Masters in Teaching and Learning, DKIT
4-3-2011
Marian McCarthy, Ionad Bairre, TLC , UCC, Cork

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The Project Zero Exercise:
Think about the following questions: on your own and then with a partner
What do I understand really well?
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How did I come to that understanding?
How do I know I understand it?
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Feedback : group response and discussion mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Lack of sleep
Industry background (hotels)
Sports development
Student engagement
Work in my own business
(flavours) tiling
Interaction of disciplines for building services
Quality gurus
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Role of DNA in our cells
Golf
Map & compass
Empathy with students
Business plans
Time
Newtons second law
Attachment theory
How to write chinese characters singing

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Building control regulations
Fly fishing
How to motivate my children
Bandaging animals
How to get a blood sample from a dog
Lipid nutrition
How to cook a roast dinner
Knitting
Baking
Hurling
Electronics

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By catching fish
Training &practice
Experience
Problem solving
Learn first (studying), then understood then apply (doing it)
Playing in competitions
Other styles of singing
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Being given out to !
Having to use times/deadlines
Trying to explain it to others
Performance – doing something under pressure
Watching someone else
Trial & error

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Having a curiosity for the topic
Listening
Finding time for the topic
Being aware of how you are behaving
Discussing with your peers
Multiple tasks
Being taught by someone with more experience
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Teaching some one else to help you understand it better
Feedback & experience
Experimenting
Being assessed, looking at something from a different perspective
Crisis management
Making mistakes
Good teacher

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Clean plates !
Present situations to students
Trained people and give them key lessons
Handicap comes down , seen as an expert !
Sales
Apply it successfully, don’t get lost !
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Ask the critical questions
Read the water /river
Response from people
Asked to produce something for someone else
Want to improve it and you can evaluate it
Failure
Experience from the failure
Predict & anticipate
Can answer questions

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Applying practice and feedback , assessment & reward
Takes time, need to put effort into it
Not linear
Stop & think
Constantly ongoing
Perseverance
Let your guard down
Dynamic & diverse ways of learning

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Flexible & read the class
Creative
Different ways of assessing the class
You assume they know it
Treat them as experts – let them self assess
Challenge them
Work placement
Presentations in class
Get students to teach part of the class

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MMc-Reflective Questions :
What kind of a process is learning in the above?
What does understanding look like?
What are the implications of this exercise for how we teach?
What are its implications for how our students learn? mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Knowledge, skill and understanding are the stock in trade of education- What conception of these underwrites what happens in schools?
Knowledge is information on tap
Skills are routine performances on tap
But understanding calls for more than reproduction or routine mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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“Understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety of thought-demanding things with a topic – like explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalising, applying, analogising, and representing the topic in a new way. Understanding is being able to carry out a variety of “performances” that show one’s understanding of a topic and at the same time, advance it”.
D. Perkins and T. Blythe, “Putting Understanding Up Front” in Educational
Leadership, 1994.
mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Understanding is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows.
An understanding of a topic is a “flexible performance capability” learning for understanding is like learning a flexible performance- learning to hold a good conversation, to improvise jazz- rather than rote learning mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Learning facts can be a crucial backdrop to learning for understanding, but learning facts is not learning for understanding
This performance view of understanding contrasts with the prominent representational/mental image view of understandings as things possessed, rather than performance capabilities mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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In casual speech, phrases like “I see what you mean”, “I see the point”, “I see through you”, “I see the answer” testify to a firm link in folk psychology between perception and understanding. Therefore, understanding- asseeing requires achieving a mental representation that captures what is to be understood. mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Understanding lies in possession of the right mental structure or representation. Performances are part of the picture but simply in consequence of having the right representation. A flexible performance capability is a symptom. It does not constitute the understanding but simply signals possession of an appropriate image.. mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Understanding is seen as lying in the performance capability itself, which depending on the case may or may not be supported by representations
Understanding performances go beyond rote and routine- they challenge
They do not undermine the importance of basic knowledge and skill-we need these mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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We can have a mental model of something without understanding it
A mental model is not enough for understanding simply because it does not do anything by itself
For performances that show understanding a person must operate on or with a model-must manipulate and interpret it =runnable mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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No one views acquiring a complex performance as a matter of “getting it”
Performances acquire attention, practice, refinement.
Performances involve multiple aspects that need careful and artful coordination.
Developing understanding = attaining a repertoire of complex performances mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Attaining understanding is less like acquiring something and more like learning to act flexibly in this model, teachers less in the role of informers and testers and more in that of facilitators or coaches. Their challenge is one of choreographing performance experiences that constantly extend understanding mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Though teachers acting in the performance model may well give a lecture or grade a test, these are supportive, not central, activities.
The main agenda is arranging, supporting, and sequencing performances of understanding. mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Central to the discipline
Exciting to students and teachers
Accessible to students
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Multiple connections, think points and entry
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 points
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These topics give you the big picture - the key ideas in your field around which lessons can be organised
History: Revolution
English:Stereotypes
Science: Evolution
Business: Money mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Publicly state what teachers want students to understand
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State as explicit statements or open ended questions
Explicitly link to UP’s and assessment
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Science: “Students will understand why some things sink and others float”
Democracy: “Students will understand the relationship between rights and responsibilities” mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Active engagement by
 students that develops and demonstrates understanding of one or more goals
 varied, complex and often collaborative sequenced purposefully
These challenge students’ misconceptions, stereotypes, and rigid thinking
DTS: Build a character sketch of X in a key scene, focusing on props, costume design, set design and lighting. mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Clear,public criteria tied to U Goals
Formal and informal assessment tied to each performance
Varied sources: self, peer, teachers
Indicates progress and informs planning
Any discipline: “Students brainstorm a list of questions about a particular topic, before they begin to study it.
They review the list regularly and identify which questions they have answered”. mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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“At first glance the framework seems simple and rather obvious.
Five years of collaborative research have demonstrated that this framework is more subtle than it first appears. Teachers who have used the framework to structure extended enquiry about their practice have found that it stimulates them to learn more about their subject matter, their students and their assumptions about learning even as it guides them to make profound changes in the way they plan, conduct, and assess their work with students”. (M. Stone Wiske, Teaching for Understanding; Linking
Research with Practice Jossey Bass 1998) mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

