The Main Responsibility of Teachers? Make yourself dispensable!

When I read this week’s prompt for #rhizo14, my first thought was “but isn’t that the point of teaching?” – I always thought it was our responsibility as teachers to eventually make ourselves not needed, obsolete – for our learners. I was just telling my students last week (hey, just days before Dave’s prompt went live) something I have always told my students: “there will always be new things to learn, but there won’t always be Maha” – and especially in a field like educational technology, there is almost always something new to learn, almost every day. My role, as I have always seen it, is to help my students figure out how to learn these new things without needing me to show them.

More importantly, while my students think it is about learning how to find new things, and figuring out the technicalities of how to use them, I think what my role as a teacher really is, is to help them develop the judgment to choose what works for their context at a particular moment in time. Barnett & Coate (2005) make this really important point about the emphasis on skills and performativity: that using a technical approach to skills education forgets the importance of helping learners develop this judgment about how to use a skill and when to use it, how to adapt it to context.

Now I think this whole idea of the “planned obsolescence” of the teacher works with all the ideas we’ve been talking about throughout #rhizo14. (The next part sounds more linear than I intended) It connects very much with independence (if you’re going to disappear eventually as teacher, you should probably work on helping learners become independent); if they’re going to be independent, they’ll need to embrace uncertainty, because that’s the way the world is; if they’re going to be independent embracers of uncertainty, they’ll need the support of community. And Apostolos mentioned on his blog an idea that had come to me: that what we really want to achieve as teachers is to make our learners eventually less dependent upon us, so that they become our peers. In that way, we are teaching so that our learners become part of our learning community in future. This is easier to imagine when your students are adults, but I am also now a “peer” of people who were once my professors.

@Jessifer in y/day’s #moocmooc chat said:

@Jessifer: Education privileges knowing rather than championing not knowing. We need to wear our not knowing more openly on our sleeves. #moocmooc

Once we embrace and value not knowing, once we help our students embrace it, we become peers on a journey to navigate the uncertainty that is the world (even while we are still in the formal course together, but recognizing that learning does not begin or end in any course). A world that is complex but that we often try to make legible (and I owe Terry Elliott a separate blog post on that! Coming soon) and lose the reality of its complexity while doing so.

Every model, every metaphor is limited. It is a representation of reality, it is not reality itself.

I look forward to research (hopefully a collaborative autoethnography) with some participants of #rhizo14 , on #rhizo14, as a way to continue our learning journey here. I hope this research somehow, in some way, manages to represent the richness and complexity of this experience. It will be a representation of our individual realities and how they intersected from our perspectives. Sure, we’d like the course leader to participate, and it would be great if he did. But it will be great either way.

Now one last point: how is it that we supposedly want our students to become independent, for our teacherliness to become less important for them, and yet we continue to remain there? As Jaap said in a comment on Apostolos’ blog – it is not just about the teacher giving students permission to stop depending on him/her, but also the students giving the teacher permission to do before the formal course “ends”.

I love Dave Cormier, I don’t remember seeing him much around during week 4 of rhizo14 (maybe I was too busy myself?) but I know that I did not feel a sense of loss for his absence, and that means something went really “right” with #rhizo14! That I did not feel the need to seek him out. I don’t think I even tweeted to him or tagged him on a facebook post last week. I just noticed all this now as I finished writing this blog post…

My Favorite Teacher?

Cathy Davidson encouraged us in #FutureEd to share who is our fave teacher and why… I had a couple of people in mind, but then reading other people’s responses (and also the interviews in the last video) inspired me to re-think this question.

I am thinking of several of my fave teachers and mentors, and what they all had in common was this: they cared about students as individuals. They were kind and loving and caring.

Yes, some of them also challenged me to think beyond what I thought I could think and do more than I thought I could do.

But kindness and caring for human beings? That’s priceless. That will stay with every student, whether they excelled at the course or barely made it through.

It is a good reminder for how to be a teacher myself. I have seen it more often in the older and wiser teachers, and I hope as time goes by, I will become a wiser and kinder teacher myself.

Pedagogy of Misunderstanding

Dare I admit this? Some of the most interesting things I have done and ideas I have thought stemmed from misunderstandings!

It is often considered good teaching to approach our subject matter wanting to figure out our students’ erroneous pre/misconceptions and to correct them. But my own experiences as a learner have shown me that sometimes a misconception or misunderstanding can lead to innovation and insight.

