ED 643 Secondary Learning and Development
Instructors:
Dr. Mark Girod
Course Catalogue Description:
Graduate course in educational psychology that focuses on learning. The various attributes of society, the classroom, and the child that influence the child's learning will be examined.
Course introduction:
Three main ideas frame the design of this course and guide student participation within it: First, reflective analysis is essential to building new learning and crafting a professional identity. Second, learning is best facilitated within a community of involved, caring, committed individuals engaged in meaningful social experiences. Third, learning and the crafting of professional identity require continual examination and reconceptualization of ideas and practices. These three framing principles reflect this class' focus on students' past experiences, present professional efforts, and future professional identities. The content we cover must be molded and shaped to fit these orientations.
Course Goals and Objectives:
Through instruction, assignments, and class participation, the successful student will be able to:
Course Structure:
This course will be divided into units which address various aspects of Educational Psychology; the study of learning. Students will encounter the three main theoretical divisions in learning theory, the behaviorist, cognitive, and socio-cultural perspectives. We will then proceed to topics which bridge these three perspectives, including issues of motivation, meaning, purpose, value, and experience in learning.
There are ten units in the course so the idea is to complete one about every week for the duration of the 10-week session. Each unit is fully accessible from the first day of class to the last but please do not fall behind as the work will stack up quickly! If you complete a unit a week... you'll be fine and will find that your assignment due dates and content covered match. In other words, if you don't progress through the units you will find yourself ill-prepared to complete your assignments - not having read the necessary material and wrestled with the appropriate ideas. Due dates and a suggested pacing guide showing when you should have each of the units completed can be found at the calendar page. Again, however, all units will be open and accessible for the entire quarter.
Units are made up of readings, mainly educational articles, along with other resources, including websites, presentations, and videos. Students should take the time to read or watch all of the resources of a unit, using the guiding questions to shape but not limit their study. The entire course is located at the website... and you only need to link to Moodle for discussions. In fact, I have stripped down all the Moodle bells and whistles so it is just discussion forums.
Important note: Though all the units are open for the entire course, Moddle forums (discussion threads) are only open for two weeks. Pay attention to the open and closing dates listed at each Moodle unit and refer to the calendar page if you get confused. I've tried to keep things pretty tight to really discourage people from dropping out for a month and then trying to pick back up again. Intermittent participation isn't good for your learning and doesn't contribute to the richness of online conversation for your classmates. In other words, stick to the timeline! See the section below on unit discussions for more information about this important aspect of this class.
Unit Discussions:
Much of the power of this course lies in readings and discussion questions designed to draw out the essential ideas of the field of educational psychology. To assist, our course is broken into ten units each with readings, supplementary materials, and some guiding discussion questions. The idea is to read and study the materials provided with the discussion questions in mind. When you're ready to offer your thoughts... log into Moodle, go to the appropriate unit (and question) to post your ideas. Each unit has two discussion questions - these are big and multifaceted so focus on the conceptual space they delineate - rather than feeling the need to answer every subpoint within the question. So here's what we're looking for... for each question (2 in each unit) post one well-articulated, thoughtful response of your own (shoot for about 100-200 words)... and then comment on at least two other persons' thoughtful response (shorter response). So you will end up with 60 postings for the whole class - 3 posts for each question (1 long one, and 2 comments on somebody elses'), 20 questions (2 for each unit). However, in an online class the experience is enriched when the discussions really unfold online. Please discuss as much as you'd like - the class will be richer for your efforts! Now... this may seem like alot but if you log in once a week and work for an hour or so... you'll be just fine.
Course Policies:
As a professional course, this class will be conducted with an expectation of responsibility and initiative on the part of the students.
This course aims to be useful and interesting - if it falls short of either of these aims, the instructor expects students to make the effort to improve their learning experience by adjusting their approach to the class and by contributing constructive suggestions to the instructor.
