Useful Sharing

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Useful Sharing

• 14th ITiCSE conference
• 7th July 2009, Paris
• Sally Fincher

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Why useful?

• Because most isnt.
• Transfer of best practice
• Whats best? For who? How? With what evidence?
• Rhetoric of dissemination
• Publish at conferences
• Case studies, pedagogy papers, database of good
  practice, toolkits, ...
• Calls on a research model of social networks of
  how knowledge passes across institutional
  boundaries
• Until recently, professional development for
  teachers has been embedded in a sacred story of
  research disconnected from practice. (Olson)

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Research (for a moment)

• Research is an activity that stands outside of
  any one institution.
• Researchers gain internal value/kudos by activity
  that is validated by an external community of
  peers and indicators (papers published, grants
  awarded, prizes won) over which the institution
  has no control.
• It happens elsewhere.
• A corollary of this sort of external network is
  that research information is exchanged between
  institutions as a matter of course.

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Teaching is not research

• Teaching is specific and situated.
• Its located in institutions, and in subject
  matter.
• I teach (literally) in the same room you teach
  in, we are seen to be doing the same thing.
• No external visibility no external esteem.
• So, Im having problems teaching public static
  void main where can I get help?
• Im the only one teaching Java and staff
  developers dont have the domain knowledge to
  help.
• Information about teaching stays at home.

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Secondary rhetoric

• As well as the dissemination of best practice
  rhetoric, there is another currently pervasive
  discourse that works to blur the distinctions
  between teaching and learning
• Research-led teaching
• Scholarship of teaching
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
• Linking Teaching and Research in Disciplines and
  Departments Jenkins, Healey Zetter, 2007

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Zukas Malcolm

• If we reject the conventional acquisition
  argument that research is about creating
  disciplinary knowledge whilst teaching is about
  disseminating it, then the distinctions between
  research and pedagogy begin to blur instead,
  both have to be understood as sites of
  disciplinary knowledge production

Zukas, M. and Malcolm, J. (2007) Teaching,
discipline, net-work in Skelton, A. (ed)
International Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
in Higher Education London Routledge
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Representing teaching as itself

• There is research and I would be one of the
  very first to defend disciplinary-specific
  educational research as a legitimate research
  area and there is teaching.
• And they are different.
• Treating teaching as research maybe an intersting
  argumentative position, but its not useful.
• But what does it mean to treat teaching as
  teaching? How may we represent it appropriately?
  How can we share what we do effectively?

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History of practice

• If not from within my institution, if not from
  papers, what about other published material?
• Well what, exactly?
• Architecture
• preserves its creations in both plans and
  edifices
• Law
• builds a case literature of opinions and
  interpretations (and Religion, too think
  Talmudic scholarship)
• Chess, bridge, ballet
• all have traditions of preserving both memorable
  games and choreographed performances through
  inventive forms of notation and recording
• Teaching is conducted without an audience of
  peers. It is devoid of a history of
  practice.(Shulman)

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Representation of Our Practice?

• Im not sure what it is, but I have some thoughts
  on what its not
• Its not a journal paper (reports something quite
  different)
• Its not made up (not a case study)
• I doubt its abstracted (no buyers context)
• In a society that attaches particular value to
  abstract knowledge, the details of practice
  have come to be seen as nonessential,
  unimportant, and easily developed once the
  relevant abstractions have been grasped. Thus
  education, training, and technology design
  generally focus on abstract representations to
  the detriment, if not exclusion of actual
  practice. (Brown Duguid)

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Representation of Our Practice?

• Im not sure what it is, but I have some thoughts
  on what its not,
• Its not a journal paper (reports something quite
  different)
• Its not made up (not a case study)
• I doubt its abstracted (no buyers context)

• An appropriate representational form is important
  if we are searching for solutions to our
  problems, looking for ideas to adopt, and also if
  we are crafting material to share. From either
  side of the exchange, similar questions emerge.
• What detail is important?
• What features are salient?

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Problems of knowing

• If were going to usefully share practice, how do
  we identify what educators think is important, is
  salient?
• One way would be to look at the way teachers
  classify the kinds of knowledge they draw on the
  way they think about things.
• There have been several attempts to describe this.