It is really worth pondering the degree to which “discontinuity and being open to surprise often foster creativity in the search for promising ideas” (Conrad and Dunek , 2012, p. 73).

An example of a misunderstanding that led to innovation is my own misunderstanding of how content analysis can be used to assess online discussions. My Master’s thesis used rubrics with online discussion as a method of evaluation. It had never occurred to me that it could be done any other way. When we came to publish a paper out of it, it turned out that this approach was new, and that’s why the paper was publishable!

It happens quite often in group meetings and classes that someone says an idea, then another person builds on it, only to discover that they had misunderstood the original idea. Some great ideas come out of misunderstandings and serendipity. Trying not to finish everything in a synchronous meeting and allowing ideas to develop independently with each person can produce new ideas as well (the discontinuity factor).

I often read a text and misunderstand something because I am reading it out of context (sometimes in purpose I will just open a book in the middle and start reading it – is that just me? I have done this with relatively complex works like Edward Said’s) and reflecting on my own context. Now, generally, I believe we mostly think it is important to read something in context, and I am not questioning the value of that in bringing us closer to the author’s intentions (I even truly believe in the importance of empathetic reading). But there is something to be said for the potential insight and self-reflection that can come out of reading something out of context and connecting it to the reader’s own context and thinking. I am sure the humanities folks have a lot to say about this already. We do it all the time when we share inspirational quotes by people we don’t know, said in contexts we never question.

I don’t think this concept of pedagogy of misunderstanding is something you can depend upon, I don’t think it is something you can even necessarily plan on, but it is something we can embrace and welcome and encourage when we see it happening, and we can appreciate the process and outcome.

Inspiring teaching philosophies

I am writing this post to capture/curate aspects of some of my favorite teaching philosophies written out there. Because of my new job responsibilities, I am particularly concerned about finding deep and critical teaching philosophies about online aspects of learning, as opposed to some of the more traditional institutionally driven approaches (that few good teachers, i assume, really incorporate into their pedagogy). What I have below is a sort of mish mash with little commentary for now, as I think of how I want to go forward.

So far, I am thinking of things written by Dave Cormier, Sean Michael Morris, Jesse Stommel, Kris Shaffer, and the folks who designed/taught the U of Edinburgh eLearning and Digital Cultures MOOC/MSc

Here are my favorite quotes/parts:

Sean Michael Morris’ contemplative pedagogy & digital agnosticism:

“…each of us has an obligation to pass on to students not only what we learn, but the contemplative process by which we came to it. I don’t believe as much in subject matter as I do in process. I don’t believe as much in methodology as I do in practice”

Jesse Stommel’s Online Learning Manifesto has lots of great points, including (note these are truncated quotes when i use “…”, APA style):
”

5. Rigor fails to be rigorous when it’s made compulsory. It can’t be guaranteed in advance by design. Academic rigor shouldn’t be built into a course like an impenetrable fortress for students to inhabit. Rigor has to be fostered through genuine engagement.
…
8. Don’t wield outcomes like a weapon. Online learning activities should not be overly designed or too-strictly standardized… Improvisation, play, and experimentation are essential to learning.
…
10. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to online education. Learning is not neatly divisible into discrete chunks (like courses)….
…
11. Community and dialogue shouldn’t be an accident or by-product of a course. They should be the course. …
…
12. Content-expertise does not equal good teaching. The internet already has lots of experts in all manner of things. A good pedagogue, rather, relies on a variable mixture of content-expertise and careful thinking about teaching practices….Once a course begins, the growing expertise of the students, and not the teacher, should be the primary focus.
…
13. Online learning needs less quantitative and more qualitative assessment. Students are not columns in a spreadsheet. …The most important form of assessment, though, is self-assessment by the students of their own learning.
”

Another manifesto, this one for online teaching, comes from the U of Edinburgh folks who provided the best MOOC experience i have had so far (#edcmooc). Among their manifesto:

”
Distance is a positive principle, not a deficit. Online can be the privileged mode.
…
‘Best practice’ is a totalising term blind to context – there are many ways to get it right.

Every course design is philosophy and belief in action.
…
Assessment is a creative crisis as much as it is a statement of knowledge.
…
Online spaces can be permeable and flexible, letting networks and flows replace boundaries.

Course processes are held in a tension between randomness and intentionality.
”

And one that i need to ponder as a former Turnitin.com administrator:

“A routine of plagiarism detection structures-in a relation of distrust.”