Major Assignments
Unit readings and discussions: Students will be expected to participate by reading all of the articles and resources provided on the course website, then sharing their thoughts and ideas through discussions on Moodle. These discussions are the primary way in which students will encounter one another and the instructor, and will serve to clarify questions as well as to extend ideas beyond the assigned readings and resources. Your participation in Moodle and discussion posts will count for 50% of the course grade. These are great readings... give yourself the time and space to read them and think deeply about the message! Again, units will close according to the schedule described at the calendar page... don't fall behind!
Lesson Plan Portfolio (5, 1-page lesson plans)
We will be spending more than half of this class examining major theories of learning. The bottom line is that we aren't exactly sure how learning always works so we have invented theories of learning that explain what we believe is going on. The different learning theories that we will discuss include behaviorism, cognitive or schema theory, and socio-cultural or situative perspectives. We will also analyze ideas specific to affect and motivation and to different perspectives on intelligence itself. Our task here is to think through these different "lenses" and imagine what teaching and learning would look like from each of them. Your task is to write five, 1-page lesson plans that follow this format:
1) Identify the learning outcome: In a sentence or two, write what you want students to know and/or be able to do as a result of your lesson. For example, "Students will understand three important causes of the Vietnam War." Be as specific as you can in this step.
2) Procedures: Make a step-by-step list that says what will actually happen during the lesson from beginning to end. For example, "First the teacher will read several diary entries from soldiers of the Vietnam War. A conversation regarding soldiers' understanding (and misunderstanding) about the war will be facilitated. Next... and so on, know what I mean?
3) Assessment: Describe how you will know if students learned as you had hoped? What will you do to figure this out? Consider asking them key questions, providing opportunities for them to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding, provide a multiple-choice test, ask them to build a diagram, make a model, write a poem... etc.
4) Type of lesson: In this section offer a couple of sentences that describe why you believe this lesson plan is indicative of a particular perspective on learning (i.e. behaviorism, cognitive... etc.).
Actually... you will need to make four of these 1-page lesson plans and you must do one for behaviorism, cognitive, and situative/social perspectives... then do one more using ideas from the units on motivation, intelligence, or even do another one of the three main perspectives so you end up with four. Finally... your 5th lesson plan must be focused on using the ideas of John Dewey and teaching and learning for transformative, aesthetic experiences using big ideas. See below.
The hope is that through our study of educational psychology, John Dewey, and powerful experiences you'll be ready to challenge yourself to design lesson plans to help teach big ideas through transformative, aesthetic experiences. For this last lesson plan... we're going to use a slightly different format. Your first task will be to identify a big idea in some content that you might teach in the future. Make no mistake, this is the hardest part of this assignment and you should spend considerable time and energy working on this first step. If nothing comes to you right away, have a conversation with Mark via email. The sections of this lesson plan should include.
1) Idea - what's your big idea?
Select content that is fundamentally powerful. This is one of the hardest things to do in teaching a big ideas lesson. Mull over carefully what are the important and powerful content ideas that exist in your area. Remember to make a distinction between ideas (causes re-seeing) and concepts (bold-faced words). Also, keep in mind that ideas will lead to bold-faced words and conceptual understandings... but that isn't where inspirational teachers begin.
2) Metaphor/analogy/story - how will you help people get their heads around it?
One of the best ways to introduce a big idea is to use a metaphor. Metaphors seem to allow us to make connections between disparate things in ways that few other tools allow. Design a metaphor (simile, analogy, or even a story) that connect learners with your powerful idea and illustrates its power in ways that blow minds. If a metaphor doesn't work for you... consider some of these other suggestions:
3) World - what do you want people to see differently?
Model how the idea changes your world and encourage and reward your learners for acting and being different in the world - on fire with the idea you've shared. In the process, model the transformative power of the idea for your students. Help your students to see through your eyes - eyes that see differently through your big idea! Set the bar high for yourself and your learners. Yes, your students should learn something important about the world... but they should also learn something about themselves and be more alive (aware, interested, happy, sad, mad...) because of your idea! The hope is that you will literally play with these ideas and see if they might buy you anything useful in your setting and with your students. The other hope is, of course, that you might actually implement your design but… that is not a requirement. Have fun with this!
