Sue Exley, Faculty of Education, UoP

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Helping our students understand their role as
teachers - an holistic approach

• Sue Exley, Faculty of Education, UoP
• Location Centre for Sustainable Futures, Kirkby
  Lodge Time 4.2.09
• Contact csf_at_plymouth.ac.uk

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Session content

• This session will consider the 'three Ts'
  pedagogic model transmission, transaction,
  transformation.
• The usefulness of employing a range of modes when
  offering feedback and discussion will be debated.
  
• Participants are invited to identify further
  applications for these notions for developing
  their use.

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Origins of this seminar

• Own education and training (school, employment,
  nursing, PCET PGCE)
• Lived Experience
• Schumacher Course Millers model
• Two examples from practice experience
• A future for professional development a
  holistic approach
• A future for Teacher Education teacher
  learning?

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My own education and training

• Lived experience - real life, aesthetic,
  social, phenomenological - has been germinal in
  the quality and depth of my own learning.
• How can this be integral to my work as a Teacher
  Educator/ Teacher Trainer?
• Bringing students/trainees own lived
  experiences to the course using models.

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Lived Experience and education for the whole
person

• The notion of lived experience has an
  educational heritage from Dewey up to the present
  day (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994/2000/2005
  Hildebrand, 2008, online).
• A lived experience encompasses meaning derived
  from being in the world, not just as a fleeting
  impression (Burch, 2008, online).
• Lived experience may be the mature students
  classroom (Challis and Raban, 1999, p.2)

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• Lived experience is a term used in discussions
  and texts, but is possibly less evidenced in the
  design and practice of teacher education except
  as controlled, specific devised experiences such
  as placement practice or classroom activities,
  which are valid but constrained, unnatural to
  some extent. Lived experience, whether through
  the emotions felt through reading a short story,
  or standing on a cliff top in the rain, have a
  different quality and a more profound effect.

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• Are we being distracted by the recent changes in
  practice?
• Are we still interested in the notion that
• A holistic way of thinking seeks to encompass
  and integrate multiple layers of meaning and
  experience rather than defining human
  possibilities narrowly. Every child is more than
  a future employee every person's intelligence
  and abilities are far more complex than his or
  her scores on standardized tests.
• 
  (Miller, R., 2000a, online) (SE)

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Students as Active, Engaged, and Effective
Citizens are

• Comfortable dealing with ambiguity
• Willing to take a risk to make a difference
• More interested in solving problems than taking
  credit
• Both effective advocates and listeners
• Eager to imagine and implement daring
  multifaceted solutions together
• 
  (Bacow, 2007, online)

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Schumacher College
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JP Millers model of 3 orientations

• Transmission instruction, didacticism,
  absorption, memorisation, acceptance of
  knowledge..? The productive members of society.
• Transaction exchange, deal, conversation,
  dialogue, relationships, meaningful activities,
  experimentation, adventure The active, engaged
  citizen.
• Transformation change, alteration, revolution,
  holistic education... Each person helped to
  discover the deeper meaning of his or her life.

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• Transmission
• Transaction
• Transformation -

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... a fourth orientation self-direction?

• This approach is grounded in a basic trust in
  human nature It claims that we are naturally
  learners, and if social institutions would stop
  cluttering our path with various prejudices,
  agendas, and limitations, young people would
  spontaneously and efficiently learn all that is
  necessary to live meaningful and productive
  livesThis orientation is qualitatively different
  from the first three (and was probably left out
  of Miller's list) because it is concerned with
  learning and has little or no interest in
  education as a specific profession.
  (Miller, R., 2000b, online)

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Helping our Students understand their role as a
teacher two examples.

• Observations of teaching practice use of
  language
• Helping learners, through use of appropriate
  language, to understand their practice in a
  teaching situation using feedback and
  discussion.
• Analysing practice in classroom settings use of
  models.
• How a simple model can provide the vehicle for
  understanding.

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A future for professional development?

• ...there is no substitute for actually having
  lived experiences which you, as a teacher
  educator, then bring to the learning and teaching
  situation. Without them there is less to reflect
  upon, there is less to assimilate, less to bring
  to the rich mix of possibilities without the
  lived experience we are left to rely on simulacra
  which, no matter how colourfully or cleverly
  constructed, are always a shadow of the real
  experience, always keeping the teacher educator
  yet another step away from the lived experience
  of their students.

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• Experience is so crucial to deep learning and
  good quality teaching it would be a poor thing if
  we let this slip from our grasp by imagining that
  classrooms are the only real experience and
  denying the importance of all lived experience...
• ...Good quality practice, and a holistic
  approach, would include the need to bring lived
  experience to teacher education, embodied by the
  teachers of teachers.

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A future for Teacher Education

• "The volume of education continues to increase,
  yet so do pollution, exhaustion of resources, and
  the dangers of ecological catastrophe. If still
  more education is to save us, it would have to be
  education of a different kind an education that
  takes us into the depth of things."
• (Schumacher, date unknown, online)

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• Perhaps we should be more concerned about how
  we define what is meant by teacher education, and
  perhaps move away from training or education
  and consider placing the emphasis on learning
  instead.
• Teacher learning could be redefined by making
  use of lived experience whilst maintaining the
  qualities of reflection, reflexivity and
  creativity built on a foundation of knowledge and
  understanding, both generic and specialised.

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What next?

• Can we identify further applications for these
  notions for developing their use?
• Are there implications of education and
  educators?
• Can simple models be useful?

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References

• Bacow, L. President of Tufts University,
  Rappaport A and Creighton S H (2007) Degrees that
  matter. Massachusetts MIT Press
• Burch, R.(2002) Phenomenology, Lived Experience
  Taking a Measure of the Topic in Phenomenology
  Pedagogy, Vol.8,pp.130-160. Available at
  http//www.phenomenologyonline.com/articles/burch2
  .html Accessed 3.3.09
• Bruce, B. C. (2008) Ubiquitous Learning,
  Ubiquitous Computing, and Lived Experience
  Available at http//www.networkedlearningconferen
  ce.org.uk/abstracts/PDFs/Bruce_583-590.pdf
  Accessed 3.2.09
• Denzin, N.K. Lincoln, Y.S. (1994). Handbook of
  Qualitative Research. London Sage.
• Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S. (2000). Handbook of
  Qualitative Research (2nd ed). London Sage.
• Denzin, N.K., Lincoln, Y.S. (2005). Handbook of
  Qualitative Research (3rd ed). London Sage.
• Dewey, J. (1963) Experience and Education London
  Collier Macmillan
• Hildebrand, D.L. (2008) John Dewey A Beginner's
  Guide online. Available http//www.johndewey.o
  rg/Welcome.html Accessed 30.8.09

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• Miller, J. P. (2007) The Holistic Curriculum
• Miller, R. (2000a) A brief introduction to
  holistic education online Available
  http//www.infed.org/biblio/holisticeducation.htm
  Accessed 28.8.08
• Miller, R. (2000b) Philosophies of Learning
  Communities Introduction online Available
  http//www.creatinglearningcommunities.org/book/ro
  ots/miller4.htm Accessed 5.1.09
• Schumacher, E. F. (date unknown) Education for
  Sustainability Available at http//www.e4s.org.n
  z/efs/about Accessed 3.3.09
• Bibliography
• Ellis, C., Flaherty, M. C. (1992) Investigating
  Subjectivity Research on Lived Experience
  London Sage
• van Manen, M. (1990) Researching Lived
  Experience Human Science for an Action Sensitive
  Pedagogy London SUNY Press