Kris Shaffer’s Open letter to his students was inspiring in that it attempts explain the thought behind the teacher’s pedagogical choices. I spend entire semesters trying to explain my teaching philosophy to students. They usually “get it” half way thru the semester, some nearer the end. I suspect explaining it via open letter won’t completely replace that confusion, but it might be more detailed than what i used to do (a couple of minutes talking in our first class). I think it also might help students respond to surprising or unfamiliar aspects of my teaching. So for example, Kris writes ( again, i use “…” for text i removed):

”
First, education is more than the transfer of information. Education involves the transfer of information, of course. However, there are things more important, and more difficult, than simply memorizing information.

And

In other words, I want you to learn how to learn. That means that at times you will be teaching yourself. This is an intentional choice. One of my chief goals is for you to take charge of your own education. Though I will help set a frame in which this will take place, many of you will feel uncomfortable, even overwhelmed, at this. That’s normal. It’s what independent learning feels like quite often. (Because it’s what teaching feels like.) However, if at any time you feel lost, please talk to me. I have gone through the same process many times before, both as a student and as a teacher. I may not remove the discomfort immediately, or at all, but I will help you learn to manage it and harness it to a positive outcome.

And

Education is about far more than grades…Some of the most important things in a class are things that are hard to assess, so they’re not part of the grade…
”

I have already blogged about Dave Cormier’s ideas… First here then again more lightly here but i expect as I take #rhizo14 and read Dave’s book, there will be more to reflect on. The main thing Is the whole notion of “community as curriculum”

These are not all the teaching philosophies to ever inspire me, but just recent ones. Will blog about others over time and mybe share my own as I develop it

Novelty, noise, and scaffolding

Some days you come across an idea that provides you with unexpected insights. The idea is simple and should have been obvious to you long ago, but somehow was not, until some other person articulated it well enough.

A couple of days ago, this insight came from a comment on Dave Cormier’s blog post about the upcoming open course on Rhizomatic Learning. Scott Johnson, building on the concept of scaffolding which another commentator mentioned, said:

“Without structure or some realization that help or accompaniment is available (the presence of a sense-making companion maybe?) novelty can be pushed aside as noise”

I’ve known about scaffolding and Vygotsky for years and years, I use the concept often, but this statement opened up my eyes to two important realizations:

1. It made me realize why, at work (I work as a faculty developer), sometimes a new idea that is mentioned in an email or meetings gets “shot down” very quickly by more conservative members of the team – I think I always realized there was some element of others not truly understanding where the new idea comes from, or not truly knowing the dimensions of it, and that this is partly the fault of the speaker for not communicating clearly in the first place and accounting for listener’s background. But the concept of “novelty as noise” is very enlightening. Recognizing that novelty might seem like  “noise”, means we understand that this noise causes discomfort, and you want to “shut it out”, because who wants to keep listening to noise? You’re not able to listen to it, you don’t understand the content of it, and it’s distracting you from listening to more important things. It never occurred to me when introducing novelty in a work setting (vs. a teaching setting) that one could use the concept of scaffolding. Yes, it now sounds obvious, but it was not that obvious to me beforehand!

2. An insight into connectivism: This (the need for some kind of sense-making e.g. via a peer or expert) might be what is truly problematic about connectivism. I have argued elsewhere (publication in process) that cMOOCs are not necessarily scalable across contexts because not all people feel comfortable with the technology or the lack of structure or info overload, and not all disciplines can easily be adapted for that kind of learning especially for non-autonomous and younger learners (well, I might have said it slightly differently, but that is the gist). But maybe what  Scott mentions is what is truly problematic with connectivism – the novelty of it, without peer (or expert) support, seems like noise to the external observer who is not an extremely connected/networked individual… and so it goes totally over their heads. Actually, I think the theory behind connectivism is difficult to imagine or absorb, and even harder to experience for the person who is not highly networked to begin with. I might be wrong, but I think the rest of Scott’s comment about the same people showing up in connectivist learning opportunities rings true: these people are feeling supported and trust each other enough to keep learning together.

This all also made me realize why #edcmooc (eLearning & Digital Cultures MOOC) might have worked really well – it had a lot of elements of connectivism (use of social media not just the traditional MOOC platform) but also some (quite loose) structure. And also encouraging lots of peer support (participants in the first run of the MOOC say they built community before the course even started and that this personal learning network stayed with them beyond).

