Blog Entry # 7

The reading this week covered learner centered teaching, the motivations for students to learn, and the difficulties in cross cultural communication.

What is Learner centered teaching?
Learner centered teaching is a method of teaching that gets the students involved in their learning experience. It can do this in many ways, but some of them are a little more common like student determination of what they will focus on or how they will be evaluated. Learner centered teaching gives students a choice in what to learn and fosters their ability to learn rather than just being taught. It involves a certain amount of student accountability that requires a high level of motivation. The McKeachie text focuses on motivation as the main mechanism of how learner centered teaching is carried out. There is also a section on how different cultures react differently to different types of teaching and activities.
One of the scarier concepts in this method is that the teacher gives up some power to the students. This can be difficult for new teachers because their position over the students already feels a little tenuous, but if a compromise can be reached it will take a lot of pressure off of the teacher.

Which aspects would I incorporate into my teaching?
I would like to draw heavily from the McKeachie text on cultural diversity. There are a lot of multicultural students in the sciences and the differences in how they learn can be a really big deal in biology courses. At one point in the text there is a section regarding some cultures' reluctance to address authority figures with questions to avoid insulting their teaching. I have noticed this in a lab where I assist a professor. I am just there to help out when students have questions and don't consider myself the authority, but it seems that I field a lot of the questions from a few foreign students even when the teacher is available. In hindsight this may be the case because the bulk of domestic students ask questions of whoever is available and closest, while I am targeted by the foreign students. I guess that, while this makes sense and makes me feel better about being there to help, it will make my ego take a hit in that I liked the idea of being so awesome that people wait in line for my explanations.
In general it seems that the best way to deal with major issues that arise with different cultural learning styles is to know what you can about them. I will take this opportunity to talk with multicultural students to see what they are thinking while keeping in mind that it is just a small sample population and that not everyone will fall into a clean plot of these data. Overall it is a good idea to try and vary the learning styles with any class, but this will also assist in breaching these barriers to learning.

I would also include the ability of students to decide what assignments that they want to do from a list of available assignments. I would like to have a list where they pick a few from a list that leaves one or two extra options in the end to avoid too much randomness in assignments. There would need to be set due dates for their homework, but with the choice of what to do they can plan ahead. The first assignment could be the easiest to ease into the coursework, or the more ambitious students could try to accomplish the hardest work in the beginning when they have more time and leave the easier work for when they have other tests. This method could be a logistics problem for the teacher, but if there is a set assignment queue to pick from they will not be insanely difficult to grade. One issue with this is that they might get graded differently based on when they are turned in, because they should be expected to know more towards the end of the class and I would expect them to increase in quality towards the end of the semester, so a paper from the start of the term is likely to be less detailed than a later one yet need to be graded somewhat similarly as to avoid an issue.

Aspects of Learner Centered Teaching that could be difficult to incorporate:
I personally can't see myself allowing the students to pick what they want to learn about for most of the classes I could see myself teaching. This goes back to the motivations of the students. I have known quite a few pre-med or pre-pharmacy students in biology classes and there is an overwhelming motivation for a good grade rather than learning the material. They focus on an A because their program requires a 4.0 and the classes are just a means to an end. There are a lot of required courses in their fields that don't really have any direct bearing on what they want to do. If this is the case I have to imagine, despite what the text says, that they would try and take the easiest way out. If I was certain that the class was full of people that wanted to learn the topic this could be a possibility, but as long as there are course requirements for undergraduates that don't seem to follow their interests there would be dissent and an attempt to take the easiest way out. A good example of this is the required humanities. I personally love history and would have done more in depth learning than what we got from the teachers, but most people were in there because they had to be. Do you think that those disgruntled people are going to say "Hey, here is my chance to learn the history that I want to learn!" or "Here is my chance at an easy A!"?

I would not want to give up too much control over the class in allowing them to pick the text or letting them set classroom protocols. I think that if there is too much relinquished there will be a problem in getting control when you need it. Giving some leeway is okay, but giving too much could lead to getting off topic and not being able to get back on track. It isn't often thought about, but some of the pseudoscience out there is by far more interesting than most of what the students need to learn for their next level courses. When you sense that things are far off track you could suggest that they get back on the right track. Once the teacher loses their gravitas it will be difficult to get back.

The American Psychological Association has a website that lists 14 principles that are related to learning. Some of these are very familiar to what we have been talking about in the reading. They try to link several factors such as motivation, environment, and contextual factors. This can give nerdier people an insight into how think about how students learn.