Section 5

For section 5, I chose to look at P-12 Education, post-Secondary Education, and Health Education. I found many similarities and differences in these three components. All three of these fields are constantly searching for new and better ways to promote efficient learning. They also tend to lean toward the notion that students learn best when directly involved in their learning. This includes the need for all three components to ensure that its faculty is staying up-to-date with the changes that constantly occur, which results in an increase in knowledge on behalf of the students. Furthermore, all three components receive government funding to research data and introduce new technologies to the fields.

Some of the differences I noted were the motivation and participation in faculty members, level of expectation and accountability for faculty members, how government money is used, and the pressure placed on the faculty involving risks and multiple task objectives.  In post-Secondary education, the administration has a tough time getting its faculty members to attend workshop trainings and stay up to date on the technological advancement, which take place from year to year. In P-12 education, it is require that teachers attend various workshops, and I assume that teachers in elementary through the high school level are held to a much higher standard. In Health Care Education, much of the time faculty members are required to be professors/teachers/ mentors as well as continue to actively practice medicine. This of course makes it difficult for the faculty to divide their time evenly, as well as participate in workshops and lectures related to their fields.  Money is given to all three types of these educational fields, but how the three components use the money is different. In P-12 education, the money is not as freely used and has more restrictions. In the university level, how the money is allocated depends on the University, which is much different than P-12 education. In P-12 and post-Secondary education, there are risks involved, to a degree. In P-12 there are end of course exams and standardized tests that place a lot of pressure on the teacher and gives them less freedom. Post-Secondary does not have these types of tests; therefore, professors do not face these types of pressures. Health care education is perhaps the riskiest of all three components. Many times, the decisions faced by the faculty have a life and death outcome. This is very frightening, and with regulations and standards in place (HIPPA laws and such) berries are placed in front of the faculty in regards to teaching effectively.

It seems to me that all three components realize the need to amend the current institution and evolve as the world around us changes. The difficulty for all three of these fields,  is that they each have berries in place that make it difficult to implement Instructional Design – some of these berries are outside influences the other issue is the difficulty creating an atmosphere of motivated faculty members. My field of study is P-12 education, and I greatful to not have the risk involved in Health Care education. Although I get frustrated with all that is required of secondary educators, I see the consequenes (post-secondary education) for not having supportive faculty. 

Section 4

Chapter 14

One issue I have grappled with over the years is time management within my school year. Each class period my students are required to take a twenty-question short answer quiz. While this is effective in preparing them for Unit exams and ensuring they are keeping up with the rigorous workload, it is very time consuming for me. I spend so much time grading these quizzes that I feel as though I could make better use of that time lesson planning. One solution I came up with very recently is that I have my students grade their own quiz the same day they take the quiz. I have them use different color ink then they used while taking the quiz, and I go over the entire quiz aloud as they check their answers. Not only has the greatly impacted the amount of time I have to plan lessons, it has also been very beneficial to their learning. They hear, almost immediately, the correct answers to the quiz, instead of just waiting on me to grade them and hand them back. Furthermore, I no longer rely on them to check their wrong answers to see what the correct answer is; this ensures they are learning from their mistakes and will be less likely to make the same mistake whenever it is time for their unit test.

Chapter 15

I like how the text refers to Performance Support as “band aids” that are in place in order to assist and prepare an employee for situations that might arise which can hinder his or her work performance. As I stated in the section above, deep into my teaching career I noticed an issue with time management. I think that this is not an issue that is isolated to my classroom, but is an ongoing issue for many educators. We have so many responsibilities that are required of us, whenever our main objective is to ensure a quality education for the learner. I believe a good performance support system would be that educators are taught early on about the importance of time management, and how to properly delegate the time we spend on various tasks. Throughout an educator’s career, we are required to take part in many staff development trainings. These trainings are required, in addition to the extensive training we are require to have a the beginning of our career. I cannot think of training that I have had in my 12-year career that touched on time management. Perhaps a good Performance Support method for this issue would be staff development support and training sessions specifically designed to assist teachers in managing their time and numerous responsibilities in a more efficient and effective manner.