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Attempts to describe a practitioners
epistemology of practice Lee Shulman

• content knowledge.
• general pedagogical knowledge, with special
  reference to those broad principles and
  strategies of classroom management and
  organisation that appear to transcend subject
  matter.
• curriculum knowledge, with particular grasp of
  the materials and programmes that serve as tools
  of the trade for teachers.
• pedagogical content knowledge, that special
  amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely
  the province of teachers, their own special form
  of professional understanding.
• knowledge of learners and their characteristics.
• knowledge of educational contexts, ranging from
  the workings of the group or classroom, the
  governance and financing of school districts, to
  the character of communities and cultures.
• knowledge of educational ends, purposes and
  values, and their philosophical and historical
  grounds.

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Attempts to describe a practitioners
epistemology of practice Max Van Manen

• Noncognitive knowing
• Knowledge resides in action as lived
• in our confident doing, style, and practical tact
• in habituated acting and routine practices
• Knowledge resides in the body
• in an immediate corporeal sense of things
• in our gestures, demeanor
• Knowledge resides in the world
• in being with the things of our world
• in situations of at-homeness, dwelling
• Knowledge resides in relations
• in the encounter with others
• in relations of trust, recognition, intimacy

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Attempts to describe a practitioners
epistemology of practice Anderson Page

• Technical knowledge
• (academic knowledge is technical knowledge)
• Local knowledge
• (includes the narratives that are idiosyncratic
  to a local school or community setting included
  within this domain is knowledge of local
  politics, and local cultures and sub-cultures)
• Craft knowledge
• (consists of the repertoire of examples, images,
  understandings and actions that practitioners
  build up over time)
• Personal knowledge

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Personal, but not idiosyncratic

• We can all recognise something in all these
  classifications.
• We can read our experience against them.
• narratives are key components in the authentic
  study of teaching, for until we understand the
  context and appreciate the perspectives of those
  involved, any understanding of what it means to
  teach and learn will remain fragmented and
  disconnected from the real world of teaching
  (Olson)

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Its not simple

• Sharing complex knowledge requires time devoted
  to either personal interaction or thoughtful
  documentation of ones expertise, or
  both.(Hinds Pfeffer)

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Disciplinary Commons

• I'm interested in models of what the Americans
  call Commons situations where individuals take
  collective responsibility for common resources.
• Definitely a model of useful sharing.
• For teaching, might it be away of producing (and
  curating) appropriate, long-lasting
  representations of practice?

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Disciplinary Commons Aims

• To document and share knowledge about teaching
  and student learning in the UK.
• To establish practices for the scholarship of
  teaching by making it public, peer-reviewed, and
  amenable for future use and development by other
  educators creating a teaching-appropriate
  document of practice equivalent to the
  research-appropriate journal paper.

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Disciplinary Commons Structure

• A Commons is constituted from 10-20 practitioners
  sharing the same disciplinary background,
  teaching the same subject sometimes the same
  module in different institutions.
• Meet monthly throughout an academic year.
• During meetings practice is shared, peer-reviewed
  and ultimately documented in course portfolios

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Disciplinary Commons Participation

• Part of the sharing is cross-institutional peer
  observation of teaching.
• We learn an unusual amount about the practices in
  other institutions (otherwise only obtainable by
  charismatic embedding).
• This, it turns out, has high internal value.

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Disciplinary Commons Reification

• Documentation of teaching practice is
• Rare
• In non-standard ( therefore non-comparable)
  forms
• Commons portfolios have
• Common form
• Persistent, peer-reviewed deliverable
• Power of portfolios is multiplied when there are
  several examples available for a disciplinary
  area
• Commons archives provide a rich set of
  contextualised data, charting and calibrating
  development over time

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Disciplinary Commons Portfolio form

• Have six sections
• Context
• Content
• Instructional Design
• Delivery
• Assessment
• Evaluation

• Each section consists of an artefact and a
  commentary.
• Detail and discussion.
• Evidence and narrative.
• What and why.
• Personal, but not idiosyncratic

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OK, I lied

• Those neat representations from other areas?
• They are not as self-contained as I might have
  led you to believe

