Losing the Value of Private Reflection Through Blogging?

They only babble who practice not reflection.
Edward Young

Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror
by M.C. Escher

Written teacher reflections, particularly in pre-service teacher education, have been traditionally done in a rather isolated fashion.  The pre-service teacher may be the only person to read their reflection and oftentimes, the pre-service teacher may only have written the reflection as a result of being asked to do it as part of their course work.  Once out of college/university I would be skeptical about the amount of practising teachers that  regularly take the time to write out a serious reflection of their work.  My scepticism is based on the reality that many teachers can be physically drained after a busy school day, and the last thing they want to consider is doing something that may be seen as further increasing their workload and/or irrelevant to aiding their practice.  However, with blogging on the increase, I find my scepticism of reflection by practising teachers is somewhat diminishing, as blogging can support different forms of reflection in a more engaging and useful manner to teachers.  For further information on the value of blogging than just reflection see Seven reasons why teachers should blog by Steve Wheeler. 

Hatton and Smith (1995) outline four types of writing, three of which are useful for reflection in school-based practice:
1. Descriptive writing - involves the reporting of events and is not considered reflective,
2. Descriptive reflection - involves some reflection, but is more personal in nature with the focus on the individual,
3. Dialogic reflection - seeks a range of answers to difficulties and thus, can contain many questions, and
4. Critical writing - looks to provide more reason to the range of answers to difficulties noted, and in particular, encompasses the broader context, e.g., school structure, cultural issues, societal issues, etc. 

Blogging is at a minimum a useful reflective exercise, capable of including the above forms of writing.  It is also a means to share experiences, and in turn find out about other people's experiences.  At the other possible end blogging can be a very useful way to interact and debate with people of similar interests, that is if other people engage in discussion.  Blogging however, like teaching, is a two way street.  If other people are to interact with you, you should interact with them.  Most blog posts can go unnoticed and it can be difficult to always find the time to blog.  However, blogging could potentially offer more to teachers than isolated reflections, if teachers were willing to invest the time.  It is not that isolated reflections have no utility (they would be useful for issues of a sensitive nature), but more may be achieved through blogging.  Some of the questions I have are: Should private reflections remain as part of teacher education courses?  Should certain reflections be substituted with blogging?  Should private reflections remain in teacher education and the other advantages of blogging should be offset through other avenues?  Time will tell I suppose.

I'm a reflection of the community.

Tupac Shakur

Reference
Hatton, N. and Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(1), 33-49.

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_with_Reflecting_Sphere

Making an Impact Competition Entry 2011

A number of people have e-mailed me about the 'Making an Impact' competition run by the Irish Independent and the Higher Education Authority that I won last year.  The purpose of the competition was for Masters and PhD students to explain their research in lay person's terms.  Here is the article I wrote for it:

One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

Albert Einstein

Not every student dreams of being part of a quiz show.  However, with a large focus in secondary school science examinations on recalling facts, one may be forgiven for thinking otherwise.  Despite it being the ‘information age’, where students can find out facts at the click of a button, we still persist in churning out students that have an uncanny resemblance to mini-libraries.  Therefore, it comes as no surprise that many students do not look forward to learning about science.  In ‘fact’, they dread how much they will have to learn-off for an examination.

Learning science should be like watching a live sporting event.  You are sitting on the edge of your seat, observing the spectacle as it unfolds, noting every little detail, immensely engrossed at the possibilities of what might happen.  Despite this ‘live’ excitement, watching the highlights of the same sporting event does not have the same appeal with the result being known.  Yet, in many schools, many students experience a ‘science of highlights’ where they are told the result beforehand and have to follow instructions towards getting that result.  This in turn leads many students to see everything in science as already solved and thus as an exercise in learning off facts.  We should instead want students to engage in the excitement of doing real science: making predictions, making observations, finding evidence and much, much more.

You do not need to be Einstein to know that a science of highlights is not the way students should be learning science, yet why does the problem persist?  Concerns often mentioned by teachers are those of student safety, preparation and tidy-up time within 40 minute class periods.  These concerns are understandable considering it is impossible to watch at many times over 20 students with only 2 eyes.  Not to mention having to get everything tidied and set up for the next class and so on.  Some teachers feel more like a fire-fighter than an educator when doing class experiments, running around to each student’s desk to ensure safety and careful procedure.  It would be great to have smaller class sizes and thus allow more student freedom in how they carry out experiments.  However, this would require lots of money, money that is not available in many tight school budgets.