And so… I think I know why the idea of rhizomatic learning and community as curriculum resonated with me a little more than connectivism. Because the emphasis on “community” seemed to emphasize the importance of the social relationships between learners… versus connectivism which seemed to emphasis the network connections which sounded to me (as a former computer scientist) as emphasizing the network (software or hardware) rather than the people and the social aspect. I’ve never gone too far in reading up on connectivism, and I assume it’s possible “network” means “social community”, but somehow it does not sound completely like that to me… I think I might get my head around all this as we go into #rhizo14. Or not. Either way, I’m excited about that course and the possibilities and social networks I could build and learn with/from through it.

More later…

Learning for Sustainability: on sustainable assessment #flsustain

I use this post to note my favorite quotes/ideas on “sustainable assessment” from the book “Learning for Sustainability”, which is one of the texts for the FutureLearn MOOC offered by U of Nottingham.

Whole paragraph quoted:

assessment strategies should be carefully planned to ensure that what is assessed is the development of the individual rather than their performance. Assessment might span several modules, again to focus upon a journey rather than a moment. A sustainable method of assessment is one that can do ‘double or triple-duty’ – it is appropriate and valid for the learning involved, takes the long view (thus making a contribution to society), and also meets the academic requirements of the university.

(emphasis mine)

And just reading the views in this book about sustainability as a frame of mind for thinking about pedagogy made me realize it coincides with a lot of what my own teaching philosophy involves (and as it evolves): ideas of authentic assessment, focus on the learning process rather than measurable outcomes, and ideas related to open education.

I was initially taking the MOOC on sustainability because I am teaching a module within a course where students will be developing educational games about sustainability. Now, I am thinking the MOOC will also help in another teacher education course I teach related to ethical, legal, social and human issues in the use of educational technology.

If you’re interested in the book, it is available to view/download here

The MOOC itself is available here

Different approaches to student input and involvement in learning

I just read a recent article by Prensky that highlights the importance of getting student input on how they want to learn, as early as school level (unsure how “early” is, but i assume as soon as kids can articulate themselves clearly enough; before then, i assume we should still watch their reactions and body language). Prensky in the article brings a panel of students to speak at conferences.

I am interested in this idea of student involvement on so many levels: as a parent, as a teacher, as a teacher-educator and as a faculty developer. I think it is important from very early on, but that there are different layers to it.

There is the simplest layer that any good teacher does: watch students’ faces as you teach them and modify your teaching according to that. Some do it more formally using techniques like the “Minute Paper” and other CATS (Classroom Assessment Techniques).

Another step is to explicitly ask their feedback on how to do things better. This is something we do at work where faculty who want to know ask us (the Center for Learning and Teaching), as an impartial external party) to help get student feedback either using a confidential and interactive in-class assessment technique called Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID), or via online mid-semester surveys. These are formative assessment opportunities so the instructor can improve the class for the rest of the semester. Students really seem to appreciate the opportunity to express themselves this way, especially if they feel the instructor will take their feedback into account.

A different, more advanced, step is to involve students much more in choosing how they would like to be assessed. This can start with having them choose the topic they want to e.g. Write/present about, but can go further in allowing them choices of format (e.g. Wiki, video, …) and even further in allowing them as a group to decide on assessment criteria or rubrics rather than have them imposed.

Another step is to involve them in choosing which content they would like to learn, and how they would like to learn it – possibly allowing different students to take different paths towards achieving the same learning outcomes.

And yet another layer would be to have students themselves as content creators – they aggregate and produce their own content for their colleagues to use in current and future courses.

I try also to go beyond this and provide opportunities for students to set and meet their own learning goals regardless of the ones for the course. This might be easier for adult education than earlier courses that are part of very formal degree programs, where some courses are pre-requisites to others, and some formal bodies of knowledge are expected to be taught/learned.

[note: I always have to remind myself that all these approaches might make some students uncomfortable especially if they are unused to getting so much of a say; this means some students’ say is louder and more dominant than others’]

I am not sure what will be done in the three MOOCs I plan to start this January, but I hope to get more creative ideas about democratizing learning, and improving learning by involving the community of students throughout the process (rhizomatic learning, for example, views the learner community as the curriculum, not just participants in it)… And i hope to find multiple ways to use this for different kinds of courses (not necessarily teaching adult learners which is most of what i do) in formal and informal education.

