LAYERING LEARNING – USING WCB TO TEACH SKILLS IN
TEACHER AND COUNSELOR EDUCATION
I teach in two graduate programs – one in Teacher Education and the other
in School Counselor Education. The curricula in both of these programs
emphasize critical thinking and the development of certain concepts and
skills such as:
a) accurately observing children’s behavior
b) engaging in collegial discussions around current topics in the field, or
c) participating as part of a diagnostic child study team (a group of
professionals who decide what information is known and what is needed
with the goal of providing a better educational experience for the student
in question).
Now one of the problems we have in teacher and counselor education at the
graduate level is that many students believe that they already possess the
skills needed to be successful in these school based professions. Indeed
many of the skills and concepts discussed in our courses have been practiced
by many of our students before; after all how many people interested in
working with children would say that they don’t know how to observe
children accurately or have never had practice engaging in collegial
discussions? And yet our experience tells us that many students in these
professional programs do engage in behaviors that they intuitively believe
are proper but may actually be inappropriate in practice.
How do we help students build the skills and concepts that they need to
succeed in the profession? I have found that developing them requires
students to
a)
form initial theories based on their experiences,
b)
engage in some activities that may challenge the assumptions on
which those theories are based,
c)
revise those theories,
d)
check the revisions,
e)
and then finally, articulate and demonstrate the newly developed skill
and/or concept.
I call this “layering learning” – the idea of building up the development of a
skill or a concept over a period of time.
This “layering” is really an idea based in the traditional learning theories of
Jerome Bruner, Robert Gagne, and Lev Vygotsky, all of whom, in his own
way, saw that learning doesn’t happen in one fell swoop, but needs to be
developed over time and only after multiple rich experiences which allow
students to discover critical connections on their own.
I firmly believe that you cannot provide these rich experiences in a
traditional lecture, reading, discussion based course. Even in a course which
provides excellent field experiences, as many courses in our professional
preparation programs do, students do not get the opportunities to specifically
confront their current thinking, have an experience that challenges it, and
then re-visit that thinking before developing the new skill or concept that is
shaped by that thinking. I believe that WCB has provided an excellent
solution to this teaching and learning problem.
There are two activities I have developed for my students in a graduate
course in Assessment in the Schools that I want to highlight. This course is
a Web supported course – students have significant assignments to do on the
web, but we meet face to face on a weekly basis. The first activity is called
Controversial Issues. In this activity, students first read the Controversial
Issues Lesson posted in the Lessons section of the Web page. As part of that
lesson, they read a one sentence description of four different controversial
issues in the profession today. They then post a pre-reading response to the
Controversial Issues Discussion Forum based on their experiences, what
they’ve read and/or heard about the subject. Students then read the
Controversial Issues article which is linked to the Links section. This article
is selected to provide some deeper background or alternative perspectives
about the issue. Students then post a post-reading response to the
Controversial Issues Forum. Students then select one Controversial Issue,
read all of the pre and post reading responses on that topic, and write a Final
Response detailing commonalities in thinking and ways in which their
understanding has changed or been clarified.
The second activity is called Diagnostic Detection. In this activity, students
are given a short case study about a student with learning and behavioral
problems and asked to develop a diagnosis. The problem is that there is not
nearly enough information to do so! I’ve done this in two different ways –
in a three hour or more class session type class, this is conducted over the
course of one class period. I bring students to our discipline lab and they
work in small groups to develop requests for more information and then post
those requests to the Diagnostic Detection Forum which I then answer.
Initially, students are asked to not read each others’ posting. Students
continue to post until they feel satisfied that they have an Initial Diagnosis,
which they post. They are then encouraged to read each other’s postings
while I post the complete case study with all information available. Students
are then asked to read through all of the postings and then to post a Final
Summary detailing what they learned from the exercise. Invariably, students
recognize that their diagnoses are incomplete because they didn’t ask for
critical information, relied on their own assumptions, and came to incorrect
conclusions. This exercise helps students develop the difficult to learn
concept of withholding judgment until all possible information is gathered.
The second way in which I’ve conducted this exercise in a less than three
hour class is through using email to post the queries and provide responses,
which I then save in a text file. Initial Diagnoses are then posted on the
Diagnostic Detection Forum, and I cut and paste the text files into the
Forum. Students then post a Final Summary which we then all read before
class; we then discuss it in class.
SHOW PAGE AND DO SIMULATION
Before WCB, I used to try to do activities like these. I would engage
students in discussions about controversial issues, then give them articles to
read, then have another class discussion. But there would always be
students who would not participate in the class discussion, or whose thinking
would appear to be rather shallow (perhaps because the students hadn’t
really allowed him or herself to really think deeply about the issue). The
Controversial Issues exercise pushes each student to engage in the exercise
in deeper ways than just listening to a lecture-discussion. I used to try to do
a Diagnostic Detection exercise as well. I would separate students into 4
groups and send each group to the four corners of the room. I would give
the groups the case study and then ask each student group to whisper a
question to me which I would then answer by giving them a slip of paper on
which I had the information in question. I would go around to each group,
whispering, handing out slips of paper. It was an unwieldy process that
didn’t allow groups to learn from each other’s process.
In conclusion, I believe that I have found a solution to a vexing teaching and
learning problem – how to help students engage in the rich experiences that
allow them to build up the skills and concepts needed to be successful in
their professions. I believe that WCB has enabled me to help my students
layer their learning from initial thinking through to deep conceptual
formation.