So what are the solutions?  This research project is looking at how free computer software (called virtual lab, see image below) could be used to offer a new way in which students can learn about science.  The purpose of course is not to replace experiments but to enable students to have more ownership, responsibility and freedom in the experiments they carry out.  The virtual lab can address the previously mentioned teacher issues and would allow more time and space for students to investigate, just like what real scientists do.  It would even cater to special education needs students who may not be able to carry out certain experiments but could do so within the virtual lab.

Results of the research so far have shown very positive attitudes by both students and teachers to the use of the virtual lab.  Students like the quick and easy-to-use nature of the virtual lab.  The virtual lab allows the students to ask many ‘what if’ questions and find out the answers quite readily, both at school and at home.  The safety aspect of the virtual lab encourages these questions by the students.  Many students have also agreed that they would be happy with the virtual lab as part of their examinations.  The use of the virtual lab in this way would aid in a movement away from rewarding mostly recalling facts to more student involvement in their experiments.  Teachers appreciate the safety aspect of the virtual lab and note the impact of the virtual lab on their teaching.  The virtual lab allows teachers to better concentrate on students’ understanding of experiments compared to experiments in the actual lab where they concentrate more on preventing breakages and spillages.

The virtual lab has undoubtedly made a significant impact on the students and teachers who have used it so far.  With further research and further development, the virtual lab has the potential to make a much bigger and broader impact in how science is taught and assessed in Ireland.  It would also lead as an example to the international community.  Importantly, the virtual lab would lead to science that is more interesting, relevant and engaging to students.  Humans by nature have inquisitive minds and our education system should strive to encourage this if it hopes to produce more creative and innovative students. 

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and all science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Putting the Pinterest in Education

I recently started using Pinterest (www.pinterest.com/dermotdonnelly/) and think it could have some great educational uses.  Pinterest basically allows you to create boards on which you can stick pins (pictures, videos, etc.).  You can create a range of different boards depending on what type of things you want to pin.  There are a range of categories, e.g., education, social media, sport, humour, science jokes (one of my favourites, but all the good ones argon!), movies, etc., that you can either search or create yourself, and organise your pins under.  In essense, I would describe Pinterest as dynamic and engaging photo/video albums to share amongst friends, work colleagues, the world!

In terms of education, I can see a student studying a particular topic, say for example the topic of light in science, and finding a range of useful pictures/videos on the internet that are helpful to their understanding of the material.  Even better still, a student could take their own pictures/videos of experiments they do in the class and create a board for these experiments.  As a user of Pinterest, you can allow certain people to add pins to particular boards that you create.  Therefore, a teacher could create a board related to a particular experiment and give students the assignment of finding or creating useful images that relate to that experiment.  I think it would be really cool for students after a year's work to have a multitude of boards specific to particular content that they can view anytime or anywhere they want to.  Also, how great would it be for students' confidence and self-esteem if they found other users from around the world showing a Pinterest in their pictures?

I would not consider myself great at using Twitter, but combining it with Pinterest I can see myself using Twitter much more now, as they combine seamlessly.  Pinterest would also work nicely alongside blogging if someone wanted to do more showing than telling in their blogpost.  What might be some other interesting ways to use Pinterest to engage students' learning or indeed share our own learning?  I am sure there will be some Pinteresting examples in many classrooms in the future.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Statistics that are commonly noted in relation to students learning is that they retain...
'90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.
50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.
30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.
20% of what they learn from audio-visual.
10% of what they learn when they’ve learned from reading.
5% of what they learn when they’ve learned from lecture.'
(taken from http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/art-retain-learning/)

The expression 'There are lies, damned lies and statistics' spring to mind for the figures cited above.  These 'statistics' have percolated through the education community and it is probably not surprising, as it presents learning as a very straight forward process with nicely rounded figures.  Unfortunately, despite the attractiveness of these figures, learning is not such a simple process and even conducting educational research would rarely throw up such rounded figures.  Besides, how does someone even define what teaching someone else means?  Did I teach them by doing a demonstration, by getting them to read something, or by getting them to engage in group discussion?  By combining all three strategies I suppose I would make 90%, because things are that simple, right?

If one thinks about it, it becomes obvious that the above statistics are bogus.  That is not to say that teaching someone or better saying 'explaining' something to someone else may enhance how much of the material you retain over other approaches.  However, it would be very important to be careful in attaching numbers to how much is retained.  If you are interested in reading a longer and much more detailed discussion discrediting the above statistics read: http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/05/people_remember.html. 
Here is to hoping I will not see these statistics quoted again in an academic presentation and that anyone looking for such statistics will stumble across this blog post instead!