The three MOOCs, in case folks are interested (I will blog about them later) are:
#FutureEd, #Rhizo14 and #flsustain (sustainability, though i am signed up for several other sustainability MOOCs as well)

Teaching as Giving, Writing as Giving

This post is inspired by a facebook discussion about my previous post “We are Nerds“. Friend of mine pointed out that the passion with which academics want to teach their students is not restricted to academics, but anyone in any field who has a passion for “giving”. Others also pointed out that although my post was directed towards academics (as these are the people I work with, day in and day out) many of the ideas relate further to informal educational contexts such as training, and even to just people management in general. I can relate to that, because before I started working in education, my passion in my previous corporate context was in the “giving” that I could do via training and support.

This thinking triggered quite a few connections in my head, and I’ll share them one by one.

First, it reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Gibran, a section from his “The Prophet” which is entitled “On Giving“. I have used this sub-poem in “critical friendship groups” as a focus of reflection with my student-teachers. I found this one resonated so much more with me and them than the other sub-poem in the same book entitled “On Teaching“. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from “On Giving“:

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

And isn’t it true that teaching is a giving of oneself?”

“There are those who give little of the much which they have–and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth”.

And I think for some of us, giving is just a way of living, it is not something we do for the joy or the pain, it is something we cannot help but do…

“It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;”

And

“They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.”

This one, resonating with what I said earlier about giving as a way of life, also resonates with me about writing my thoughts and sharing them. This, too, is a kind of “compelled” giving. I am compelled to share my thoughts and ideas…

“See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.”

And this last one, reminds me of the humility of giving. Every time I write something that someone appreciates, I wonder if I am deserving of that appreciation. If I truly did have something new, useful, helpful to say? Who am I to impart wisdom onto others? Why are all these people listening to me? I feel that way in my teaching as well. I am humbled by the knowledge my students can bring into the class and the beauty they can make of a learning encounter. The more I know about my field, the more I realize I don’t know, the less significant what I do know becomes. But what little of it I have, I want to share. It is a very strange thin line between confidence and humility and I’m still navigating my way through it.

(You can read the entire Gibran poem online – just follow the links earlier and look to the sidebar for more parts)

The second thing this discussion reminded me of is one of the most influential books I have ever read by Stephen Covey. Nope, not the 7 Habits, but “First Things First”. I think this is one of the 7 habits, but there is an entire book on the subject and I am forever indebted to the friend who introduced me to it (thanks Yasser). I just recently recommended it to a colleague at work, because the book helps you reflect on what your mission in life is. It helped me leave a well-paying corporate career and start in a career in education. It helped me decide to take two years off of my career to take care of my baby without feeling like I was losing my “balance”, because each stage of life has its own equilibrium, depending on your priorities.

The thrust of the book centers around the concept that we all want four main things from life: to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy. The first is obvious, and involves healthy eating, sleeping, exercise, etc. (not that I know too many people who can do that very well, myself included). The second is about our relationships. The third is about our continual need to learn. But the last one, the “leave a legacy” one is the most inspiring. Because this is, to me, the one that centers your decisions about how to meet your mission in life. That mission might be to raise good children, and they will be your legacy.

My ideas around leaving a legacy were originally related to influencing an improvement in education in Egypt. They still are. But along the way, I have realized that I can make small gains in influencing education through my teaching of teachers, my consulting with faculty, as well as working with those in informal educational settings to help them in various ways related to my areas of expertise. But I have also realized that writing is another way to widen this “circle of influence” (which I believe is a term Covey uses) even though very little might lie within our “circle of control” (I have currently no control over the education system in Egypt, for example). Writing also enables one to potentially reach a wider audience than initially intended. Some of my writing that was intended for an Egyptian audience (e.g. the critical citizenship work) found resonance with people in Lebanon and the US (that I know of). You cannot predict how far something like this might go (side note: this is also scary if you ever change your mind about something and have no idea who is living with your older ideas… Think Edward Said, who I believe updated his ideas from Orientalism in his later book Culture and Imperialism but still you find more reference to his earlier work in scholarship).

Which reminds me of another interesting point someone recently brought up. They were talking about how you teach someone and the effect of it may or may not appear years from now. You are lucky if you ever hear back from your past students and know you have made a difference in their lives, you are luckier if they realize it while you are still teaching them (it helps if you teach the same cohort more than one course!), but the majority of your influence is often outside your notice.