Chapter 16

After reading chapter 16, I realized that Tactic Knowledge would probably be the most useful type of knowledge that can be used during a collaboration process. Often times, schools divide their teachers into teams according to their grade and content area. This is an effective way for teachers to share their prior knowledge, frustrations, concerns, and ideas with one another. Veteran teachers are probably most equipped in discussing time management. If I had been able to collaborate more with a veteran teacher during my early years, perhaps they could have given me some advice as to how to effectively allocate my time. In fact, the resolution I came up with, was not 100 % my idea. I remembered a former teacher, now retired, who used to have his students, grade his or her own tests. He would brag that his workload was lessoned and he truly believed that the students learned from that grading process. This teacher and I never collaborated, but if we had, perhaps he would have encouraged me to do this a long time ago. I also like the idea of Partner-supplier relationships. To me, this could mean that evaluate myself more through my students. Perhaps I could find out if they feel they learn better through grading their own quiz.

Chapter 17

 I am in informal learning advocate. Since the beginning of my career I have heard experts and read studies that consistently point out that students learn more from one another than they do their teacher. I feel that this is obvious; they can memorize a song in a few short minutes, and hey gravitate towards certain music, art, and activities that they experiment with on their own and with their friends. People learn when they are in love with whatever it is they are learning. As a teacher, this has been a struggle. Although I realize these aforementioned facts, it is still very difficult to create these types of learning environments. Furthermore, all the staff development trainings are extremely educator-centered and speak very little about informal learning. It is not an easy to task to teach this type of learning, and you have to constantly be thinking of new ideas and way to facilitate this type of “instruction”.

Last year I gave an assignment in which students were to create fictitious blogs of various enlightenment thinkers. They are very into social media and I thought this would be a good way for them to get involved in their own learning process and research. It turned out to be very enjoyable and successful for most students, and I will definitely initiate this assignment again. The thing I will do differently is managing their progress more effectively. I allowed so much freedom that it became difficult for me to ensure accountability is met. Perhaps the next time I will give better guidelines as to exactly what I want for them to research, post about, and in their commenting section, what they needed to include.

Another informal type learning that I believe to be effective is the National History Day presentations in which I require my students to become participants. National History Day is a lot like Science Fair, in that the students can basically create any type of presentation they desire, such as a documentary, essay, theatrical performance, website, etc. At first, I thought the students were going to hate the assignment, but they actually loved participating; and incoming students actually look forward to participating. They have such freedom in this presentation, get to work alone or with peers, and I am simply a coach or guide. I actually do very little if any work leading up to the day of presentation. I have had quite a few students advance to regional competitions as well as state level competitions. The first year I did this, I did not manage them as the year progressed. However, I found that the students were not as motivated and at times lacked focused, so I set some guidelines, and due dates and this seemed to me all they needed in regards to management. 

Section 3 #'s 1,2, & 3

Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method is a more specialized model. It delves into the specifics of finding out if a certain program worked. There are 5 steps in this model: 1) plan a case study, 2) build an impact model, 3) conduct a survey, 4) schedule in-depth interviews, 5) Write up and communicate findings. I have actually used this model before, and although, time consuming, it really gave me an idea as to what impact I was having communicating with my students’ parents. Basically, I followed this model in order to find out if certain ways of communicating to my parents was successful. I used three classes in my research, and overall, I figured out what was working and what was not working. Furthermore, just by using this model, I found myself more focused on the needs of my students. Since there was such a detailed process, I stayed focused on communicating with my parents – more so than if I were to have conducted no evaluation whatsoever.

