This third session focused on John Zubizarreta’s  “The Learning Portfolio: A Powerful Idea for Significant Learning.“

The author asserts that  student portfolios are still very much in use and should continue to be utilized in all areas of school, as well as out of school contexts, as a method for “displaying and judging evidence of best practice and samples” of someone’s “full range of talent.”  Portfolios, as artifacts, “showcase a representative breadth of acquired skills or professional success and career.”  Zubizarreta provides the reader with a learning portfolio model, though he reminds us that portfolios take may forms. One model he proposes consists of  three fundamental components: Reflection, Documentation, and Collaboration.  He goes on to describe these and explain carefully their use and purpose. He says, “The learning portfolio, then, is a flexible tool that engages students in a process of continuous reflection and collaboration.”  He encourages flexibility and adaptability through the portfolio process and reminds the reader that “purpose”  drives the final decisions about reflection and documentation. Ultimately, this author is in search of an “authentic” and meta-cognitive process—students/people engaging in self assessment, and thinking critically.

The Group decision:

For the next Honors Ed. FIG session in Fall 2016 to:

1. (re)read of the article and further the discussion on portfolios
2. decide on a portfolio project with one or limited students
3. update each other on the process and student progress
4. invite involved students to our last meeting for a conversation (perhaps a presentation of their project)
5. to read more by John Zubizarreta.

We will attempt to meet by the second week of the semester, giving ourselves an early start on the project, if all are still on board.

The group found this reading both challenging and interesting.

The discussion  for Session 2 centered around “Promoting Critical Thinking through Sequenced Activities” by Barbara J. Mills. This article is valuable from several points of view: 1) from a theoretical one and 2) from a practical teaching perspective.

Mills focuses on:

I. Deep Learning (the outcome of teaching for critical thinking)—

She says that we can structure effective learning with an  understanding of the following: 1) prior knowledge, 2) deep foundational knowledge (concepts), and 3) metacognition (reflection). Students who are encouraged to build these areas learn to deepen thinking and grow in critical awareness. She says that if the teaching/learning experience involves 1) a motivational context, 2) learning activity ( doing + metacognitive reflection), 3) interaction with others, and 4) a well-structured knowledge base connected with prior experience, one has “integration.”   To  “THINK   INTENTIONALLY” is of utmost importance for the instructor: What is taught?; How is it taught?; How is learning assessed?  Mills encourages, as fundamental, structured group work/cooperative learning: student heterogeneity, a problem to solve, processing activities (skills + metacognitive reflection).

II. Practice through Pedagogical Strategies:

The following strategies support deep learning and critical thinking—

1. Double Entry Journal
2. Cooperative Jigsaw
3. Cooperative Debates

(See the article for a full description of these teaching techniques—examples of sequencing for deep learning.)

III. Group Discussion Based on the Issues above and the Following Questions:

1. What do we assign, and what do we exclude in our courses? Why?
2. How does the instructor decenter him/herself and yet structure/construct the framework of a class?
3. Do we listen to our students? Do we change our minds? Do we support “opposing” or “multiple views”?
4. How do we encourage/discourage student voice?
5. How do we empower students to stop thinking about being sure or right?
6. Is it possible to be neutral in our teaching?
7. What do we think and feel about what we teach and our teaching?
8. To what degree is our purpose to develop community and democratic space?
9. Is all pedagogy political?

Spring 2016

The Reading:

This semester the group picked up where we left off in the fall with a discussion of “Democracy Lab” (see Session 3, Chapter 4, Fall 2015). This section of the chapter discusses how to involve students in Democracy Lab Forums. Though James Knauer presents the pedagogical construct as an online experience among students of diverse backgrounds, clearly, it can also be adapted in our own diverse classroom. Knauer focuses on how dialogic learning is structured and facilitated. The idea is that through student-to-student specific learning, opportunities arise—in tandem with structured teacher guidance. The article reminds us that students can find their way(s) to learning through a teacher’s framework if the latter is fluid. Students, guided by a trained facilitator who makes “announcements” and provides “instructional modules,” develop deliberate, intentional dialogue groups in order to lay out broad social issues and work to understand them from multiple lenses. James Knauer’s  project is one type of experiential learning involving: specific tasks, methods, practice, skills, process, metacognition/reflection, identifying action possibilities and taking action. (For specifics of the project and process, see James Knauer’s article, “Dialogue, Politics, and Pedagogy: Lessons from Democracy Lab.”

Questions Discussed:

1. Is all pedagogy political?
2. What do we assign and exclude in our courses?
3. Is it possible to be neutral instructors?
4. Do we as teachers listen, change our minds, and support ‘opposing’ viewpoints/multiple lenses?
5. What do we think and feel about what we teach?
6. Is the purpose of the classroom to develop community and reinforce democracy/democratic structures and beliefs? Is Democracy Lab a moral/ethical project?
7. How do we encourage/discourage student voice?
8. How to we empower students to stop thinking about being ‘sure’ or right and bifurcating language and thinking?

Comments:

The group discussed the importance of collaborative work but how difficult it is to relinquish  power in the classroom, especially if the students are not highly skilled at analytical work and ctitical thinking. This might be the case even for honors students at our community college. On the other hand, if students don’t practice the process of learninbg, how are they to develop skills?  Perhaps it is fair to admit that if we don’t think of projects as a product but a ‘messy’ experience we might be able to relinquish to students what they can so often take up themselves.  Are we product, time, text driven? Or, are we student driven? After all, a dialogic project, as well as all classroom activities, never  throws the teacher by the side of the road. Knauer call the instructor an “intentional, trained facilitator” who guides through “announcements and modules.”  The content of a course is important, but the emphasis lies on the “how” of learning; the instructor must be adept at content and pedagogy—pedagogy which shapes intentional students who can do metacognitive work. In the case of the Democracy Lab project, the work revolves around significant social issues and the taking up of action.