So that’s why I think giving, for a teacher, has to be its own reward, though you may get some small external reward from your students every day (and I hope we all do).
Just as writing, I think, in some ways, is its own reward. But boy, does it feel wonderful to get positive (or even critical) feedback/support on one’s writing and know that it is beginning to influence some person, in some way, out there.

Happy giving!

We Are Nerds. So how do we reach our students?

It suddenly struck me, a couple of weeks after I finished my PhD, that I was a nerd. This should not have come as a surprise, since I have been a high achieving student throughout school and college, and loved learning in those contexts enough to pursue a master’s and PhD.

I cannot be too different from most academics. I assume we share some common characteristics: we love reading (we chose a career that requires so much of it, after all) though we might differ in how much we love to write. We are passionate about teaching or research, or if we are truly lucky, we are passionate about both (though whether we ever manage to find the best balance for our own personal fulfillment is another matter). Many of us (those who enjoy teaching) are probably not the typical nerd you see on TV. We are probably very social with good interpersonal and communication skills. But we are still, deep down inside, nerds. And the reason I want to point this out, is that this “nerdiness” can stand in our way when we try to “reach” our students, motivate them to learn what we ourselves are so passionate about. Because most of our students, I am predicting (going out on a limb here), are not nerds. They do not already love the subject matter we are teaching. They may not be interested in pursuing a PhD in it. At least not yet (ha!)

How often have I heard during faculty development workshops the odd faculty member who says “well, we must get our students used to doing so and so, because they need those skills for graduate school”. Well, hello! Most of our students are probably not planning to go to graduate school (I probably shout this out before anyone in the room has the chance to agree, so I am unsure how widespread this sentiment is). Yes, it is important to prepare students for graduate school in case they do eventually plan to go. This is our medium-term goal. But our immediate goal is to help them through THIS course that they are taking for whatever purpose they have for taking it.

Which gets me to my second point: do we teach the way we like to learn? I love noise and humor and group discussions and disagreements in my classes. It is how I like to learn, and it is how I like to teach. It is my comfort zone. However, I often need to remind myself that this is not necessarily the way all my students prefer to learn. Occasionally, I will stop my class for individual written reflection before doing a larger group discussion. Occasionally, I will do some more quiet pair work. Occasionally, I will recognize that (oops) not everyone is as comfortable with conflict in my classroom as I thought. And that (oops) sometimes students who deep down inside dissgree with me are not comfortable doing so in class, no matter what assurances I give them that this is something to be desired. It may be desirable to me, but it is not always desirable to them. Occasionally, I will discover that my own culture is slightly (or very?) different from my students’ culture, which reminds me of the importance of “culturally relevant pedagogy” (great pedagogical concept if your students are diverse or very different from yourself).

I really also like the idea of “differentiated engagement” proposed by Michael Feldstein, which proposes that we as teachers consider providing space for our students learn according to their motivations and learning preferences. It has elements of what is called a process-oriented approach to curriculum, where your focus is not on the “myth of the unified learning goal” and not on the product of learning, but rather, the focus is on the learner’s own engagement and the teacher’s judgment of how to use the learning moment to take these particular students’ learning further in this particular context. It puts the actual learning and engagement as the center of discussions about curriculum, rather than any arbitrarily pre-defined goals set by one person or a group of people separate from the individuals in the classroom and separate from its context. The idea of “differentiated engagement” also has elements of the notion of “differentiated instruction” which builds on the idea of addressing different learning preferences (usually about multiple intelligences specifically, but the concept extends to all sorts of learner differences). Feldstein’s concept, as I understood it, focuses on learner motivations and preferences for engagement, and though he begins talking about it with reference to MOOCs, I agree with him that it should be something all teachers think about when thinking about their courses.

I also love Sean Michael Morris’ statement as he discusses contemplative pedagogy (is that his own term?):

“one of the most important skills a teacher can possess is mindful attention, and a willingness to see where a class is really headed, and not stick so tenaciously to his plan that he misses the brilliance of collaboration possible with his students”

(quoted from his website).

I’ll stop here. I hope this blog post keeps reminding me that I may be different from my students, and, because of that, I need to be mindful of what engages them, how they want to learn, so that I can direct my energies and passions in ways that satisfy us all.

Do you have a story to tell about how you taught in ways outside your comfort zone in order to motivate your students or help them learn better? How do we do this while still staying true to our ourselves? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts.

But are we really nerds?