3 Learning Through Experience: Identifying Aims and Creating Conceptual Workshop (2/1) -- Experimental Pedagogy

3 Learning Through Experience: Identifying Aims and Creating Conceptual Workshops This Workshop provides an opportunity for you to reflect on your pedagogical aims and to create your own Conceptual Workshop. You may complete this workshop independently. If you can work with a few colleagues, even better. This workshop is designed for about two hours if done independently plus an additional half hour or so if completed with a small group. (Note that completing your Conceptual Workshop will probably take a bit longer than the initial workshop time.) Take notes and keep track of the time. If you are working with a group, please select one volunteer to be the time keeper. The time keeper will watch the clock and keep the group focused. Part One: Bringing Your Whole Self (15 – 30 minutes) In Teaching to Transgress, feminist scholar bell hooks shows that not only do students learn better when they connect their lived experiences with their educational (in-school) experiences, but educators also teach better when we bring our whole selves; If we protect ourselves, we cannot fairly ask our students to be vulnerable (1994, 13-22). In Part One of this workshop, you are asked to reflect on your experience as a learner in order to consider how you might bring more of yourself to your teaching. A. Please begin by working independently, and in writing, for 5 – 10 minutes to answer the following questions. You will return to your answers at the end of the workshop. - - When have you had an educational experience that was radically transformative? Describe a memorable learning experience of your own and how it transformed you. - What were the conditions that scaffolded this experience? (Were you in school? Did someone “transform” you or intervene in your life in some way that encouraged or supported your experience? - How did this experience affect your “whole self”? B. Next, if you are working with a group, please reconvene. Part Two: To What End? (25 – 40 minutes) John Dewey distinguishes between ends and aims in education (1929, 100-104). In Dewey’s model, ends are met sequentially, as one works toward an aim. Aims “must be an outgrowth of existing conditions,” flexible, rather than rigid, and extend beyond the end, toward a “freeing of activity” (1929, 104-105). For Dewey, an aim directs learning beyond the current end, toward a further point on the horizon that one might never reach. Such an aim harnesses the interest of the student and infuses each end with meaning, creating educational experiences relevant to students’ (and teachers’) lives. Ends and aims stand in contrast to goals, which Dewey understands as something one might hit and then set aside. Unlike ends and aims, goals may not be meaningfully integrated into a larger context or lived experiences of the learning community. A. Compare and contrast the concept of a goal with the conceptual dyad end and aim, as you understand these concepts from the brief introduction above. Try to articulate the