This post is contributed by Laura MacKay, Chapter Six Facilitator. 

WHAT?

Principle: Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning.

This chapter of How Learning Works addresses how learning is influenced by the interactive effects of holistic student development and classroom climate. Students vary from one another and from class to class. This is what makes teaching exciting and always changing.  But this also has pitfalls unless educators proactively work towards creating a supportive classroom climate that intentionally acknowledges and addresses differences. The educational environment is often focused on student intellectual development but students are also rapidly growing and changing socially and emotionally. While educators have less impact on student development according to the authors, they can shape the climate of the classroom in ways that address holistic development and enhance learning.

A number of theories are presented that describe changes in how students perceive and understand the world around them and the ways in which this impacts the class environment. Strong emphasis is placed on students’ development of identity and how this can lead to the formation of ingroups and outgroups and the development of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes. The classroom can be a place where students feel invisible, or marginalized, or discriminated against, or supported, or inclusive. How educators structure the class climate will impact learning.

According to DeSurra and Church (1994) classroom climate is best understood on a continuum:

Classroom climate is determined by:

• Faculty-student and student-student interactions
• Tone
• Stereotyping
• Content

SO WHAT?

A negative class climate hinders learning whereas a positive environment strengthens learning. Educators have a great deal of control over classroom climate. HLW suggest several strategies that encourage student development and create a productive classroom environment.

• Make uncertainty safe
• Resist a single right answer
• Incorporate evidence into performance and grading criteria
• Examine your assumptions about students
• Be mindful of low-ability cues
• Do not ask individuals to speak for an entire group
• Reduce anonymity
• Model inclusive language, behaviour, and attitudes
• Use multiple and diverse examples
• Establish and reinforce ground rules for interaction
• Make sure course content does not marginalize students
• Use the syllabus and first day of class to establish the course climate
• Set up process to get feedback on the climate
• Anticipate and prepare for potentially sensitive issues
• Address tensions early
• Turn discord and tension into a learning opportunity
• Facilitate active listening

NOW WHAT?

Instead of looking to the above strategies as a checklist, it may be helpful to consider your learning environment as more of an ecosystem with interacting components between yourself, your students, and the course content.  As one component changes, the learning environment changes.

To reflect on this chapter and prepare for the upcoming book club meeting you may wish to comment on the following:

• The focus in this chapter is on young adults (17-24). How might this principle apply to older learners? What might be different?
• What explicitly inclusive approaches do you use to foster a more positive classroom climate?
• Do you see the principle of learning in this chapter applying to online class climate? How might it be similar or different?
• Much of the discussion around the stages of development, in particular in relation to social identity, has a negative connotation. In what ways might social identity be construed as positive?

To encourage participation, those who share a comment/post this week will have their name entered into the Chapter Six draw for a $25 CAD gift certificate for Chapters Indigo. Read the contest guidelines here. Good luck!\

The Book Club chat on Chapter Six will take place on Friday, Nov. 2^nd at 10 AM PST. Check out the schedule and how to connect with the group.

This post contributed by Janine Hirtz, Chapter Five Facilitator.

What Kinds of Practice and Feedback Enhance Learning?

WHAT?

Chapter Five of How Learning Works examines the critical role that feedback plays in helping students learn.  The principle is that “Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback are critical to learning.”

Practice:
Students need sufficient practice that is focused on a specific goal or set of goals and that is at an appropriate level of challenge.

Feedback Targets:

• What they are understanding or not understanding
• Where they are performing well or where performance is not going very well
• How they should direct subsequent efforts so they can improve

SO WHAT?

(p. 126, Figure 5.1 Cycle of Practice and Feedback)

Characteristics of  Effective Feedback: 

• Focuses students on the key knowledge and skills you want them to learn
• Is provided in a timely manner and with consistent frequency
• Is linked to additional practice opportunities

NOW WHAT?

