Informed Learning

Due to my interest in the article on public debate pedagogy, I thought finding an article from the reference list would be a great step for this week’s study.  I found, when looking at the first few articles, that I was a little mistaken.  Some of the articles weren’t really focused on developing a pedagogy for learning—some looked only at how important concepts were or what the future for educational pedagogies meant.  Despite this lack of luck, I did finally come across a promising article titled “Informed learning: A pedagogical construct attending simultaneously to information use and learning” by Christine Bruce & Hilary Hughes.  The article was mostly about the idea of informed learning.  Informed learning makes a connection between information use and learning where both occur simultaneously and as a relationship.  There were four concepts that the article claimed informed learning hinged on which were second-order perspective, simultaneity, awareness, and relationality.  The article even offered a few case studies to enhance the theoretical framework of informed learning.  I found the article difficult to follow, despite the fact that it was only seven pages.  There was a lot more theory embedded in this article and some of the concepts were difficult to follow.  I also found myself irritated with the case studies because they focused on 1) teachers and 2) teachers studying ESL.  I really want to figure out how to engage students who are just starting an educational career.  Teachers are the worst to go to because we have already made it through the first phase of our educational background/career and we are constantly thinking about learning and how we teach.  For me, some of the activities and ideas in the study (such as reflective writing), although great, were not effective for figuring out how these concepts would apply in a sample group of college freshmen who have not had as large a learning experience as teachers.  For this reason, I am not too reliant on this article for my future classrooms.    

Policy Debate Pedagogy

I wasn’t quite sure where to go from the last work, so I started from scratch with my research process.  I typed “pedagogy of engagement” in the hopes of getting something a bit more focused on what I can actually do in the classroom.  I was slightly nervous about my results since I was very vague and none too specific.  I was really surprised with the first source that popped up.  At first, I doubted it would be useful or reliable—it had the words ‘Policy debate pedagogy’ and I automatically thought that would mean this was meant for high school.  I read the abstract anyway, and found I was very mistaken.  This article, titled “Policy debate pedagogy: a complementary strategy for civic and political engagement through service learning” (2016) by Danielle R. Leek was about a specific type of engagement learning that I could do in my classroom.  The focus was on ‘policy debate pedagogy’ where students learn about argument as a means for problem-solving with multiple ways of solving a problem rather than partisan ones.  The article first focused on ‘service-learning pedagogy’ which was heavily emphasized after U.S. Congress passed the National and Community Service Act in 1990 which was followed by President Bill Clinton’s National and Community Service Trust Act in 1993 (399). These acts encouraged service-learning pedagogies.  “Service-learning is a type of experiential curriculum that calls for students to engage in structured opportunities to work with community partners to solve a problem (Flecky, 2011)” (399).  This philosophy was developed by Dewey (1916), focusing on the need for democratic action as a part of student’s education.  Although service-learning has many benefits, the main opposition with service-learning looks at the simplicity of it—students’ experiences may not motivate them to understand the broader social policies and political dimensions that pertain to a policy.  Instead, students may only rely on their experiences and not consider anything beyond that.  To fix this issue, Leek suggests Instructors incorporate public policy debates into the classroom.  “students need concurrent attention to political learning, which encourages engagement with public policy and electoral issues, while fostering opportunities to build skills needed for political activities (Colby, 2008)” (400).  Students are able to consider a course of action for actual institutions and they learn the skills necessary to participate in political debates and their government.  Leek suggests setting aside time for students to debate relevant policy questions and to engage in multiple perspectives.  She also believes this type of pedagogy enhances information literacy which, in turn, engages students in informed learning.  She also considers this as a pedagogy that builds tolerance for difference and differing opinions.  With this pedagogy, students can better understand social problems, gain knowledge about sources, and “mitigate the absence of fact-finding from traditional institutions” (404).

I thought this article was fabulous!  This type of pedagogy is a specific type of engagement that could be developed for an argument and exposition course.  The only thing I feel like I need more of, concerning this pedagogy, is more specific and concrete examples.  As I read this, I tried to think of ways I can control the specific types of argument we engage in in a classroom (I don’t want my students to get overwhelmed with the amount of policies we could debate and instead prefer focusing on one or two).  I also tried to think about how to make this so students are engaging with society and actual policies while doing this.  I thought it would be neat to look at a specific policy and to have our final argument paper as a letter where we contact our representatives arguing for a specific policy position and asking them to represent our interest and needs.  I love that idea—I just have to figure out how to get there.  I also found myself wondering how I can engage with this pedagogy NOW, with The Complete Persepolis.  I’d really like to see my student’s arguments go somewhere where they can engage with the public and not just our classroom and classmates.  

