Terminology Tuesday

In light of recent events, I figured it might be appropriate to discuss some terminology I was introduced to during my graduate program – critical consciousness.

Critical Consciousness

Paulo Freire was heavily involved in discussions and research related to social relations, and indicated that dominant social relations or statuses were more often than not directly correlated with a culture of silence, wherein individuals at a lower social relation or status feel oppressed by the the inability to speak up or be heard. This realization is classified as “critical consciousness” – the individual realizes that the dominant social relations are creating this culture of silence. Now, I don’t necessarily think this is true in today’s society – folks seem to be a lot more outspoken than they once were, but there is still oppression occurring everywhere. Most of us likely encounter at least one small inkling of it every single day.

Critical consciousness is an educational concept that involves having a critical understanding of the world around us, including the social justices and injustices (or the contradictions therein), and being able to take action based on your understanding to construct or move toward positive social change and reducing oppression.

Resources

I encourage you to research more about critical consciousness; it’s certainly a higher-level of thinking than we do most days, and I implore you to become empowered to do something within your community to move toward positive social change.

• Critical Pedagogy and the Knowledge Wars of the Twenty-First Century by J. L. Kincheloe
• Centering Love, Hope, and Trust in the Community: Transformative Urban Leadership Informed by Paulo Freire by P. M. Miller, T. Brown, and R. Hopson
• Humanism and Multiculturalism: An Evolutionary Alliance by L. Comas-Diaz
• Towards a Framework of Critical Citizenship Education by L. Johnson and P. Morris

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about my participation in social learning activities – which is minimal at best. I want to participate more, but have yet to find the time! In any event, social learning is happening all the time, and it can be an easy way to learn from your peers.

What is social learning?

Traditionally, social learning emphasizes the fact that learning can be social, occurring through observation of behaviours. When I think about social learning, I think more about mobile or micro learning – why? Because social media has created a new venue for social learning. Just think of all of the Twitter chats that are occurring all over the place, or Reddit!

Drawing on the traditional definition, the modern definition might be defined as learning through social interactions where individuals can learn through their interactions in a collaborative and social environment. As in the traditional sense, individuals can learn desirable vs. undesirable behaviours based on reactions, and there is constant reciprocation.

Benefits and implications of social learning

To me, the benefits are obvious – we develop a means of engaging with individuals, socially, and through our interactions determine the ways in which we should (or should not) be engaging with individuals. However, social learning can be a double-edged sword. Just think of critical periods of development – teenagers make a great case study. In situations where individuals want to ‘fit in’ or feel popular, they may assume undesirable behaviours, mimicked after other individuals who are performing these behaviours (within the shared social sphere). Another example is the bystander effect – individuals don’t stop to help someone who appears to be in need of help, because they see others continually passing by, and assume that someone else will come to help.

So, social learning can certainly be a good thing, especially where micro learning is concerned, but it can also be a bad thing – as most things are capable of.

Resources

• Instructionaldesign.org’s explanation of Social Learning Theory
• Sense of Acceptance: Key Factor of Social Learning by H. Kawamichi, K. Yoshihara, R. Kitada, M. Matsunaga, A. Sasaki, Y. Yoshida, H. Takahashi, and N. Sadato
• Social Learning in a Human Society: An Experimental Study by M. Hamdi, G. Solman, A. Kingsotone, and V. Krishnamurthy
• The Role of Social Learning in Understanding Deviance by T. Rajasakran, S. Sinnappan, and S. S. Raja

First off, I know I’m a day late, but you know what – it was a holiday and I think that warrants taking a day for myself. Let’s be honest, I did a lot more sleeping than I typically do, and it was GLORIOUS!

Secondly, I’ve been plugging the heck out of How we Learn by Benedict Carey, and no I haven’t finished it (because I was distracted with ploughing through Amy Poehler’s Yes Please – which was amazing – go purchase/read now!), and this week’s TT post is going to discuss some concepts he talks about in his book: Incubation and Percolation. Part of what I love about this book is how relatable it is, and I’ve been that person at the poker game lately who relays study tips to friends who are finding themselves in the ‘mature student’ role. I love learning, what can I say?!

