Implications of the student learning journey for teaching

Tansy JessopL&T Conference, USW

@tansyjtweets30 June 2016

Session outline

1. What is the student learning journey?2. One dominant model (Biggs)3. Two theories (Perry and Baxter Magolda)4. The central problem5. Implications and strategies for teaching:

• Curriculum Design• Knowing and knowledge• Engaging students• A paradigm shift.

3P model of Learning and Teaching

Deep and Surface Learning (Marton and Saljo (1976)

Deep Learning

• Meaning• Concepts• Active learning• Evaluate evidence• Make connections• Relationship new and

previous knowledge• Real-world learning

Surface Learning

• Formulaic• Content• Passive process• Inability to distinguish

principles from examples• Treating modules as silos• Not seeing connections • Artificial learning

Theory 1: William Perry

It all began with Perry’s Module Evaluations…

“This course has changed my whole outlook on life. Superbly taught!”

“This course is falsely taught and dishonest. You have cheated me of my tuition”

This has been the most sloppy, disorganised course I’ve ever taken.

Of course I’ve made some improvement, but this has been due entirely to my own efforts!”

The reliance on traditional instruction is not simply a choice made by individual faculty—students often prefer it. This resistance to active learning may have more to do with their epistemological development than a true preference for passivity.

William Perry 1981

The journey: move over dualism

By confronting students with uncertainty, ambiguity, and conflicting perspectives, instructors help them develop more mature mental models that coincide with the problem-solving approaches used by experts.

William Perry 1981

Intellectual Development of Students

Marcia Baxter-MagoldaMiami University

Theory of self-authorship

Four stages of knowingFour StagesAbsolute Knowing Authorities know the answers

Transitional Knowing Authorities don’t know all the answers, need to search for answers with the guidance of teachers

Independent Knowing Most knowledge uncertain, people choose what they feel is best

Contextual Knowing Knowledge relative to context; knowledge claims need to be tested against evidence.

Three key assumptions

1. Knowledge is complex and socially constructed.

2. Self is central to knowledge construction.

3. Interdependence of knowledge construction. Mutuality.

Theory of Self-Authorship in a nutshell

The Central ProblemCollegiate Learning Assessment 2,300 students. 45% showed no significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

Wabash Study (2005-11)3,000 students from 19 institutions. No measurable improvement in critical thinking.

How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer, for many undergraduates, is not much.

Do universities reproduce or reduce inequality among students from different family backgrounds?

[There is ] evidence of limited learning and persistent inequality…

Take Five• Your gut responses to

student intellectual journey theories.

•What evidence do we have of students’ growth in complex thinking?

•What helps students to grow in complex learning?

Common things that get in the way of the student learning

journey1. Disconnected curriculum design

2. Over-emphasis on content knowledge

3. Absence of active and routine student engagement in intellectual pursuits

1. Disconnected Curriculum Design

Does IKEA 101 work for complex learning?

• A lot of people don’t do wider reading. You just focus on your essay question.

• In Weeks 9 to 12 there is hardly anyone in our lectures. I'd rather use those two hours of lectures to get the assignment done.

• It’s been non-stop assignments, and I’m now free of assignments until the exams – I’ve had to rush every piece of work I’ve done.

What students say…

Feedback: single most important factor in student learning? (Hattie 2009)

What students say…The feedback is generally focused on the module.

It’s difficult because your assignments are so detached from the next one you do for that subject. They don’t relate to each other.

Because it’s at the end of the module, it doesn’t feed into our future work.

I read it and think “Well, that’s fine but I’ve already handed it in now and got the mark. It’s too late”.

Strategies to address disconnection

• Team approach to curriculum design• Smart structural ways to connect curriculum• Longitudinal student research journey • Planned iterative cycles of feedback• Feedback as conversation – who starts the dialogue?• Synthesis level-tasks related to feedback• From feedback as ‘telling’…• … to feedback as asking questions

2. Teaching privileges content knowledge over knowing

Content Vs Concepts?

The best approach from the student’s perspective is to focus on concepts. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your students are not going to remember 90 per cent – possibly 99 per cent – of what you teach them unless it’s conceptual…. when broad, over-arching connections are made, education occurs. Most details are only a necessary means to that end.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-students-lecture-to-rofessors/2013238.fullarticle#.U3orx_f9xWc.twitter

A student’s lecture to her professor

What students say…. We just have to kind of regurgitate it … there’s no time for us to really fiddle around with it, there’s so much to cover.