Evaluation is important for both the student and the teacher. The text talks about all the reasons education is important for the learner. It allows the teacher to design better quality lessons, learn where the competency levels of his or her students, and allows the teacher to assess what it is he or she needs to reteach. But I think it is important to point out that evaluation has really great benefits for the students as well. It teachers students a sense of accomplishment, how to manage their time and study effectively (various study skills, etc.), and also gives them motivation. 

During an economic downtime, I would make sure to recruit a team in order to prepare for this task. I would make the primary theme of the staff development team be something to the tune of…”we have people and time but no money”, and go from there. I do feel that in education we are fortunate in that we are usually prepared for dips in the economy and can plan ahead – I know that in my school district we know the summer before the school year is to begin, how our financial situation will be during the upcoming school year. I do believe that as a leader, it is important to assess “the current situation and plan what can be done to solve the problem.” As a leader of this team, I will need to create a few goals that we want to achieve. One of these goals would be to create an online source through our school online document system (called eduphoria), which allows all the teachers in the school to upload a technological lesson plan that does not require a lot of resources. For example, in years past, I have created a blog assignment much like this class is designed, and the students were to blog about a specific topic a few days a weeks. They could do this from home or even at their local or school library. The only resource needed for this assignment was access to a computer. I did not come up with this lesson plan on my own, I enlisted the help of a college who depends heavily on technology in her classroom. I feel as though there are many teachers out there that have great ideas and we need to learn that sharing our lesson plans and ideas can only benefit our students. 

Section II #3

Differing epistemic stances lead to differing approaches to learning and instruction, and ultimately to problem-solving. Explain differences in problem-solving when approached from behaviorist and constructivist perspectives. How do the approaches differ in both the nature of the problem to be solved and in facilitating the problem solving process? Finally, what effect might these differences have on learner motivation?


When one solves a problem, he or she needs to be involved in the problem-solving process. I understand the Behaviorists view that the teacher can provide the reinforcement needed in order to achieve motivation in the classroom, but I tend to lean more towards the constuctivists view, that real motivation is obtained when the students are at the center of their learning. Since the beginning of my career, it was very evident to me that I had to make the subjet I teach relavant to the students. Otherwise, I would lose most of them - even the AP student needs to have motivation to achieve success in my classroom. And the only way I can ever get the motivation, is to make the content relavant to the student. For example, I recently taught my pre-AP World History class about the crisis in Syria. They are very bright students, but thier eyes would gaze over as the very mention of "Arab Spring" or even "Chemical Warfare". I mean, come on! Chemical  Warfare? How is that not interesting? Well, to 15 year old, pubescent teenagers, it just isn't. So, instead of me teaching them from the front of the classroom, I had them research certain aspects of what is going on, teach each other, and then as a group figure out how to solve the problem in Syria without United States intervention. I even went as far as to have the students think of ways to be an international superpower without the use of weapons. The students were very engaged and empassioned. Furthermore, the situation in Syria became more real to them. I also think that they got more involved in the learning because they didn't feel like the students getting information from the teacher - they were teaching each other - they owned thier learning. To me, that is more meaningful than any speech or powerpoint lesson. I think that if we do not meet our students to where they are today (people who do not need for us to give them all the information since it is right there at their computer), the we could possibly lose the motivation of an entire generation. 

Section II #2

Chapters in this section present two contrasting epistemic stances: positivist and relativist. However, a third stance, the contextualist or hermeneutical, is also widely recognized. This stance falls somewhere between the strictly objectivist/positivist beliefs about knowing and the purely subjectivist/relativist stance. While designers and educators with a positivist stance generally apply behaviorist principles to the design and development of instruction, those with either a contextualist or relativist epistemological framework employ constructivist theories and methods. However, relativists ascribe to radical constructivist approaches, while contextualists draw upon social constructivist theories and models. Based on what you’ve read about positivist and relativist epistemologies, as well as behaviorist and constructivist approaches, try to more fully describe a contextualist epistemology. How might it differ from either a relativist or positivist stance, and how might social constructivism differ from either behaviorist or radical constructivist approached to learning and instruction?