Reading this chapter reminded me of an “aha” moment that has guided me in my own work and in my consultations with faculty for the last 14 years.  In 2004, in a B.Ed. course, the instructor gave us an assignment with a rubric attached.  She asked us to complete the assignment, then grade our own assignment using the attached rubric, including comments, and then hand it all in.  The “hand in your own marked rubric method” provides an opportunity for the instructor to comment on the discrepancies between the student’s judgement of their own work and the instructor’s judgment and this helps the student recalibrate.

Later in 2017, at an Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Ed (STHLE) conference, keynote speaker David Boud, Emeritus Professor from University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, talked about assessment.  He challenged us to teach “feedback enabled curriculum” where there are opportunities for feedback early and throughout a course, not just at the end. He shared strategies for creating an environment for “sustainable feedback”—feedback that builds students’ capacity to make judgements about their own learning.

As you read this chapter and reflect on your own teaching practice, or perhaps even, your own experiences as a student, consider the following:

What strategies have you found to be helpful for students to be able to judge their own learning?

Is the type of feedback outlined in this chapter practical in all courses, or for all class sizes?

What about practice? How do we build in practice that is goal-directed so students have an opportunity for improvement?

What do you think about letting students “redo” an assignment?

Post your comments below! To encourage participation, those who share a comment/post this week will have their name entered into the Chapter Five draw for a $25 CAD gift certificate for Chapters Indigo. Read the contest guidelines here. Good luck!

The Book Club chat on Chapter Five will take place on Friday, Oct 26th at 10 AM PST. Check out the schedule and how to connect with the group. We also invite you to say hello in the Comments section of our Intro post.

Hello Everyone,

This week (Oct.15 – 19) is our second Reading Week   for a bit of space for more reading and some reflection.

We are more than half-way through the book. Time flies! We hope you are are having fun and experiencing some meaningful learning with the Book Club.

If you are still considering participation, please come along for the ride and say hello in the Comments section of our Intro post  .Read the comments from participants from Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4.

After this break, we’ll start up again on October 22nd with “Chapter Five: Practice and Feedback” facilitated by Janine Hirtz.   The week will be topped off with a Friday chat October 26 at 10 AM PST. Be sure to join us.

In the meantime, have a great week!

What?

There are two major points made in Chapter Four of How Learning Works (HWL).  Mastery is an important final stage of learning that requires specific teaching practices to ensure student achievement, and mastery as an instructor can leave us blind to the challenges students face on their own road to this goal.

HWL offers a four-stage model for progression towards mastery:

1. unconscious incompetence
2. conscious incompetence
3. conscious competence
4. unconscious competence

and three teaching modes for their attainment:

1. component skills
2. integration
3. application

Application will be familiar to many instructors as the ‘transfer’ learning that we hope to see when students are able to apply concepts or skills learned in one context (typically, the classroom or lab) to a new context (hopefully, the real world).

This topic lends itself to both traditional academic disciplines and to trades and skill-based learning. Examples can be developed from both spheres, but perhaps there are differences in how this plays out in each context.

The implication for mastery in instructors is that having achieved the ‘unconscious competence’ stage, instructors have blind spots where they don’t realize that internalized steps or an intuitive ability to apply knowledge is perceived by learners as a black box, or not perceived at all. Options to alleviate this perceptual mismatch are offered in the “Strategies to Expose and Reinforce Component Skills” section of the chapter.

So What?

This chapter makes a strong case that supporting the path towards mastery is the key to deeper learning. An argument could be made that the ‘application’ stage is where professional fields like accounting, or general skills like critical thinking, make our graduates successful in their lives after graduation.

Now What?

As you think about this chapter, consider how it relates to your own teaching practice or the learning you have supported.

1. Are these stages of learner achievement and the teaching modes that support their attainment, factors in your context? Where does the model fit and does it fall short in some aspect?
2. If you have one, describe your own experience with a ‘blind spot’ as an instructor. How did you overcome it?

To encourage participation, those who share a comment/post this week will have their name entered into the Chapter Four draw for a $25 CAD gift certificate for Chapters Indigo. Read the contest guidelines here. Good luck!

The Book Club chat on Chapter Four will take place on Friday, Oct 12th at 10 AM PST. Check out the schedule and how to connect with the group. We also invite you to say hello in the Comments section of our Intro post.