The scope of information that you need to know for that module is huge…so you’re having to revise everything - at the same time, you want to write an in-depth answer.

In an exam it's really like diving in and out of books all the time and not really getting very deep into them.

Teaching and curriculum design is about making tough choices

Curriculum Design (Barnett & Coate 2005)

• Knowing is about content• Acting is about becoming a

historian, engineer, psychologist, or philosopher• Being is about

understanding yourself, orienting yourself and relating your knowledge and action to the world

Knowing

Being

Acting

3. Student engagement in intellectual pursuits

Pedagogy must move beyond knowledge acquisition to active knowledge construction

(Baxter Magolda 2001).

Life is not multiple choice (Anne, 2001).

Everyone at a university should be a discoverer, a learner. (Boyer Commission 1995).

But there is an engagement vacuum

• Summative assessment is a ‘pedagogy of control’ driving student effort

• Culture-shift required to engender playful, curious, authentic engagement in learning

• Symptom: the ratio formative to summative assessment is 1:8 (TESTA data)

• Student research projects are often a belated offering.

What students say about formative

• If there weren’t loads of other assessments, I’d do it.

• If there are no actual consequences of not doing it, most students are going to sit in the bar.

• It’s good to know you’re being graded because you take it more seriously.

• The lecturers do formative assessment but we don’t get any feedback on it.

Formative Blogging Case Study

ProblemAre students reading academic texts?SymptomSilent SeminarsCureWeekly blogging on academic textsImpactsGrowth in writing confidence, complex thinking, reading and engagementChallengeArticulation with summative assessment

Headline Findings Deeper engagement

• Students spent more time-on-task

• Production of writing deepened understanding

• Discussion cemented it

Out of the silent seminar…

You have to evidence that you have read it compared to a seminar reading. You are reading a lot more as well as the set ones.

I go more in depth with the reading than with the reading pack when I’d just highlight. It helps.

We sit in blog groups, all talk about it. Discuss the readings. I think the discussion is more focused.

Into engagement…

Over the whole three years this is the most engaged I’ve been in my readings. I really liked doing this. I wish we had done it more. Maybe start it in the first year.

.

…it is also a bit chatty and informal. Even though I’m putting

in readings, it’s different. It’s a nicer relaxed way of talking

about literature

Key principles of authentic learning and assessment…

• Builds on personal knowledge and experience• Creative, risky and challenging• Students exercise choice and agency• Linked to the real world• In the public domain• Collaborative • Often digital • Involves students doing research tasks• Linked to summative

It’s about educational paradigms…

Transmission Model

Social Constructivist Model

ReferencesArum, R. and Roska, J. 2011. Academically Adrift. Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.Baxter Magolda, M. 2001. Making Their Own Way: Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to Promote Self-Development. Virgina. Stylus Blaich, C., & Wise, K. 2011. From Gathering to Using Assessment Results: Lessons from the Wabash National Study. Occasional Paper #8. University of Illinois: National Institution for Learning Outcomes Assessment.Boud, D. and Molloy, E. 2013. ‘Rethinking models of feedback for learning: The challenge of design’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 38(6), pp. 698–712.Harland, T., McLean, A., Wass, R., Miller, E. and Sim, K. N. 2014. ‘An assessment arms race and its fallout: High-stakes grading and the case for slow scholarship’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(4), pp. 528–541. doi: 10.1080/02602938.2014.931927.Jessop, T. and Maleckar, B. 2014. The Influence of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning: a comparative study. Studies in Higher Education. Jessop, T. , El Hakim, Y. and Gibbs, G. 2014. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a large-scale study of students’ learning in response to different assessment patterns. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. 39(1) 73-88.Perry, William 1981. Cognitive and Ethical Growth: The Making of Meaning. In Chickering, A. (1981) The Modern American College. San Francisco. Jossey Bass. Nicol, D. 2010. From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35: 5, 501 – 517.Shulman, L. 2004. Pedagogies of Substance. Chapter 7 In Teaching as Community Property: essays on Higher Education. 128-139. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.