 The Second Exercise
Capturing the Particulars of Classroom Practice |
Kenneth Eble wrote about teaching, "It is attention to the particulars that brings any craft or art to a high degree of development" (1988, p. 6). This exercise is designed to uncover "this high degree of development" embodied in the particulars of classroom practice. What is it that good teachers in the different disciplines and interdisciplines know and can do in the classroom that will have a sustained, substantial, and positive influence on students? What episodes and "telling moments" reflect that know-how?
Identify a telling episode or some incident of actual classroom practice that reveals something distinctive about your approach to teaching your students. You might select a particular assignment you have made, a laboratory demonstration you have used, an interactive group activity you have organized, or a lecture and follow-up discussion you have conducted.
Outline (bullets, numbers, etc.) that classroom episode. In that outline you should make clear what you expected students to be able to do intellectually, physically, or emotionally after experiencing the episode; what you did in the episode; what your students were supposed to do; and how you determined whether the episode had the desired influence on the students (did it help and encourage them to learn something worth learning in a way that has had a sustained and substantial influence on how they think/act/feel without harming them?)
In addition to that outline, write a brief memo (1-5 pages) on your episode using any of the following prompts that you find provocative:
What made it work? What did you assume about how and why people learn? Where did it fail? How would you change the episode next time? Why did you choose to document this particular classroom episode? Is it a particularly compelling, insightful or artful rendition of a key concept in the course or field? A new metaphor or demonstration you have developed to illuminate a topic that students perennially find particularly difficult? An exercise which allows students actively to experience and engage in scholarly inquiry? A unique interpretation you bring to the topic that distinguishes you from your colleagues?
What did you hope students would be able to do intellectually or physically as a result of this session? Did you hope to change any attitudes? Why did you decide to use these practices to promote these learning objectives? Did the class session go as planned or deviate from your design? How so? Why? Did you change direction to take advantage of some new opportunity, get around an obstacle, or deal with a new circumstance?
What context is needed to understand the sample? What questions are you trying to help students learn to answer? What larger questions will these answers illuminate? What reasoning or other abilities are you trying to help students develop? Where are we in the unfolding of this help? What have you and the students been doing up to this point in the term? What topics have you considered? What will you do in the days and weeks to follow? What will you ask students to do?
This exercise was developed by Ken Bain based on an earlier exercise developed by Russell Edgerton, Pat Hutchings, Kathleen Quinlan, and Lee Shulman.
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