Posting 3

Today I had the same lesson as yesterday but with the other year 9 class. It went ok, as a class there are a few characters in there which make it a bit trickier and it doesn't help being squeezed into a tiny classroom on a hot day. But right at the end of the double period I had a student ask "so how does this relate to social studies?". I think there are two issues here:

1)Probably what he has done in social studies before is so different to participatory citizenship that for all intents and purposes what we are doing is not social studies. Certainly when I asked them what social studies was no one said "it is about citizens taking action in the world to make it a better place".

2) Secondly,my suspicion with the language of learning intentions and success criteria (see posting on the geometry of learning) meant that I didn't make the purpose clear enough. I had hoped that with the nature of this assignment the learning intention was so inherent in the nature of the task it was obvious for all: we are learning to be active citizens. Davis, Sumara and Luce Kapler are instructive here. Firstly they think learning objectives (not quite the same as learning intentions) should be recast as "enabling constraints" where there is enough structure to produce creativity. Ie, there is not so much structure it is dead, and not too little there is chaos. They describe it as "opening possibilities by limiting choices". On page 193 of their book Engaging Minds (2nd ed) they give three examples of learning objectives:

A) "By the end of this lesson, students will demonstrate their understandings of some of the core elements of a poem by identifying the rhyme structure, the principal figurative devices, and the core themes of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" " (Too much structure).

B) "Students will write original poems in this lesson" (too little structure).

and finally on page 194

C) "Students will explore poetry-writing processes through involving characters and plots based on unfamiliar items and unexpected juxtopositions"

The authors give a really nice account of the lesson that took place with the third learning objective which worked so well and was so conversational. Their learning objective is slightly different to my learning intention because there was absolutely no reason to state the objective to students in their account of their teaching episode. It would have been a completely unnecessary and bureaucratic imposition on the learning that took place. It would be very interesting to know when the desire for stating learning objectives in unit plans turned into a desire to clearly state learning intentions to students. This is a really important question. When implementing new strategies such as AToL there is very rarely any discussion encouraged amongst teachers about the nature of teaching. Without this, the difference between behaviourist outcomes, learning objectives and learning intentions become almost imperceptable. Meanwhile, there is often still no real sense of learning in our classrooms, mine anyway. We teachers just shunt them through activities in a linear fashion. A good student is one who completes the tasks "to the best of their ability", as if ability is a static phenomenon. Of course our answer to all education's problems, especially literacy, is to do even more of this, without examining the metaphors we rely on to teach.

What I really object to is the belief that teachers who clearly state learning intentions are "more effective" than other teachers. It could well be the case, but I don't remember them in Sylvia Ashton Warner's classroom, or John Holt's, or Jim Neyland's or the authors of Engaging Minds. It is possible to have highly proficient learning intentions and success criteria in a class where no attention is being paid to the nature and purpose of the subject; no genuine conversation and engaged learning around a topic of mutual concern is taking take place, and students are uninspired. It is going to be really interesting using Photovoice to grapple with the tension between "enabling constraints" and "learning intentions" and the fact that my performance appraisal documents require the use of a technique based on principles I think are fundamentally flawed.

Which brings me back to the student who said "what does this have to do with social studies". My objective for this activity, formally written, would probably be something along the lines of "students will take photographs of issues and assets in the school's local community that they care about and will develop ways they might go about doing something about these,thereby exploring what it means to be a citizen".

I don't know what the learning intention would be or if I need one on the board for the students. I suspect what I did today and yesterday didn't provide enough of an 'enabling constraint'. What I should have done is engaged them in a discussion about the meaning of the concept of "Citizenship" prior to introducing the photography assignment. We could have discussed what makes a good one and what makes a bad one. There is also a great little typology of different kinds which I have included in this post. Maybe I could have asked students "what are the actions of a good citizen?" and then got them to compare their results with the Kahne and Westheimer categories. Perhaps had I done all this before setting up the Photovoice assignment the student wouldn't have asked me that question, and the whole exercise would have made more sense. I should probably do half of this stuff. If it is raining on Monday morning that is what I will do, otherwise we can do it when they have been out to take photos. Either way it will make for a pretty interesting discussion!