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In the diagramed deal, five diamonds doubled was
the contract at both tables. In the other room,
North opened two diamonds! After Rengstorff
(East) passed, South responded two spades, and
Krekorian (West) overcalled three hearts. North
was still there with four clubs East raised to
four hearts South bid five diamonds West
doubled and all passed. East led the heart king.
The best play was to ruff that in hand, play a
spade to the ace, ruff a spade, ruff a club and
basically continue with a crossruff. That would
have led to down one. But North won with dummys
heart ace and discarded his spade queen. Then he
ruffed a heart ruffed a club, bringing down
Wests ace and cashed the diamond ace, getting
the bad news. Now came the spade ace, a heart
ruff and a club ruff. At this point, if West had
overruffed and cashed his two trump winners, it
would have resulted in down three, because East
had the club queen. But West, defending
carefully, discarded. Declarer could take only
one more trick by trumping a card. West then
ruffed the club king, drew trumps and claimed
down three. In the given auction, Woods (North)
bid four no-trump to ask his partner to choose a
minor. West led the heart jack. Lev (South)
started correctly, ruffing in the dummy, playing
a spade to his ace, ruffing a spade, ruffing a
club, ruffing a spade and ruffing a club with the
diamond nine. West overruffed and returned a
heart, South winning with his ace, ruffing the
spade six and discarding a heart on the club
king. West ruffed to give this position West
correctly led the diamond king, which should have
resulted in down two, but when declarer won with
his ace and played the spade five, West erred by
discarding. Now South could lead another spade
and score dummys diamond ten with a coup en
passant for down one.
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In the diagramed deal, five diamonds doubled was
the contract at both tables. In the other room,
North opened two diamonds! After Rengstorff
(East) passed, South responded two spades, and
Krekorian (West) overcalled three hearts. North
was still there with four clubs East raised to
four hearts South bid five diamonds West
doubled and all passed. East led the heart king.
The best play was to ruff that in hand, play a
spade to the ace, ruff a spade, ruff a club and
basically continue with a crossruff. That would
have led to down one. But North won with dummys
heart ace and discarded his spade queen. Then he
ruffed a heart ruffed a club, bringing down
Wests ace and cashed the diamond ace, getting
the bad news. Now came the spade ace, a heart
ruff and a club ruff. At this point, if West had
overruffed and cashed his two trump winners, it
would have resulted in down three, because East
had the club queen. But West, defending
carefully, discarded. Declarer could take only
one more trick by trumping a card. West then
ruffed the club king, drew trumps and claimed
down three. In the given auction, Woods (North)
bid four no-trump to ask his partner to choose a
minor. West led the heart jack. Lev (South)
started correctly, ruffing in the dummy, playing
a spade to his ace, ruffing a spade, ruffing a
club, ruffing a spade and ruffing a club with the
diamond nine. West overruffed and returned a
heart, South winning with his ace, ruffing the
spade six and discarding a heart on the club
king. West ruffed to give this position West
correctly led the diamond king, which should have
resulted in down two, but when declarer won with
his ace and played the spade five, West erred by
discarding. Now South could lead another spade
and score dummys diamond ten with a coup en
passant for down one.
commentary
exposition
interpretation
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http//www.hastingschess.org.uk/2009/commentary.ht
m
Community context

• One of the biggest dilemmas facing any
  chessplayer, especially those below master level,
  is whether to employ main line openings, or rely
  on less theoretical sidelines. The extent of
  modern opening theory is now so great that to
  play main lines requires an enormous of work, and
  many hours of home preparation and study. For
  most amateur players, burdened, as they are
  likely to be, with job, family, dog and mortgage,
  the requisite time is simply not available. Even
  if the flesh is willing, the spirit is frequently
  weak. Regardless of results, a lot of players
  simply find it boring to trot out 15-20 moves of
  established theory at the start of each game, and
  prefer to use their own heads, from the very
  beginning of the game.
• At GM level, inevitably, one finds far fewer
  players who eschew main line openings, but there
  are some brave souls still willing to do so. The
  Brits, ever since the "English Chess Explosion"
  of the 1970s, have always had a reputation for
  preferring offbeat lines. Quite apart from Mike
  Basman, the high priest of recondite opening
  schemes, players such as Tony Miles made a
  healthy living with openings that the average
  Russian GM would not been seen dead employing.
  Tony's apogee was his successful 1.e4 a6 2.d4 b5
  against Karpov, but other English players have
  done a huge amount to make openings such as the
  Trompovsky and f4-Sicilian respectable.

The extent of modern opening theory is now so
great that to play main lines requires an
enormous of work, and many hours of home
preparation and study. For most amateur players,
burdened, as they are likely to be, with job,
family, dog and mortgage, the requisite time is
simply not available
Historical context
The Brits, ever since the "English Chess
Explosion" of the 1970s, have always had a
reputation for preferring offbeat lines English
players have done a huge amount to make openings
such as the Trompovsky and f4-Sicilian respectable
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http//www.hastingschess.org.uk/2009/commentary.ht
m

• The top boards of round six in this year's
  Hastings Masters showed opposite sides of the
  offbeat openings coin. The biggest story of the
  day came on board two, where top seed Emanuel
  Berg faced what liked a tricky pairing as Black
  against Stephen Gordon. In the event, though, the
  genial Swedish GM brought off a sensationally
  easy victory, thanks to a highly unusual opening
  choice
• 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e5
• The Albin is an extremely rare guest at GM level,
  although the mercurial Alexander Morozevich has
  used it successfully on a few occasions. I cannot
  trace any examples of Berg playing it before, so
  it must have come as a complete surprise to
  Stephen Gordon.

