The blog is paused!
It’s been a pretty good run so far. I started writing the messages/musings in response to the disconnect and loss I was feeling when Covid changed the way we all could work together as faculty and faculty developers. Over the past year and a third, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to dig deep and explore topics with anyone who had a chance to read. Writing the blog helped me to clarify some things that were always a bit fuzzy for me and share what I had been learning from our NorQuest community. I hope that some of these “musings” struck a chord for some of you too. But, at this point, the blog is paused while I concentrate on research and international projects. I hope to restart the blog sometime soon, but just when that will be, is anyone's guess.
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This past week, in our professional learning community on reflective practice, Jeannine Dolen (nursing instructor) raised an issue that has plagued all of us, “Just how do you get students to do the required readings before class?” Jeannine was concerned that many of her students did not prepare for class, expected the instructor to summarize the salient points, and often never even bothered to buy the required texts. From this starting place (Jeannine provided relevant readings, a muse/scenario and a few questions to guide our discussion) our little group dove into some pretty big questions about instructor and student roles, the nature of the reading process, and how we might incentivize and scaffold student reading. The context With so many of our instructors moving to a flipped classroom approach to teaching (expecting students to familiarize themselves with important learning prior to synchronous lessons so that class time can be spent on synthesis and application), it has become even more important that students take ownership of their learning and come to class ready to work. This means completing all the assigned readings, viewings and activities. It can also put the instructor in a precarious spot. She may have developed a wonderful lesson plan with time allotted for breakouts, collaborative problem solving using shared documents, and class discussion–but if the students come unprepared, the lesson plan goes out the window. The instructor feels obligated to “deliver the goods” and revert to a less active, more lecture-type lesson and the students who actually have done the readings feel like the synchronous lesson is really not the best use of their time. So why aren’t they reading/preparing? We want to help most of our students take ownership of their learning (we’ll never get all!). We’d like to create a classroom environment where our students learn very quickly that they need to be prepared so we can all participate in active lessons that engage and challenge rather than merely repeat or summarize. And yet, for all of our exhortations and encouragements, students still come to class unprepared. If I reflect back on my undergraduate days, I don’t think I was a whole lot different. I often came to class unprepared. In my case it was immaturity, an overcommitment to other activities (sports?), employment responsibilities, and the feeling like I could get away with it–and still pass the course. And I hated shelling out big bucks for texts that were haphazardly referred to, or were the latest edition from a professor who found a way to supplement his academic income. And this may also be the case for many of our students. However, for our students we might also add concerns of child rearing and family obligations, competing interests, stress, and time management. And there may be one other factor to consider. Perhaps they are reading, but not really reading! I remember being a first or second-year student at the U of A, working through psychology texts with my handy highlighter! I’d grab my favourite colour and then sit down, coffee at hand, and attack all that dense text. Soon that overpriced compendium of information and academic wisdom was a sea of colour! Whole pages were yellow, pink or green and there was little that was left unmarked. Everything seemed important! And, if I stepped back to see what emerged as being the most important, it seemed to be the words: and, but, next, however – the words actually linking ideas. These words stood out because they were not highlighted! Eventually I learned to read the text several times first to get the bigger picture, then think about the dominant themes or important concepts to be learned, before returning to the text with my highlighter to sagaciously and sparingly apply colour only to the essential points, perhaps annotating in the margin with a relevant question or a connected thought. There is a difference between superficially reading (quickly skimming through texts) and really reading (making connections and comprehending). Many of the students we work with at NorQuest may have challenges in reading closely and connectedly. They have come to the college with uneven experiences in schooling and may not like to read or even know how to read - for learning. Perhaps they have struggled in junior high or high school, or perhaps they’ve come to Canada with limited English skills. And, as instructors we often forget about that. Sometimes we can misread our students because they seem to have excellent spoken proficiency, which masks their academic shortcomings. We can have delightful conversations with them about the weather, hobbies and their work. However, written work–especially academic texts–calls for a much broader vocabulary and a deeper understanding of language and language patterns. Working through readings, constantly looking up words and terminology and even translating these new terms into your home language, can be exhausting and overwhelming. And if the instructor hardly ever refers to these readings, seldom quizzes you on them, or will simplify them for you, why bother? However, this hard labour of wrestling with academic texts and professional language is precisely what all of our students need. It is in reading the texts, watching the videos, making notes, and asking how it all fits together, that the students truly learn. And we can’t do that for them. But we can help them develop some of the skills and acquire the mindset that might help them persevere. I often think of this situation like the work my daughter does in providing physiotherapy support. If we keep giving our students crutches (recap lectures and summary sheets) and we fail to push our students to get active (application exercises, problem solving activities), we are actually part of the problem. So, what are the reading skills that need to be encouraged and scaffolded? What do good readers do? When I worked as a literacy consultant for secondary teachers at Elk Island Public Schools, I was blessed to work with a team of educators in supporting the development of effective literacy practices across the school district. As a support and frame, the team highlighted eight thinking skills students need when interacting with and learning from with various texts (print, oral and visual). These skills or processes were built upon the work of Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, and incorporated elements from William Brozo, Kylene Beers, and many other reading gurus. Readers are more engaged and successful in learning when:
As educators, we need to consider how we might challenge our students to develop and use these thinking skills when we assign readings, podcasts and you tube clips. We also need to ask ourselves how we can prepare them for such assignments, scaffold them through the meaning-making process and challenge them to make applications and develop insights. References Beers, G.K. (2002). When kids can’t read, what teachers can do: A guide for teachers 6–12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Brozo, W.G., & Simpson, M.L. (2006). Content literacy for today’s adolescents: Honoring diversity and building competence (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for understanding and engagement. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. |
AuthorJeff Kuntz Ph.D. ImagesExcept where indicated, images used in the blog posts are personal photos, images from NorQuest College or images from Pixabay. Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, videos and music. https://pixabay.com/ Archives
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