#rhizo15 Blog #2: The Counting!

This week Dave asks us – if you can’t measure learning – what can you count?

http://rhizomatic.net/2015/04/22/learning-is-not-a-counting-noun-so-what-should-we-count/

Or as Dave says it:  

This week’s challenge Get out there and count! What can we measure that isn’t learning? Think about all the other facets of the human experience… can we do better? What about all the fancy tools we’ve seen… can they help? Should we throw it out all together? Can we help people measure themselves? Is there a better way of looking at it? Be theoretical. Be practical… but GRADE ME!

The naming of parts

This takes me back to last week and ‘The Naming of Parts’. The Henry Reed poem has the voice of the drill sergeant naming parts – even those parts that ‘you do not have’. The responses are the poetic thoughts of the men – in the garden amongst the coral flowers – the almond blossoms - the bees – easing the spring. That poem captures the dichotomous nature of education for me – on the one hand the percussive naming of parts; the taxonomies; the hierarchies; the lists; our places on the lists… on the other the joyous wandering.

In the end it is the reason I dropped out of school. I was studying botany, zoology and chemistry (and not allowed to combine these with English Literature – for that did not fit!) – and oh it was all about the naming of parts: family - phyla – genus… the whole nine yards – and for what and for why?

Like Piaget and his hierarchy of learning: enactive – iconic – symbolic – going upward – leaving the doers behind. Of course. 

A perfect model for a measuring system.

Ironic that I’m currently teaching on a module: ‘Managing the Assessment and Feedback Process’ – and one assignment that we set is that participants have to determine a group project on an assessment-related topic and they have to generate measurement criteria for their group presentation.

What a fraud am I?

My criteria would be:

Fail: did not meet the criteria

C: met the assignment criteria

A: met the criteria – and demonstrated engagement, joy and/or enthusiasm.

B: not sure about B – more than a C – not enough joy for an A.

Bonus: Bonus marks are available for something special or interesting. Capturing bonus marks means that you could score 100% for this assignment.

I don’t suppose we’d get that past the Validation Panel.

Funnily enough we’re trying to do something a bit like this on our first year module, Becoming an Educationalist. We have set several projects for the students to do – including taking over three weeks of the course for their ‘Performances’. (For this week’s performance, check out this student blog: https://becomingeducational.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/learning-log-week-26/ .) It is a year-long module and we set a Research Project and an Essay – but we’ve also allocated 30% of the marks for three portfolio items - and said to the students that they can submit anything – a blog post – a piece of art – a notebook… anything that reflects their best learning experience – anything that showcases their creativity – talent – engagement – joy. And of course this is really confusing. And of course – we try to be helpful. But not to say so much that we generate another form of strait jacket – we want the bees and the flowers – and not the naming of parts.

Postscript:

For those who fancy a course video – here’s a Yale one on Zizek, D&G and the rhizome: http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300/lecture-15

For those who fancy an even better course video – here’s Zizek on the Internet:

http://www.critical-theory.com/slavoj-zizek-reacts-to-the-internet/

Not quite #moocmooc

This week I am mostly vicariously participating in Hybrid Pedagogies #MOOCMOOC on Critical pedagogies (http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/mooc-mooc-critical-pedagogy/) by following the posts of some friends (Maha Bali, Simon Ensor and Keith Hamon). There has been much discussion on Freire and bell hooks – and just how tricky it can be to implement critical pedagogy in real life classrooms – they asked:

• Is the primary effort of education bent toward the humanization of its participants (learners and educators alike)? If it is not, should it be? What does humanization look like as curricula, as syllabi, as lesson plan?

• If it is not our task to “make deposits” into students’ minds, to reinforce learner passivity, but rather to spark inquiry, where is the best place to start?

• How are we teaching, really, and how are we relating to the world, really? Do we walk the walk we want to walk, the walk we say we walk?

• If, as Freire points out, the “teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking” (58), what process might we follow to foster authentic thinking — in the classroom as much as in professional spaces?

Movements in space and time

Recently our University moved from 15-week to 30-week courses: in moving from modules to courses, some of us found that this small change in space and time arrangements allowed us the space and time to at least attempt to implement something that is at least informed by Freire and hooks and Illich (and Holt) and Dewey – but also by Carl Rogers… and for us in particular this meant that our module ‘Becoming an Educationalist: reading, writing and enquiry’ – could not just enter into dialogue with students about what an educationalist could be in the world – and how – and why… It also allowed us to shape something that fosters belonging and human connections between the students – it allows the space and time to foster creativity and fun and play – as well as criticality and dialogue… and we hope that the processes involved also allows the module to act as a tool or lens for participants to use to critique their previous educational experiences – in ways that critically inform their own future practice. We blog about the course each week: https://becomingeducational.wordpress.com/  - and we encourage the students to blog their learning to develop their own playful, powerful academic voices.

We are the ‘other’

Our University is a Widening Participation university – and attracts those students who do typically get called broken or lazy or ‘less able’ – but who are really just less inducted into the traditional academic forms, processes and procedures… The goal of a module like ‘Becoming’ on paper could be that we re-territorialise (D&G) these perhaps ‘un-inducted’ students – that we tame them – fix them – and get them all set up for their education deposits; what we hope is that the passion and the play of the module and their blogs and the spaces created - enables the students to narrate themselves as they become ‘academic’ on their own terms.

Share the love?

We would be happy to share our Module Handbook with others implementing Critical Pedagogy in their classrooms – and to have you share yours with us: for beautiful lessons emerge from such practical ideas of CP in action.