Decoding the Disciplines and
Patterns in Emotional Resistance
Kevin R. Guidry and David Pace
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Paradigm Shift
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Session Goals
I. Learn to anticipate student emotional
bottlenecks
II. Discuss an affective bottleneck in your
class
III.Design an assessment for your
bottleneck
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I: Emotional Bottlenecks
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I. What are emotional bottlenecks?
• Emotions are completely intertwined with
learning
– How you frame something cognitively shapes the
emotions you feel about it
• Emotional bottlenecks may come from a
mismatch between students’ notions of the
content and that encountered in the class
• They may also arise from a mismatch between
students’ image of the discipline and what is
actually encountered in the course
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I: An emotional bottleneck – Reaction
to the subject matter
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I: An emotional bottleneck – Reaction
to the nature of the discipline
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I. Narrative Emotional Bottleneck
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II. The Emotional Bottleneck in your class
What is an emotional bottleneck for the
students in one of your courses? And
what is the nature of the problem?
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Think and write (2 minutes)
First member of group speaks (2 mins.)
Second member of group speaks (2
mins.)
Third member of group speaks (2
mins.)
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II: Your Bottlenecks
• What did you learn about each others’
bottlenecks? Were there similarities or
differences?
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Chi on Persistent Misconceptions
• To make a conceptual shift:
1.Collect information about student
preconceptions—what do they think about the
topic before you teach it?
2.Show them the results.
3.Make a side-by-side comparison of their
preconceptions and how that is uniquely
distinct from the new way of thinking.
4.Now they may begin to assimilate new
instruction.
Step 6: Assessing Preconceptions
Questions to use
1.Besides hard work, what does it take to do
well in this course?
2. What happened during X? (the Middle
Ages?
3. What have you heard about X? (global
warming, calculus)
Always add Part II: “Why do you say that?”
Handout 3
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III. Analyze student data
Uncovering Student Narratives
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III. Analyze student data
Uncovering Student Narratives
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III. Analyze student data
Power of Metaphors
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Step 6: How would you assess student
preconceptions?
Discuss in teams of 3:
What question could you ask to uncover the
narratives or disciplinary preconceptions
students bring to your class?
4 minutes per person
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Step 6: Assessing Preconceptions
Questions to use
1.Besides hard work, what does it take to do
well in this course?
2. What happened during X? (the Middle
Ages?
3. What have you heard about X? (global
warming, calculus)
Always add Part II: “Why do you say that?”
Handout 3
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How would you assess student
preconceptions?
Report back-Will someone share an example?
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Student preconceptions in History
–
Bottleneck: Students are unable to see the
perspectives of different actors from the past
•
They look for good guys and bad guys
Step 2: Expert Thinking in History
• Historians reconstruct the realities of
different actors in the past
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Step 3: Modeling—History e.g.
– Gestalt Images
– Retelling stories
– In-class modeling of reconstruction of
the values and assumptions implicit in
texts
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Step 4: Practice and Feedback
• Now I was prepared
to use Prezi
– The learning teams
were asked to come
up with a short list of
issues that were of
concern to either of
these two thinkers .
Aquinas
Mandeville
Step 4: Practice and Feedback
• Now I was prepared
to use Prezi
– I entered these terms
next to both of the
names
Creature
Comforts
Protecting the
Week
Economic
Productivity
Aquinas
Population
Increase
Protecting the Week
The Afterlife
Creature
Comforts
Mandeville
Population
Increase
Virtue
The Afterlife
Economic
Productivity
Virtue
Step 4: Practice and Feedback
• The students then
had to tell how big to
make each term, as a
reflection of its
importance in one of
the two systems of
thought
Creature
Comforts
Protecting
the Week
Population
Increase
Economic
Productivity
Aquinas
Virtue
The Afterlife
Economic
MandevilleProductivity
Creature
Virtue
Population
Increase Comforts
Protecting the Week
The Afterlife
Step 4: Practice—History e.g.
• On-line assignments
– Week 4 – Students asked to identify the values
implicit in Victorian championing of
competition, to identify passages in which
these values are present, and to explain what
in the passage convinced them of this
• Then they have to describe the position of thinkers
who did not accept these views of competition
– Week 5 – Students asked to find contrasting
passages from Marx and Engels and from
defender of capitalism Samuel Smiles
• Then they have to explain what values were present
in each passage
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Using Prezi to Give Students Practice at
Both These Tasks
• Each learning team took one of four ways of
thinking about conflict and competition in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
– Classical liberalism
– Marxism
– Pacifism
– Militarism/Fascism
Using Prezi to Give Students Practice at
Both These Tasks
• The task of each team was to use Prezi to
represent
– The principal ideas of the group of thinkers that
they were focusing on
– Explain how their group would have dismissed the
ideas of other groups
Using Prezi to Give Students Practice at
Both These Tasks
• Goals of the exercise
– To reinforce previous exercise
– To give the students practice at “playing”
with ideas
– To motivate student inquiry [Step 6:
Motivation]
– To assess how well the students were
mastering the operations
The Experience of the Exercise
• Level of student involvement
– The power of play and
autonomy
– The desire to produce
something that impressed
the other teams
– Taking ownership of the
technology
• Visual
• Combining Prezis
Lego Action Figures of
Marx and Engels
The Power of Play
Step 6: Assessment—History e.g.
Disrupting Ritual Interactions
See Handout 2
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Step 6: Assessment—History e.g.
• Pre-Post comparisons
– Compare assignments in weeks 4 and 15
– Average score increased from 2.3 to 3.5 (34%)
– Scoring scale:
1= repetition of literal meaning
5 = polished presentation of the assumptions implicit
in the text
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Give evidence a number so others can use it
easily
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Step 6: Assessment—History e.g.
• Multiple measures: Is there other
evidence that students incorporated these
ideas into their notions of history?
– Week 14 Assignment: Describe a way of analyzing
historical sources that you have learned in this course
(i.e. what might you do in writing this paper that you
would not have thought to do when the course began?)
– Videotaped Interviews: Did students specifically describe
the use of values and assumptions in discussing what
they gained from the course?
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