Reflection 0.1 - Thinking about Teaching and Learning

[Suggested due date is Monday, January 24]

 

Background

As we kick off a course that is going to focus on teaching and learning related to programming, I think it is vitally important that you begin to reflect on your beliefs about teaching and learning in general.  I'm actually a firm believer that the best teachers are the ones who actively think (and RETHINK) about their beliefs regarding teaching and then plan their instruction based on those beliefs.  As such, I want to help you start your way down the path of becoming a "Reflective Practitioner"   To do that, I think it is helpful to start this course by having each of us (me included) explicate our beliefs about teaching and learning.

[Explicate is a fancy word meaning to "analyze and develop an idea or principle in detail"]

In this activity you will begin by reflecting upon, and documenting, your beliefs about teaching and learning. This document will be used heavily as we move through this course.  It will become a building block for many of your later reflections.

Please note, beliefs are highly personal. They are neither right nor wrong, true nor false. They (should) guide our behavior as teachers. Sometimes we find that our stated beliefs are inconsistent with our behavior. Both beliefs and behavior can change if we allow it. This activity gives us a chance to identify our beliefs and perhaps change our behavior with respect to teaching and learning programming.

 

Reflect

To begin, JUST REFLECT.  Don't write anything yet other than brief notes to yourself.  My questions below are meant to stimulate thinking and are NOT to be seen as a list of things you have to explicitly answer at this point.

Begin by thinking about your experiences as a student in school.  Start as far back as you can remember (kindergarten?  preschool? ) and continue all the way through your most recent class(es) at UNI.  Include not only your regular K-12 experiences and undergraduate experiences (including your teacher preparation courses) but any situations where you have learned something such as in a dance class, or a summer science camp, or when your grandma taught you to make her famous chocolate layer cake. 

I want you to reflect on what you think it means to be a learner.  Some questions you might consider as you think back on your experiences as a learner:

 

Now, I want you to think about your teachers:

 

Write

Each individual is asked to prepare a report of their beliefs about teaching and learning with a discussion of the rationale for each. The rationale should explain why the belief is included, i.e., the basis in theory or practice for the belief and why/how it is useful. This is personal, i.e., we may disagree and that should not matter so long as you adequately describe the rationale for the belief.

 

This is a hard document for which to prescribe a format.  Just as there are multiple legitimate beliefs about teaching and learning, I think there are multiple ways to structure/organize those beliefs. Therefore, I simply ask that you take this task seriously.  Discuss what you think it means to be a learner (both from your observations of students and your self-examination of yourself in classes like this one).  Discuss what it means to facilitate that learning as a teacher (both from your observations of other teachers and from your own experiences in the classroom).  It may be very hard to get started (or not depending on your personality).  But I think that it is worth taking the time to reflect and respond at this time.

I do not like to "prescribe" page lengths to assignments like this.  Especially one that is open ended and very personal in nature.  However, I suspect that this should be a minimum of 3-4 pages double spaced and could easily be 5 or 6 depending on what you say and how you structure it.  If you find yourself "done" after only barely two pages, you likely haven't put into this the thought I am expecting.

 

 

 

 

Submission

I do not see there being any right or wrong answers in this activity.  Similarly, length of your answer does not necessarily correlate with the quality of your answers.  Instead, I will be looking to see if you have considered a broad set of ideas/concepts for this reflection and will be looking at the clarity with which you have crafted your response(s).  This includes things like spelling, grammar, formatting, etc.

Remember that I will be grading this on purely a 1/0 basis.  You get credit for submitting something "on time" and that shows that you put time and effort/thought in to crafting a meaningful response. 

One of the things that I have found helpful - for both of us -when I grade like this is to ask you to provide a brief self-assessment of your own work.  As such, I would like you to add a 2-3 sentence self analysis at the end of your deliverable.  This should consist of a reflection on the quality of what you submitted.  This reflection should contain whether you think your work is

and then a brief explanation of WHY you made this assessment

I want to be able to give you some guidance as to how this kind of response would be graded if it were part of a competency demo.  If I look at what you submitted and think it is marginal and you think it is excellent, then we should talk so that we are on the same page. On the flip side, if I think your reflection is excellent and you think it is marginal, then we should also talk. I appreciate your honest admission when an assignment was rushed and you know it.  It allows me not to have to have a detailed talk with you if we both understand this is sub-par but you admit is an exceptional situation

To submit your work you should word process your entire reflection (including the final, self analysis) and save/print as a PDF. 

Give the file the name

for example, I would name mine

And share to the appropriate folder in our shared Google Drive