Yesterday I managed to finish up the Learning Math Course. I kind of lost interest when the technical problem with the Stanford server wouldn’t allow me to respond to peer responses – that was after the fourth section. I continued working my way through the remaining sections, responding as asked, but I knew I wouldn’t get any feedback from anybody else because my content wasn’t getting through. I suspect, however, I may get a certificate of completion, anyway. We’ll see.
I was struck all the way through by contradiction between the content of the course – to help teachers/parents understand learning (math learning) as an iterative, open process where mistakes are a valued part of learning, where talk is essential for exploring and making sense (all values I was advocating as a literacy educator more than 25 years ago) – and the format of the course which kept telling us about those values and steering us to the “right” responses. rather than allowing us reach those understandings by engaging in the process the instructor was advocating. That’s not easy to accomplish – I certainly struggled with that contradiction myself all the years I was teaching, but it wasn’t clear to me that the instructor here understood the contradiction even existed.
Did I learn anything new? Not much, but I didn’t go into the course to learn math – I wanted to see what theoretical position Jo Boaler would take and how it would play out through the course content and process in a digital environment. I’d love to engage in conversation with her about the difficulty of putting into practice what you’re advocating teachers themselves do. I did write her – but I didn’t receive a reply (not that I expected to).
I partly resolved the contradiction in my own teaching as a literacy educator by asking some questions as we went along:
- What did we just do?
- How did that affect you as a learner?
- What questions does this experience raise for you?
- What do you know/think/understand at this point?
- How does that affect you as a reader and a writer?
- What one thing does it make you reconsider as a teacher?
What I was attempting to foster was a reflective practitioner stance – to enable teachers to both reflect-on-action and reflect-in-action (as the late Donald Schon described). I wanted teachers to learn to make the problematic in their teaching open to inquiry so they could learn from the situation, and from their students, how to teach those students.
Offering a course in a digital world (where you never come face-to-face with your students) presents a whole host of interesting obstacles, particularly when what you want people to develop is an inquiry driven stance. I’m sure it can be done – the tools are becoming more accommodating every day. The challenge is using the various tools in ways that are consistent with your philosophical underpinnings.
On Learning 