Learning Environments – Week 10 – Reading Czar group meeting

Met with Cody and Nikita at Columbae – a living coop – different from a fraternity/sorority – a communal house. Great vegetarian food.

Worked out the mechanics of the activity we’re going to lead tomorrow:

Freire Pitch Night

We will split the class into 6 groups.

Each group is going to create a Freire School who’s guiding principle is the quote received.

20 minutes to create a 2 minutes long pitch to a panel of investors and parents (the rest of the class)

Deliverables

Name
Logo
Moto / slogan
Brief description of their strategy

Twist:

Halfway through the process we will announce that the investors demand that another theorist is included in their strategy.

Quotes / Theorist

Group 1

”… a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.”

Brown

Group 2

“Education as a practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination.”

Skinner

Group 3

“The teacher is no longer merely one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.“

Montessori

Group 4

“Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”

Hutchins

Group 5

“Liberating education consist in acts of cognition, not transferals of information”

Lave & Wenger

Group 6

“In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which the can transform”

Dewey

Tech 4 Learners – Week 10 – Learner Chat

Chatted with Omair about my learning problem while walking to Vaden Medical Center… got there late so had to reschedule the TB shot for next monday.

Omair’s desire was to have a tool that would help him remember all the topics he must cover. Using keywords and a mind map for each piece of content, the system would alert him if any node was not covered yet. His main concern is covering the entirety of the content.

The more I look at the problem, the more I see that I would need to focus on a subject matter due to the particularities of each, pedagogically speaking. To try to create an overarching generalized system that helps you create ‘better’ courses seems like an outreach and a technocentric view of a solution.

My initially narrow view of wishing to create a magical tool that would help me create a course by giving me tips and suggestions along the way might have the be reconsidered.

I am starting to see that a larger challenge that has to be addressed is teacher professional development. How do we scale it? How do we integrate it into their daily routines?

… rethink… review… research…

Tech 4 Learners – Week 10 – Class Notes

Today was presentation day – OMS parents came in to see all the group’s videos – interesting ideas – but reflecting back on the class, I felt a slight disconnect between the project and the course content. I feel the prototyping assignment could be a course on its own.

In any case – the reception of all the ideas by the parents and panel of experts was fantastic.

Still waiting for permission to publish the video publicly.

Intro to Teaching – Week 10 – Class Notes

Very good last class – able to wrap up with solid discussions about the greater challenges of education and teaching.

Funds of Knowledge vs. Prior Knowledge

Funds is about a community’s practice – not only culture but way of doing things
How do use these practices within the classroom the help for learner
Prior knowledge is typically something specific the student learned before

Cohen – Ms. Oublier

Teacher training and professional development
PCK and CK
- “She thought that her revolution was over. Her teaching had changed definitively. She had arrived at the other shore.” p. 325
- “Lacking deep knowledge, Mrs. O was simply unaware of much mathematical content and many ramifications off the material she taught…. Because her grip on mathematics was so modest.” p. 322
- “Hence teachers are the most important agents of instructional policy (Cohen, 1988; Lipsky, 1980), but the state’s new policy also asserts that teachers are the problem. It is, after all, their knowledge and skills that are deficient.” p. 326
- “Teachers also would have to learn a new practice of mathematics teaching, while learning the new mathematics and unlearning the old.” p. 327

San Francisco Teacher Residency

Just like medical students
Expose future teachers to practice

Week 1 reboot

Look at the video again and see how much we have learned.

Video Notes:

Sitting in groups
Sets out clear mechanics of the class
Peer-to-peer teaching
Visualization of process – modeling by the teacher
Student centered teaching
Generate own data for better engagement and ownership of information
Prior knowledge
Transfer
Modeling by the student on the board
Asks questions from the students, doesn’t give out answers straight away
Facilitation of the process

Post video notes:

Clearly there was instructional planning
PCK & CK were there
Development – teacher was aware of where the students were and where he wants them to be at
Assessment – peer review
Classroom management – not much – students were already well behaved

Room for improvement

Show relevance of content material with real life

Reread notes

We were given out notes from the same video we did earlier in the quarter
- Noticed similar things but lacked some terminology acquired during this class
- Had not thought about / did not know about certain aspects or terminology of teaching:
  - Classroom management
  - Peer-to-peer teaching
  - Modeling
  - Prior knowledge
  - Transfer
  - Instructional planning
  - ZPD

Brazilian Education – Week 10 – Class Notes

We had an eye opening talk by Paula Louzano on the current proposal for national K-12 curriculum standards in Brazil.