Game context
The Albin is an extremely rare guest at GM level,
although the mercurial Alexander Morozevich has
used it successfully on a few occasions. I cannot
trace any examples of Berg playing it before, so
it must have come as a complete surprise to
Stephen Gordon.
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Synthesis of forms

• So each of these representational forms is, one
  way or another, in text or in person, accompanied
  by a narrative exposition.
• I still dont know what a good (strong/appropriate
  ) representation of teaching is, but to be useful
  - as in all these other areas - I think it must
  be situated and specific and guaranteed by
  personality.
• These are not characteristics of research
  representations.

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Why might Commons portfolios be candidate
representations?

• All Commoners are expert
• Commoners work together to discover, interpret
  and re-interpret new material
• Resultant public documentation is contextual,
  comparative and collegial
• A Commons portfolio is the product of a unique
  voice. Each chosen artefact is paired with an
  accompanying narrative.

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Its not simple

• Sharing complex knowledge requires time devoted
  to either personal interaction or thoughtful
  documentation of ones expertise, or
  both.(Hinds Pfeffer)

• Useful sharing requires interacting with people
  who are most interested in what I do. The highest
  value input is from colleagues who do the same
  thing teach the same subject as me.
• I suggest that it means leveraging discipline
  over institution in a way that is analogous to,
  although at the same time quite orthogonal to,
  research activity.

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Shameless advertising

• Two Disciplinary Commons will run from September
  2009.
• A Database Disciplinary Commons in the UK, led by
  Rich Cooper
• A Software Engineering Disciplinary Commons in
  the US, led by Dennis Bouvier
• If youre interested in joining these, seek out
  myself or Dennis
• If youre interested in exploring issues of
  representation further, see my current project
  http//www.sharingpractice.ac.uk

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References

• Margaret Olson, Narrative Epistemology in
  Practice. Curriculum Inquiry 274, 1997
• John Seely Brown Paul Duguid, Organizational
  Learning and Communities of Practice Toward a
  Unified View of Working, Learning, And
  Innovation. Organizational Science 21, Feb 1991
• Lee S Shulman Knowledge and Teaching Foundations
  of the New Reform. Harvard Educational Review
  571 March 1987
• Gary Anderson Bonnie Page Narrative Knowledge
  and Educational Administration The Stories that
  Guide Our Practice in The Knowledge Base in
  Educational Administration Multiple Perspectives
  Edited by Robert Donmoyer, Michael Imber, James
  Joseph Scheurich SUNY Press, 1995

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References

• Max Van Manen The Practice of Practice in
  Manfred Lang, John Olson, Henning Hansen
  Wolfgang Bünder (eds.) Changing Schools/Changing
  Practices Perspectives on Educational Reform and
  Teacher Professionalism, Garant,1999
• Pamela Hinds Jeffrey Pfeffer Why Organizations
  Don't Know What They Know Cognitive and
  Motivational Factors Affecting the Transfer of
  Expertise, in Mark Ackerman, Volkmar Pipek and
  Volker Wulf (eds.) Sharing Expertise, MIT Press,
  2003
• Bridge narrative http//www.nytimes.com/2009/05/3
  0/crosswords/bridge/30card.html
• Disciplinary Commons seehttp//www.disciplinaryc
  ommons.orgThere are links to individual
  Disciplinary Commons from that page (for example,
  introductory teaching of programming)

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Acknowledgements
Eerke Boiten clued me in to the essential
narrative component in the representations of
Bridge games. Josh Tenenberg and I jointly
devised the Disciplinary Commons model The first
US Disciplinary Commons was made possible by
funding from the Washington State Board of
Community and Technical Colleges, the University
of Washington, Tacoma. The first two UK
Disciplinary Commons were made possible through
the award of a National Teaching Fellowship 2005
to Sally Fincher, via a workpackage of CETL ALiC
and a TQEF small grant from Leeds Metropolitan
University
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• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.