Pedagogy of Engagement: Starting Point

Freire, P.  (2006) Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. 

I was introduced to Freire by my Theory and Comp professor.  She offered this as an optional reading and, unfortunately, I didn't have time that week to read it.  I did, however, put it on a list of works to get to.  Unfortunately, I've only reviewed the first few chapters, but what I have reviewed has proved helpful.  The first few chapters of Pedagogy of the Oppressed introduces readers to a new philosophy of life, not just education.  In this philosophy, Freire identifies two opposing educational purposes--one he calls 'the banking concept of education' and one he calls the 'humanist, revolutionary educator' (74-75).  'The banking concept of education' looks at students as knowledge-less, implying that the teacher knows everything the students need to know and the teacher 'deposits' knowledge in them (72).  The 'humanist, revolutionary educator' seeks to engage students in critical thinking and "the quest for mutual humanization" (75).  The 'humanist, revolutionary educator' learns from her students just as the students learn from her.  Freire goes from this into the idea of a 'problem-posing education' (80) as a practice of freedom, an opposing goal of the oppressor behind a 'banking concept of education'.  In chapter three, Freire's ideas become larger--they focus not just on education but on social and cultural interests that lead me into considering this a life philosophy at several points.  Freire gets into the idea of problems existing in different situations and in ways people can break down these situations (which could apply in a classroom), however, Freire's design sounds too large for a semester in a classroom broken into several units.  The design also sounds extremely advanced--his concepts are abstract and will take time for students to break into.  I do not foresee students beings able to jump straight into making observations about society since several of them need to first figure out how to separate their bias from their observations.  I do like Freire's point that we need to encourage students to engage in a pedagogy focusing on problem-solving (one of my goals actually).  I also appreciate Freire encouraging Instructors to pull from less academic resources in the classroom.  I would be interested in finishing this work, however, I will have to hold off until the summer.  It's very interesting, but it seems to be much broader than I had hoped for establishing a pedagogy of engagement for students who are beginning to think critically.

My Inquiry

My undergraduate career focused on teaching, breeding me to work with students who do not work in a stark, tradition school setting where a teacher stands at the front of the classroom and the students submit to all of her commands.  Instead, I spent most of my time working with students who are commonly identified as at-risk or non-traditional.  Note, I say non-traditional recognizing that the teaching tradition has been established for well over 100 years--we have not really changed our teaching style much since we established our modern public school systems.  I spent my student teaching in a title-one school where I faced the reality that some of my students would not be able to take the "English" material with them when they went home.  Instead, they had to focus on more important things like earning money to help out their parents, like getting home after school to watch their siblings, like basic needs so they could survive the week.  For these reasons, I was taught that it was more important that I think of activities and lessons that students would think about when they were away from school doing these things, and these lessons oftentimes did not include homework.  Maybe that's why I shy away from assigning my students homework--I think I need to work on that.

Although I was bred to be engaging and find things students could relate to, the materials I had to cover in a public school were predetermined.  I lost my sense of engagement (to an extent).  Working at the University level brings the idea of student engagement to a whole new level.  Not only do I want to continue working on finding things the students enjoy and can identify as important issues/concerns for their lives, and I also have a new culture to navigate.  The University is a different set-up--it's not a Title I school and I can expect students to do their homework.  Students here may have different interests than students in other locations (such as Texas which is where my teaching background stems from).  I have to engage with the university culture myself to engage with my students.

That being said, I really want to explore different ways to bring engaging activities into the classroom for my students in a rhetoric and exposition (composition) course.  I want my students to learn new things--I want them to work with different worldviews and to be taught the purpose behind critical thinking.  I want students to begin evaluating the information that comes in front of them, and I want them to understand the importance of writing as a communication tool.  All of these goals, I think, can be more easily achieved if I have activities students can enjoy and be relevant with.  So, my question:  What can I do to engage students in the classroom--specifically for composition and literary courses?