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.