of focus”). Students do not like unruly classrooms and often complain about teachers who have poor class control.


Us and Them Mentality – sometimes teachers can feel outnumbered

Lined up outside, I spoke to them in a friendly voice, clearly identifying expectations – the required outcomes (Finn & Ravitch, 1996, p.5). A teacher needs to allow students to recognise that his anger is always “professional” and never personal. A “shout” is only effective if rarely used. It has shock value because it is unpredictable (Fetherston on Cognitivist use of novelty to gain initial attention, p. 134).

Firstly, the room was to be cleaned. I assigned one student to empty the bin, and another two students to bring the outside bin into the class and remove the rubbish. It was important to stop dealing with a mob. And at the core of effective teaching and learning is the interplay between the teacher and learner, personality to personality, banishing class mentality and putting in its place a sense that learning in the classroom is always occurring on a one-to-one basis merely multiplied several times. Teaching is always one-to-one – more a construct of two real people, teacher and learner – and then secondly a construct of the class group. Vygotsky’s social constructivism with a society of two (Fetherston, Chapter 7, p. 159).

While their fellow class members remained lined up outside, I helped them pick up the rubbish. I then nominated two other students to straighten the desks and chairs, explaining that an untidy working environment leeched into untidy minds and poor productivity. Now evicted from their mob hysteria, the students were conducive to reason and they deserved explanations for what I asked of them.

With the room perfectly tidy, I explained that I required them to enter silently, to take out what they needed to complete the work sheets, and then allowed them to enter. When one or two students spoke, I sent just those two students outside again and allowed them to re-enter as we agreed. I said to them that they had made a mistake, but that I was sure they would learn from their mistake when they re-entered in silence and got down to business (Killen, p. 8 “mistakes and errors are part of learning”).

As the students began to attend to the worksheets left by their History teacher, I could see some students were off-task. One was obviously doing his homework for another subject. I moved around the room and stood behind his chair. He hastily put away his contraband. Two other students were still slyly chatting. I could see that an extra was really considered as a “bludge” to many students and that little true learning would take place in this extra at the end of the day centred on a worksheet that another teacher was administering.

Extras are difficult in terms of effective teaching and learning because the teacher is not the lesson “programmer”. That he is taking an “extra” means that he is supervising someone else’s program or plan and does not have ownership of the planning. Nor is the single lesson in context of a sequence of lessons on a topic that he has controlled. The class sense the weakness that comes from a teacher’s lack of ownership of content and teaching strategy. The students know that the extra lives in the world of “one-off” things – a place of educational limbo. But it is possible for the teacher and students to escape limbo for a more enviable educational destination. But the teacher must be more than a “facilitator” at the start of this lesson for any effective facilitation to take place later in the lesson (Finn & Ravitch, 1996, on the short-comings of facilitation p.4).

The worksheet left by the History teacher was on Gallipoli and Australia’s coming of age as a nation. I asked the class to stop working and look up and pay attention. Personal anecdotes are powerful tools for teachers because they reveal enough to students to see that their teacher is a person just like them (Fetherston on Cognitivist sinificance of “emotional stimuli, p. 134). My anecdote was aimed to give some “authenticity” to the worksheet and to create some passion for the subject (Fetherston on Constructionist authentic tasks p. 160). I told the students that I have two sons, one 10 and one 12. My grandfather fought in the Boer War …a war before the First World War. He was just 17 and was decorated for bravery. I asked the students how old they thought the average age of soldiers were at Gallipoli…in fact, in any war. With an answer being elicited of around 19, I then went back to my sons and a father’s prayer every time he looks at them for world peace in their time (perhaps a selfish prayer, but understandable in human terms). I talked about how the generals in the World War I were considered idiots. I asked how they would feel if they were the ones directed by politicians to bring the war to an end and thus had to give orders to commence battles because wars could not reach conclusion without battles (Gardner, “MI after 20 Years” and an appeal to interpersonal and intrapersonal inteligences). I talked about the film Gallipoli and the intensely powerful moment as the commanding officer’s hand shakes on the whistle that he blows to signal the charge and certain death for so many of his men. And his men were boys not many years older than the boys in this room…and my two sons.

We then resumed work in a focussed and productive way for the rest of the lesson.

That is why I bother…and the sense of satisfaction walking out of that lesson was immense. I had been part of a community of learning despite such inauspicious beginnings.

I realise that my teaching combines aspects of behaviourist, cognitive and constructionist approaches (Fetherston, 2006, Chapters 5-8). This is not surprising as real world experience usually comes at a problem from a multi-strategy approach (Finn & Ravitch 1996 refer to “a balanced approach”).

I realise that I am a behaviourist in that my “can do” approach seeks to modify unsuccessful student behaviour on tasks and change it to successful student behaviour on these tasks. Demystifying a complex task by breaking it down to do-able smaller tasks models successful behaviour and through modelling encourages adoption of a successful method by the students. Rewards are given through teacher praise and good marks on frequent tasks: with the assumption that these tasks allow demonstration of mastery of learning.

I am a cognitivist in that I break-down big tasks into smaller achievable tasks more readily dealt with by working memory, and constantly make connections to other information already in the students’ long-term memory (Fetherston, p.131). I use personal anecdote to grab attention and strive for innovative ways to introduce concepts – thus making an impression and fast-tracking memory retention. I prize the development of meta-cognition in students dealing with umbrella concepts asking students to think about not only their opinions but why the opinions of other students differ. Scaffolding is crucial and is designed into a structured learning environment where focus is not quickly lost.

I cannot help but be a constructivist teaching the current NSW English syllabuses where post-modernist theory reigns. The English syllabus understands a text as a medium whereby meaning is constructed in tandem between a composer and a responder. This is the very stuff of a constructivist approach to knowledge, where knowledge is not absolute but relative to context. Meaning is either the construct of the individual learner responding to the stimulus presented by the teacher - à la Piaget (Silverton “Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development”, 1999, p.1) or the construct of groups of learners bouncing ideas off one another - à la Vygotsky (Riddle & Dabbagh “Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory”, 1999).


My Teacherly Self
January 10th, 2007

Reference List

Fetherston, T. (2006) Becoming an Effective Teacher, Melbourne: Nelson, Chapters 5-8.

Finn, C. & Ravitch, D. (1996) “A Report from the Educational Excellence network to its Education Policy Committee and the American People” in Education Reform 1995-6 downloaded from Tony McArthur’s Blog http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/ed4236-resources/

Gardner, H. (date unknown) “MI after Twenty Years” downloaded from Tony McArthur’s Blog http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/ed4236-resources/

Killen, R. “Outcomes Based Education: Principles and Possibilities” downloaded from Tony McArthur’s Blog http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/ed4236-resources/

Riddle, E.M. & Dabbagh, N. (1999) “Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory” downloaded from Tony McArthur’s Blog http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/ed4236-resources/

Silverton, P. (1999) “Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development” downloaded from Tony McArthur’s Blog http://tonymcarthur.edublogs.org/ed4236-resources/