Incubation

The concept of incubation is one which emphasizes the importance of distraction in learning – which is great to hear, because I distinctly remember marathoning Criminal Minds episodes during much of my graduate degree. Good to know I wasn’t wasting my potential!

Incubation should be used when we encounter a problem that we simply cannot figure out; we should step away from the problem, and come back at a later time – refreshed and renewed. From an Instructional Design context, I do this before reviewing products for delivery. You’ve spent so much time with a product, that you need that time away in order to provide a solid review and pick up any little errors you may have made. For me, most of my good (and functional ideas) come to me as dreams – having trouble getting some Storyline triggers to behave properly? Nap on it, and surely some idea may come to you! Having an enrolment crisis in a post-secondary university? Hit the sheets, and maybe you’ll come up with an idea for a new certificate program. Maybe my books will write themselves this way….no?

Carey (2014) explains that incubation is “subconscious. We’re not aware it’s happening.” – This explains why my dreamt up ideas make so much more sense! Basically we should just be napping all the time – I kid. But really. We should. J/K. An important step with incubation is verification, for obvious reasons. For example, one of the ideas that came to me to resolve a trigger issue didn’t work. BUT, it helped me think a little different about how to approach the issue, and I was able to resolve the problem in less time after incubation than before.

Percolation

Percolation is the idea that you let the mind linger on a problem, in order to provide a more well-rounded response. For example, when it comes to paper writing, term papers (based on all of the readings throughout the term) are often more well-rounded than say 6 papers throughout the term on 6 different topics. This is because the individual has time to percolate on one subject, without distracting the mind with different concepts or topics. Each reading and assignment throughout the term is provided on the same topic, in different contexts, with different goals, and they contribute to the greater whole of the end-of-term paper.

Within the percolation chapter, an interesting study was discussed which suggested that unfinished tasks linger in our memory longer than those that are finished. In considering the term paper example, this makes a lot of sense. Students likely perform better, churning out a well-rounded term paper, when they are able to percolate on the subject matter, in different contexts, throughout the course of the term versus changing topics each week. By changing topics, the student finishes each assignment, and may not carry forward the context of which that assignment was attempting to illustrate (e.g. the importance of an outline, or historical overview, literature reviews, formulation of own opinions, etc.).

Very interesting, no?

Resources

How we Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where and Why it Happens – Benedict Carey

Man oh man! Life has been busy, with lots of unexpected surprises (e.g. no internet connection for four days…IN TWENTY-FOURTEEN – COME ON!), so I’m a bit late to the TT punch. However, I’ve been reading How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why it Happens by Benedict Carey (of which I had much time to read this past weekend), and there was a concept I found incredibly interesting: Spaced (or distributed) Learning.

I think what I found most interesting was the research that went into the findings related to spaced learning – it would have taken some dedication, that’s for sure! And while it certainly seems like an effective method for learning, it still baffles me and I’m not sure I could commit to such study practices on my own.

What is Spaced Learning?

Spaced learning is a learning method wherein an individual must learn a series of information (often quite dense in nature). In order to optimize learning and retention, spaced learning posits that one should space their study activities out, with distractions in between. For example, you have three sessions of study – one 10 minute session with a 3 hour gap in between, the next study session is 10 minutes with 1 day in between, and the final study session typically occurs in close proximity to the formal test (e.g. the night before). Spaced learning has been shown to enhance retention, allowing learners to score higher than their colleagues who are not implementing a spaced learning method for their studying.

Essentially, spaced learning makes memories more memorable! Neat, eh?

