I appreciate Caleb Kelly’s thinking, and I am intrigued by his posts because they spur my own thinking. His posts allow me to reflect by pushing my mind in a different direction and considering a different perspective. Unfortunately for me, it woke me up, and now I’m writing this post at 4:30 am. ET MOOC is like a teenage crush: it invades my thoughts throughout the day, forcing me to think about it, and waking me up in the middle of the night dreaming about how I’ll start a conversation with it. Of course, this is fine when you have the energy of a teenager, but I’m an old man now. So, thanks Caleb, I’ll have to take a nap this afternoon because of you.  🙂

I admit that I’m a small-t thinker (as implied in the title of Caleb’s post), and I’m not really interested in debating what’s right or wrong, better or worse. I can only offer what resonates with me and helps me achieve my goals as teacher and learner. I read the Wikipedia entry for “speculative realism” and didn’t really understand it. I’m not a philosopher, so I didn’t really see enough to make me want to read more, to make me want to dig deeper. But I’m sure that in the days and weeks to come, I’ll circle back around and consider this thread again and again. But, for now, I can only offer what resonates with me. Personally, I like the post-structuralists. I like Baudrillard. I like Foucault. They make sense to the way I move through the world. Before them was Kenneth Burke. After them was Bruno Latour (and a dabbling of Actor-Network Theory) and Yrjo Engstrom (and a dabbling of Activity Theory). Likewise, rhizomatic learning strikes a certain familiar chord, although I haven’t explored it much. I don’t know what’s trending, but I’m drawn to connectivism. I’ve read all 600+ pages of Stephen Downes’ self-published Connectivism and Connective Knowledge because I’m fascinated. I’m quite certain that I don’t understand much, and it usually makes me dizzy if I stand up too fast, but I wanted to read more about it. What I get makes sense to my world view, to my philosophy of education and learning, to my teaching style.

Writing teachers work within a complex web of contradictions.  We advocate small class sizes and individualized attention.  We document the ways different learning styles affect learners.  We tell our students to develop several processes for writing, to suit specific situations.  We tell our students that writing is context specific, audience specific, forum specific, purposeful, and resulting from meaningful motivation.  We encourage them to develop a voice (or voices), to tend to different styles, to choose among different forms of argument, different patterns of organization, different conventions.  In other words, much of what we say to students about writing emphasizes situation, context, choices, flux.

However, at the same time, and perhaps in more powerful ways, we contradict and undercut these appeals to recognize the complexity of any writing task.  We “teach” in arbitrary time periods, 2 or 3 days a week, for 50 or 75 minutes at a time.  We assign one book, one list of readings, one set of assignments, one syllabus.  We stipulate timetables for producing and publishing writing.  We use one set of criteria and, often, one reader to evaluate an assignment.  Our classrooms situate students in specific physical spaces, constraining or restricting the movements of students and teachers.  In many cases we even stipulate the media students use to produce their work.  In other words, while we espouse the complexity and fluidity of writing, we also enforce simplistic and often rigid guidelines that may contradict and undercut legitimate attempts by writers who might make an effort to account for this complexity and fluidity.  

Since I am firmly situated as a teacher within these contradictions, and within the confines of formal educational institutions, I’ve come to see that my two primary goals as a university teacher are 1) to put students in a position to learn as much as they want to learn, and 2) to provide them with tools for learning that they can use for the rest of their lives.

I consider myself wholly student-centered. In this respect, I can’t dictate what they learn or how they learn. Each one of them has to take that responsibility. Dave Cormier uses contract grading to formalize that conversation. I try to be equally transparent without asking for a signature. For example, I teach a 400-level grammar course (here’s the course web site), and all the teachers who teach the course have collaborated to create certain expectations (outcomes) and outline a specific workload. In my classroom the students and I then have regular conversations about what it takes to meet those expectations. In this respect, we negotiate the workload: what it takes to get an A, what it takes to get a B, what it takes to get a C. Students have to make that choice, and they have to be honest with how much time and effort they want (or are able) to put into the course. We do a lot of small group work. Students are asked to do a lot of collaboration. So they need to be honest with each other, as well. If someone decides that they only have the time and are only willing to put in the effort to get a C, then that’s OK. That student won’t be ostracized. That student will contribute to the learning of the class to the best of their ability, that student will help other students get the grades they want, that student will participate in group conversations, and we’ll all help that student succeed to the best of their ability.

The more important aspect, and the one most difficult for my students, is pushing them away from a static view of content. I tell them that I don’t want to minimize their learning by requiring them to memorize a few facts and figures. But my students have been very successful their entire academic lives by spitting back “correct” answers on demand. From my perspective, I’m not really interested if they can tell me what a thing is. I’m much more interested if they can tell me why or how it works. In my professional writing courses, I don’t teach them software, I teach them how to learn software (or, rather, I ask them to explain to the class how they learn software). Returning to my 400-level grammar course as an example, I know that I frustrate my students because they will ask me if such-and-such is the correct answer for a particular exercise. And I always respond with “Why do you think it’s the correct answer?” For me, the “correct” answer is simply a product and is situated only in that moment. It is, on the whole, irrelevant. On the other hand, if they can explain WHY that answer is correct, or reflect on HOW they came to understand that particular exercise, then they will be able to determine “answers” outside of the classroom and for the rest of their lives. They’ll have a tool to place in their learning toolbox. Now, we do have proficiency worksheets and exams in the grammar course, and these materials do have KEYS, and students do get credit for “correct” answers. But students with “correct” answers can lose credit if they don’t provide proof or show their analysis; likewise, students with “incorrect” answers can get partial credit for showing the steps in their analysis. In this way, they can review to understand where they may have gone off track, or where their analysis may have been faulty.

At this point, I don’t know any more if my thinking (rambling?) is in concert with or in opposition to Caleb’s post, or even if it addresses his main concerns. I think that I’ve migrated into the realm of Julie Balen’s question: How Metacognitive Are You? A question that can lead to endless feedback loops, so I’ll stop now. But I’ll continue to reflect on my own practices, continue to interrogate my teaching philosophy, and continue to challenge my students in the best ways that I know how.