3a+-+Reflections+on+F2F+Teaching


 * 3. Reflections on current teaching practice in your face-to-face environment **

Part of being an effective educator is the ability to be able to reflect on one’s own learning and teaching practice. The quality of the learning that results from the portfolio development process will be in direct proportion to the quality of the self-reflection on the work. So keep that in mind and remember to review the rubric.


 * **Explain the principles and main educational theories that underpin your current methods of learning and teaching in your face- ****to-face environment. Do these principles and theories translate to an online environment? **

Answering this question required that I take a little field trip and re-explore the worlds of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. After said field trip, I feel that the theories of cognitivism and constructivism both underpin my current methods of teaching and learning. Cognitivists are concerned with how memory works, and posit that our memory systems are organized processors of information 1. According to learning-theories.com, cognitivists states that "people are rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking." 2 I very much see a connection between learning and how our memories work, and so this learning theory is alive in my classroom, and can be seen when students are engaged in cooperative learning or peer review (active participation) or are studying vocabulary definitions through the creation and reviewing of flashcards (memory functions).

In addition, I also see learning as being a process, a series of steps, where my students build (and thereby increase) their knowledge and learning-base using their prior knowledge and their prior experiences. This is the underlying belief held by constructivism - that students "construct" their own knowledge based on their own prior experiences. One of the guiding principles of constructivism - and which I subscribe to myself - is "the purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning."3 This theory can be seen at work in my classroom when students are debating open-ended questions with each other, assessing their own work, or writing a reflection after the completion of a project in which they are reflecting on their learning and the path that learning took them in.

These principles and theories absolutely translate to an online learning environment as well. In an online classroom, students are active in their learning - perhaps even more so than in their f2f environment. They still are using prior knowledge and connecting it to new knowledge learned in their coursework in order to construct new meaning and broaden their knowledge-base. Discussion forums require active participation on the part of students, instructors often will assign cooperative learning activities just as in f2f courses, and there is more of a focus on reflection and open-ended questioning - as opposed to searching for one "right" answer - in an online course.


 * **Compose reflective statements about your teaching. **

My reflections and ruminations about my teaching can be found here at my blog A Work in Progress! hosted by edublogs.org.


 * **Critically evaluate your personal beliefs and attitudes on teaching. **

There is a very heated debate going on in my school right now, focused on the principal's belief that all students can learn at high levels. While this may seem an innocuous, almost "given," statement, it has brought about some surprisingly fiery debates. I suppose the problem really focuses on the use of his phrase "high levels." As I see it, "high level" learning for one student means something completely different when applied to another student. My personal belief is that it just isn't possible for ALL students to learn the SAME thing at the SAME level of learning and achieve the SAME level of progress ALL the time. Isn't that where differentiated instruction comes into play?

But I digress...I bring up the heated debate because it brings to mind one of my personal beliefs on teaching, which is that there are multiple ways to teach the same skill to a variety of students, and that it is the teacher's responsibility to incorporate those multiple teaching strategies so that he or she reaches all of his or her students. Think "differentiated instruction" and "learning styles." In my teaching, my lesson to my honors English students on, say, how to use a semi-colon properly, is going to be //extremely //different than my lesson to my remedial English students on the same subject. These two types of students simply don't learn the same way. It is my belief, however, that it is my responsibility as a teacher to find the BEST way to teach BOTH types of students to the best of my ability.

One of my attitudes towards teaching and learning can be summed up in this quotation: "//The only one who learns is the one who does the work//" (author unknown). While I feel I am a part of my students' education in that we should be collaborating //together//, I also feel that it is //**they**// who should be doing the majority of the work. My job is to help them learn; their job is to do the learning. This is why, in my classroom, my students WORK. And work. And work some more. If I have my students spend three weeks editing their mythology essays, and the other freshman English teacher spends only a week, it is not because I am looking for busy-work for my students. Rather, I am having them polish their editing and grammar skills through the repetitive use of the same essay. It is not my belief that you "teach it once and you're done; if they don't get it, oh well." Studies have shown that repetition enhances learning and creates patterns of learning - just ask a World Language teacher why she has students repeat verb conjugations over and over again! This is one of my beliefs that has played a role in my teaching style.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Write about what you value in your face-to-face teaching. How can you bring those values into new spaces for teaching and learning such as an online course? **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> In my f2f courses, I value the interaction I have with my students, as well as being able to provide them feedback - both as a class and individually, on their learning processes. While the logistics may require that my interaction with students and the feedback they receive may work and look a bit differently in an online learning environment, they still both can be incorporated in this environment.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Since my interaction with my students is so important to me, I don't see myself as taking a backseat in an online course. While I may sit to the side in a discussion forum and let students take control of the conversation, I'm still going to maintain a presence through occasional comments, and still be available to "steer" the conversation if it starts to veer in an unintended direction. The same is true of providing my students with feedback. In a f2f class my feedback is usually verbal and almost immediate; in an online course, however, my feedback may take the form of remarks made in a discussion forum, comments made electronically on a submitted assignment, or a private discussion via email.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Select artifacts that represent your teaching and learning strategies. **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Artifacts that represent my teaching and learning strategies can be found at this page of the wiki.


 * **<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Write reflective statements for each artifact, elaborating on why it was selected and its meaning and value in the portfolio. **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Reflective statements for each artifact can be found at this page of the wiki.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Sources:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> 1 Learning theory (education). Retrieved March 24, 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_theory_%28education%29 <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> 2 Learning Theories Knowedgebase. Cognitivism at Learning-Theories.com. Retrieved March 24, 2011 from http://www.learning-theories.com/ <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> cognitivism.html. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> 3 "Constructivism" at Funderstanding.com. Retrieved March 23, 2011 from http://www.funderstanding.com/content/constructivism.

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