The talk was in Portugues, thus so were my notes

Analise Internacional Comparada de Politicas Curriculares: contribuições para o debate da Base Nacional Comum no Brasil

Inspiração:

Carnoy – salas de aula Chile Cuba Brasil – foco em aulas de matematica
Livros didaticos fornecidos gratuitiamente – professores compravam curriculos em vez de somente livros

Foco: curriculos Pesquisa:

Estudo comparativo internacional
Quem decide o que estudar e como ensinar

Governo Ferderal centraliza a decisão do que estudar Portugal / Chile

O que se ensina: Ministério da Educação
Documentos legais que foram entrando em especificidade
- Currículo Nacional – 2001
- Programas por disciplina – 2007
- Metas curriculares por disciplina – 2011

Finlândia / Nova Zelândia

Paises aonde os professores tem maior autonomia
- É definido o que ensinar
- Não define como ensinar
- Metas ao final de 2 anos devem ser atingidas
Documentos e leis nacionais
Investiram na formação de professores e portanto documentos ficaram menos específicos
Período de metas é de dois anos em vez de ano a ano
Avaliação é feita por cada professor, baseado em metaas especificadas

Cuba

Governo central definie o que e como
Define até o nível da sala aula: passo a passo do conteúdo

Analise dos modelos

Maior centralização
- Foco na equidade do sistema
- Capacidade de inovação
- Alinhamento da formação de professores, material didático e avaliação
Maior autonomia às escolas
- Foco na competência e julgamento do professor em atender os alunos e comunidade local
- Maior impacto das diferenças nos recuross para cada escola

Não há consenso de qual é o melhor modelo Brasil nem entra nessa linha comparativa… nem entra na curva… “uma jaboticaba” Diretirzes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Básica

Base nacional comum, que tem força de lei, especifica somente as matérias obrigatórias.
Só agora (2014) que houve um debate nacional sobre o que ensinar
Primeiro veio o livro didático, sem orientação curriculas
Depois veio o sistema de avaliação externa
- Com isso, vieram os curriculos feitos pelos Estados e Municípios

Plano Nacional de Educação – 2014Base Nacional Comum Curricular – 2015

http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br
Não foi feito um benchmarking
Não foi determinado o processo da reforma curricular
Brasileiro tem dificuldade de fazer escolhas (formato, conteúdo, foco)
Expectativas baixíssimas – baixa preocupação com excelência e equidade

Learning Environments – Week 10 – Reading Czars Meeting 1

Met with our professors Shelley Goldman and Roy Pea (via phone) and the other 2 members of the team: Nikita Michael Bogdanov and Cody Oliver Karutz

Talked a little about Freire’s big ideas and how might we propose an activity that will make people think about it, engage with it and come back with ides for a discussion.

We are going to divide the class into smaller groups and hand each group a main idea from the readings. Each group will have to design a school based on this main idea, giving it a name and creating a 2 minute pitch of their idea. Halfway through the process we announce that each school must have a link to one other reading.

Meeting up tomorrow night again to work out the mechanics and topics that we will present.

EdClub – Coursera visit

The EdClub organized a visit to Coursera – one of the leading edtech companies today – founded by two Stanford professors and now employer of several Stanford graduates. Had lunch at their new offices that now hold around 180 people and growing. Great talk with 4 members of the team – 2 of which have been there from the early days (3 years ago) when there were only around 20 people.

Great talk – very informative – plenty of opportunities.

LDT Seminar – Week 10 – Udemy Interview

Interviewed two top execs at Udemy today about how might we help experts publish online courses.

Here are the questions and some notes:

In your own words, how would you describe Udemy’s role in the educational market?

Strong focus on continuing education content
Create high quality content to be able to attend the needs of the learners

What are the biggest challenges it faces in attending to the learner’s needs and goals?

Create mind set that learning is something you have to do continuosly.
How do we educate people about continuing with their own education.
How to install a growth mindset.

What is the relationship between Udemy and the educators who create content?

Closer relationship with a few high achieving teachers.
Udemy has private discussion groups on Facebook that are very active.

How does the platform scaffold educators to create better courses, besides the Udemy’s courses on the subject?

On-boarding
- Send a test video to see if you’ve got all the settings correct
- Tips and tricks on the side bars
Community of co-creation where they help each other out, peer-review and share techniques
Instructor’s handbook: what is the exact sequence for a course depending on the skill level of the student and the subject matter?

How does the course review process work?

1500 reviews a month
Secret sauce as to how they do it 🙂

What proportion of courses received have enough technical quality to be accepted?

Most courses are ~~rejected~~ sent back for review, because they did not meet the required technical criteria (a/v quality, frame size, etc).
Content: no introductory material about what the course is about.

If you had unlimited resources, what features would you implement on Udemy?

No specific thing but keep on pushing towards the larger goal of takin

Questions we did not ask:

What are the main problems teachers have in using the tool?
What are the main problems learners have in using the tool?
What are the most popular course categories?