Bring your first 3, 1-page lesson plans to campus on Saturday, February 11th. At this face-to-face meeting we'll talk much more in depth about John Dewey and the content from unit 5 that will help you write your 5th Big Ideas lesson plan. The final two lesson plans will be due at the last class meeting on Saturday, March 11th.
Learning Theories Summary Table
One of the major goals of this class is to help us understand contemporary learning theory and how it helps us to think differently about teaching, learning, curriculum, motivation, and transfer. We've used three major perspectives from educational psychology including: (1) behaviorism; (2) cognitive psychology or schema theory, and; (3) the situative perspective or distributed learning. Each of these three perspectives says something very different and important about the work of teachers or those involved in teaching, learning, and schooling in general.
The assignment itself is pretty simple. It includes reading and studying course material and then drawing upon the resources to build a summary table that has rows for the three theoretical perspectives and columns for how they answer each of the following questions:
The goal is to basically make a massive learning theory cheat sheet with all this content organized in ways that make sense to you. Now... keep in mind, part of this is about coming to understand theory but our real goal is to become aware that depending on what it is that needs to get learned, educators are wise to draw on different perspectives of learning (and motivation, and assessment, and curricular design, and instructional strategies...) to maximize those opportunties for learning. The Learning and Cognition chapter from unit 4 will be a major resource for you in completing this activity. Again, structure things in ways that make sense to you.
Bring your completed Learning Theories Summary Table to the campus meeting on Saturday, February 11th.
Movie Review Assignment
I believe firmly in the power of looking in other places to inform our understanding of a given issue or problem. For example, ever have the experience of reading a book and thinking, “Hey, that totally helps me think about something else!” That’s what we’re after here – though we are going to watch a movie that isn’t about teaching it is my hope that these movies will likely help us understand something about teaching and learning and certainly about adolescent social and emotional development.
As part of our study of adolescent issues you will be required to watch a movie and write a little bit about the adolescent developmental issues dealt with in the film. Choose from either: (1) Stand By Me – filmed in Oregon about 4 boys on an adventure right before they start middle school; (2) Mean girls – about teen girls and their efforts to abuse one another through psychological means; (3) 13 - good girl led down wrong path by charismatic friend; (4) Grease - classic caricature file about adolescence in the 1950's; (5) Breakfast Club - brat packers that started the 80's teen genre; (6) some other movie that deals with kids growing up. I’m open to other films but the ones listed above are great in content so… be prepared to defend your suggestion if you want to go another route.
Your task it to write a 3-page paper in which you discuss a theme or set of ideas that you’ve identified as present in the film you watched. For example, in Stand by Me, Stephen King (he wrote the story) draws a very interesting parallel between the main group of younger boys and a group of older boys. The two groups deal with similar issues: (1) seeking adventure; (2) trying to understand themselves and their place in the world; (3) struggling with power and using it over one another… all of these things are dealt with in the movie. An interesting thing to write about, however, would be to compare how these two groups of boys deal with these issues differently. So… about two-thirds of your paper should be about analysis based on themes and the last third should be about you saying… “So, after making my analysis, here’s how this informs my work as a teacher – how it helps me think differently about teaching, learning, curriculum, power, relationships, working with middle school age kids… anything you wish that helps you reconsider practice.
Bring your completed Movie Review Assignment to the final campus meeting on Saturday, March 17th.
Assignment Weights:
Assignment Formatting Guidelines:
Unless otherwise stated, all assignments should be word processed, double-spaced, and proofed. Please use Times New Roman font in 12-point and set 1-inch margins. Your name, the date, and the assignment should be in the upper left corner of the page. Please edit your work for clarity, grammar, and spelling. Citations of journals, books etc. should use the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Assignments should be submitted by email, and should be sent by midnight on the day which they are due.
Accommodations
If you have a documented disability that may require assistance, you will need to contact the Office of Disabilities Services (ODS) for coordination in your academic accommodations. Location: APSC 405. Phone/TTY: 503-838-8250.