Resources

• Effects of Spaced versus Massed Training in Function Learning by M.A. McDaniel, C.L. Fadler, and H. Pashler
• Learning by Degrees by C. Lambert 
• Study Better: Space it out and Mix it up by N. Kornell
• Why Spaced Learning Works Better Than Cramming by M. Stenger

This week’s term is less of a term and more of a group of tests or ‘tasks’. In any event, Piaget was always cool in my books, so I thought I’d chat a bit about some of his tasks, reversibility in particular. I was inspired by a chat I had recently with a very passionate professor – she rattled off one of the tasks she has her students do (so these are on average 18-22 year olds):

• First, she presents the students with two jars of jelly beans; one contains all red jelly beans and the other contains all black jelly beans. She explains that there are 250 jelly beans in each jar.
• Then, she shows her students a scoop, explaining that it holds exactly 15 jelly beans.
• She takes a scoop or red jelly beans and puts them in the black jar and then takes a scoop of now black and red jelly beans and puts them in the red jar.
• Finally, she asks the students how many jelly beans are in each jar.

The result she gets is much the same as one a child might get. Why? The correct reason is because the students, at 18-22, still have issues with the concept of the reversibility. Another reason might be that the students became confused by the word problem…similar to any time I was presented with one of those ‘a train is traveling south west at a speed of X…’ problems – which I HATED. Anyhow…so that discussion was my inspiration for this week’s post.

Alright, but what is a Piagetian task?

Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist who some may refer to as the pioneer of cognitivism. He was a pretty cool cat, and is often chatted about in close proximity to Vgotsky (another name, another theory). His theory basically stated that cognitive development occurs in stages, as we grow, age, and learn from the world around us. Throughout his research, he tested children in varying stages of development with Piagetian tasks to determine whether they understood concepts of conservation, centring, and reversibility, to name a few. Based on their responses, Piaget posited that he could determine (or approximate…in the example of the 18-22 year olds) what stage of cognitive development the child was in. How neat is that?!

Another popular Piagetian task you might be more familiar with is one having to do with conservation of volume:

• The child is presented with two beakers; one is squat and wide, while the other is tall and slim.
• There is water in both beakers, and the instructor asks “which beaker contains more water?”
• The child typically responds that the taller one contains more water, when in actuality, both beakers contain the same amount of water. BAM!

Intrigued? Here are some resources:

• Physical Knowledge in Infancy: Reflections on Piaget’s Theory by Elizabeth S. Spelke
• Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development: Background and Key Concepts on Piaget’s Theory by Kendra Cherry
• Piaget’s Model of Cognitive Development at thebrain.mcgill.ca
• Piagetian Tasks 

Hey folks! First off, I want to apologize for the less than exciting blogging week; things have been completely insane over here! Two projects on the go, two books being written (whaaaaat?!), webinars and meetings – oh my!, and a proposal that I’m working on. All exciting things, but how does Beyonce do it?

This week I wanted to chat a bit about rubrics. The online course I’m taking is currently discussing course quality, and rubrics feature prominently in this discussion. Now, as a student, I’ve been on the annoyance side of the rubric stand-point (ugh…a table?! you want me to look at a table to figure out what I need to do?!), but I’ve also learned to appreciate the structure of a rubric and how functional it can be, especially when evaluating more subjective materials that don’t necessarily have a solid wrong or right answer – e.g. papers.

So, what is a rubric?

A rubric is an evaluation tool that allows individuals responsible for evaluation tasks to be able to easily and effectively do their jobs. Rubrics break down the criteria, providing a range of options for each item. Evaluators will select the range option that corresponds with the material for which they are evaluating. At the end of the evaluation, the score (based on the range options selected) will be added up, providing the student with their grade.

I’m with you, Ashley – these sound annoying. Why would anyone use them?

1. As I said before, they make it a heck of a lot easier to evaluate subjective materials
2. They can enhance academic achievement by providing students with a clear outline of what they need to do in order to score within a particular range.
3. They can provide students with a criteria for conducting peer evaluations, which as an instructor, ensures you don’t get an entire class  full of 5/5 peer evaluations.
4. As an instructor, they help you back up your evaluation decisions by offering a tangible explanation for students who seek to challenge their grades.

Rubric resources, please. Here you go:

• Understanding Rubrics by Heidi Goodrich Andrade
• Creating a Rubric – University of Colorado
• 3 Rubric Makers that will Save you Time and Stress – Edudemic