Learning Environments – Week 10 – Reading Notes

“Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Paulo Freire 1972

Dehumanization of the opressed
- False generosity – false charity -> true would be to teach them to work and transform the world
  - “And this fight, because of the purpose given it by the oppressed, will actually constitute an act of love opposing the lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressor’s’ violence, lovelessness even when clothed in false generosity.” p. 29
- “The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.” p. 34
- For opressor, to be is to have
- Self-depreciation – internalization of opinion oppressors hold of them.
Opressed as opressors
- Rebel not by becoming the oppressor of the oppressors but rather restorers of humanity of both
  - “In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both” p. 28
- Their ideal is to be oppressors themselves because that is the world view they are fed – identification with the opposite pole – the context does not change – only roles are changed
  - “Their ideal is to be a man; but for them, to be man is to be oppressor.” p. 30
  - “It is a rare peasant who, once ‘promoted’ to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant toward his former comrades than the owner himself.” p. 46
Opressed’s change
- “In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which the can transform” p. 34
- Only oppressed can make the change – only them can understand what it means to be oppressed
- Fear of freedom and how it will affect the whole group – everyone has to be on board.
  - “They prefer gregariousness to authentic comrade ship; they prefer the security of conformity with their state of unfreedom to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the very pursuit of freedom.” p. 48
- Fear of authentic existence – responsibilities, decisions, consequences, accountability
  - “They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic exis tence, they fear it.” p. 48
- Oppressed must confront reality critically or it will not lead to transformation of objective reality
  - “To achieve this goal, the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality.” p. 52
- If goal is for the oppressed to become fully human, can’t simply reverse poles
- Oppressed have to internalize both their image and the oppressor’s in order to be able create true change.
- Oppressed aspires to the oppressor’s way of life.
Pedagogy must be forged with, not for, the oppressed
- “This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.” p .48
- “Functionally, oppression is domestication” p. 51
- Educational Projects vs. Systematic Education – With oppressed vs. For the oppressed
How this happens
- Stages of transition:
  1. Oppressed unveil the world of oppression and commits to transformation.
    - Change how oppressed see the world
  2. Pedagogy becomes for for all men
    - Expulsion of myths
- Oppressor class must disappear
- Critical reflection must become action
- Propaganda is packaged and sold – conviction must be reached by a totality of reflection and action.
- Co-intentional education – oppressors in committed involvement instead of pseudo-participation
Banking concept of education
- Deposits from the ‘oppressors’, who know it all, into the alienated receptacles
- Negates them of the process of inquiry
- Welfare recipients
- Good students fit into the this skewed version of the world – they adapt.
- Necrophilic – transforms the students into receiving objects inhibiting their creative power.
Conscientização
- Interest of oppressors lies in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation with opresses them (critical thinking would do that)
- Person is merely in the world, not with the world – not a corpo consciente
- “Liberating education consist in acts of cognition, not transferals of information”
Content relevance to real life – socal learning
- “Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.” (Legitimate Peripheral Participation)
- Teacher-students and student-teachers. “The teacher is no longer merely one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.“
- Joint responsibility of learning and growing together.
- “Education as a practice of freedom – as opposed to education as the practice of domination.”

Intro to Teaching – Week 10 – Reading Notes

Cohen, D. K. (1990). A revolution in one classroom: The case of Mrs. Oublier. Educational Evaluation and Policy. 12(3). 311-329.

Rereading – Mrs. Oublie was also assigned as a reading in Qualitative Research 🙂 Interesting to read it with a different lens.

Something old, something new: missinterpretations of policy lead to partial teaching practice change.
- “Is Mrs. O’s mathematical revolution a story of progress, or of confusion? Does it signal an advance for the new math framework, or a setback?” p. 323
Teachers may not be willing to change way of teaching
- “She thought that her revolution was over. Her teaching had changed definitively. She had arrived at the other shore.” p. 325
How to teach teachers not to teach by telling, by telling them how to teach?
- “If students need a new instruction to learn to understand mathematics, would not teachers need a new instruction to learn to teach a new mathematics?”. p. 327
- “Hence teachers are the most important agents of instructional policy (Cohen, 1988; Lipsky, 1980), but the state’s new policy also asserts that teachers are the problem. It is, after all, their knowledge and skills that are deficient.” p. 326
- “Teachers also would have to learn a new practice of mathematics teaching, while learning the new mathematics and unlearning the old.” p. 327

Zimmerman, J. (2014). Why is American Teaching so Bad?

Women as teachers – lower salaries, maternal instinct
- “That helped save money for taxpayers, because school districts could pay women less than their male counterparts. It also capitalized on women’s natural instincts and abilities…”
Quality of teachers in decline – create Teach for America – but still need Teacher Professional Development
- “By 1980, Texas Monthly published an award-winning article showing that public school teachers in Houston and Dallas scored lower on reading and math tests than the average sixteen-year-old in nearby suburbs did.”
- “Everyone understands that you can’t be a nurse without attending a nursing school with carefully developed standards that must be met if candidates are to be systematically inducted into the profession. Most of our schools of education lack such high standards.”
Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) – Lee Shulman, Stanford
- “I am a full professor at a major research university, but I could not, without much preparation, teach high school chemistry.”
Japanese teachers have weekly routine for PD
- “Japanese teachers even have a separate word for this process, jugyokenkyu, which is built into their weekly routines. All teachers have designated periods to observe each other’s classes, study curriculum, and otherwise hone their craft.”
American education is technocentric
- “But the countries that are outpacing us at school, like Japan and Finland, are noticeably low-tech in their classrooms; they recognize that it’s the teacher that counts, not the technology. In America, by contrast, we’re always looking for the next gadget to improve—and, one suspects, to supplant—our beleaguered teaching profession.”

Lucas Longo

Produtor de Conteúdo Educacional