Knowledge: ( What ?)
What questions do experts ask?
What do they need to know about?
Forms (How Expressed?)
How do experts communicate?
What are the tools of the discipline?
Purposes (Why?)
Why do they do what they do? What is the goal?
How do experts use what they know? mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie
Methods: (How?)
How do experts find out?

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PEDAGOGICAL
FRAMEWORK
Generative Topics: central, accessible, exciting, making multiple connections
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Understanding Goals: public, interrogative, holistic and specific – the big picture
Performances of Understanding
–what the students do to demonstrate and develop understanding
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Ongoing assessment : continuous feedback to students
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DISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK –
THE DIMENSIONS OF
UNDERSTANDING
Knowledge – conceptual frameworks of the discipline
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Method – how experts think in the discipline
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Purpose – why this topic is worth studying – ownership
Form – how understanding is represented
“Pedagogical content knowledge”
TfU fuses the two
SoTL lens- grammar of practice mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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TFU AND SOTL
TfU as sotl process :
It has all the rigour of good curriculum design and its focus on student learning
The focus is on active learning and student performance/doing to demonstrate and develop understanding
Methods of assessment provide raw data for faculty re their student learning – and for me
It helps faculty to develop a language of practice – the naming of parts
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EMBEDDING SOTL IN THE
CULTURE -
Developing a community of practice
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Building trust and security over time
Creating opportunities for discussion and reflection at each session
Providing food for thought
Aligning assessment with SoTL
Providing opportunities for teachers to publish and to gain recognition ( President’s Awards,
NAIRTL grants and publications and international conferences ) mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie

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Bernstein, D., Burnett, A., Goodburn, A & Savory, P. (2006). Making Teaching and Learning Visible:
Course Portfolios and the Peer Review of Teaching. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co.
Blythe, T. (1999) The Teaching for Understanding Guide
Cross, K. P. (1996). Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching. San Francisco:
Jossey- Bass.
Hetland, L. (2002). Introduction to TfU video resources, Harvard: Project Zero Classroom, 1-5.
Hutchings, P. (ed.), (1998a). The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance
Practice and Improve Student Learning, Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education
(AAHE).
McKinney, K. (2004). The scholarship of teaching and learning: Past lessons, current challenges and future visions, in C. Wehlburg & S. Chadwick- Blossey (eds.) To Improve the Academy: Vol
22. Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development (pp.3- 19). Bolton, MA:
Anker.
McKinney, K. & Jarvis, P. (2009) Beyond lines on the CV: Faculty applications of their SoTL research. IJSoTL, Vol.3. No 1.
Shulman, L (2004) Teaching as Community Property: Essays on Higher Education
Wiske, M. (1998) Teaching for Understanding: Linking Research with Practice mmccarthy@education.ucc.ie