I am not a fan of the positivist approach to education. I feel as thought, it is very "old school" and probably why I hated school so much during my younger years. All learners are different, come from different backgrouds, and thier prior knowledge will always differ. To be so concrete in the field of education, is not eduation, but rather indoctrination. Positivism, a philosphy brought forth by an elite French man called Auguste Comte, was developed as the Old Regime in France was crumbling as a result of the French Revolution. He believed in a social order in which experts were experts and everyone else should ask no questions and believe what they are told. Well of course an elitist would want education to be that way. How dare the poor become educated and take his land away! I digress, my point is that I believe freedom for all humans comes with education. There is a reason prisons are filled with the uneducated, and the poor have a difficult time coming out of poverty. Furthermore, isn't it vital to education to know why? To ask questions? To truly believe in what is being taught? This is why I am more in favor of the realtivists approach to education. While I agree that teachers and professors are to facilitate the learning process, and give information to the students, I think it is equally as important to create an educational environment where the student becomes a life-long learner - thirsty for knowledge. In the Constructivists approach, the classroom is designed as such that the students are a part of the learning process. Social Constructivism allows the students to become affected by what they are learning through a real-life process of collaborating with others. Radical Constructivists believe that people all learn differently because we all hear words differently and therefore cannot possibly have the same exact knowledge. This reminds me of a movie I once watched, called "Waking Life" in which there was one scene where two women were discussing this very viewpoint - one of the women said that when two people say they love each other they do not mean the same thing - because each person has thier own experiences and memories of the word, love. This is very deep thinking, of course, but it is worth noting that we do all hold different histories and memories and therefore, it only makes sense that we cannot every really learn the same and have the same knowledge. To me, it seems that constructivists try to take pieces for positivists, realitivsts, social constructivism and radical constructivism, and create  a learning environment that is cohesive to all the different learning philosophies and learning types. Interesting stuff....my brain is hurting. :)

Section II #1

#1

Basically, early in the 20th century, much of the studies of learners had to do with how the teacher was affecting the learner. Later on in the century, the cognitive development of the learner became the focus, rather than the effectiveness of the teacher. Therefore, instructional design was modeled after strategies that would assist the learner in the processing of information and how they applied their knowledge. To me, it seems they began to shift their focus on how to promote higher level learning. It is one things to be able to regurgitate information, and another thing to be able to truly understand and apply what one is learning. I have always been fascinated with the Montessori School, it is very learner-centered and a lot less structured than the average private or public school. There are no exams, and there is a much more holistic approach to learning. It really reminds me of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird - his children are constantly questioning him and wanting answers to questions, but instead of telling them what his beliefs are and how to think, he socratically (I think I just made up a word:) allows them the opportunity to forge their own beliefs and own way of thinking. It is nice to think that as educators we can just teach the content - but that really is too easy. The challenge is - and the challenge should be - that we are constantly experimenting with new ways to encourage our students to own their learning, and how to apply what they are being taught. 

Since media comes from the word "medium" and medium simply means - the transfer of information - I have to suggest that a chalkboard, textbook, and teacher, can all be considered a type of media. With that being said, I do not believe that those 3 elements should be relied on in regards to Instruction Design. In the first three chapters of the text, the definition of Instructional Design has shifted in past 50 years. This shift is due to the evolution of technology, and it seems logical to me that our classrooms evolve along with technology. We serve our students best, whenever we understand how they learn best - and they are dependent on computers, ipads, kindles, nooks, social media, etc. How can we be effective, relate to the students, and ensure they are part of the learning process, if we refuse to become part of the lives in which they live - become a part of their reality? Clearly students can receive and learn information from their teachers and textbooks - but should that be their only source of learning? I believe it is irresponsible for a teacher to rely on their own voice and the voices of a few authors of texts to educate today's younger generation.