Term 2 – Contemporary Relationships with Outdoor Environments

A provocation  “The typical contemporary (last years) relationship that Australian’s have with outdoor environments is largely unchanged from the historical ‘resource’ perception”.  Agree or disagree – explain why.

Questions…  What logic/info did you use to make your decision?  What are the implications of your response – good or bad?  What real life modern day issues are there that are affected by the implications you have identified?

Third story thinking  You have just gone through a very important and useful process that we can call ‘third story’ thinking’. It is the difference between knowing useless crap for a test and understanding useful things and being able to use them  Gather – Process – Apply  This task as an example, or demonstration of what we will try to do this term

Gather – Process - Apply  Gather – get information that you need.  Process – work out some useful conclusions from this information  Apply – use it to do something useful

Example  Imagine an person who designs electronic - she is not successful if he memorises information out of an electronics' textbook.  If she wants to design a circuit board for a radio, she must…..  Gather info – in a book, on the internet, talking to others. Find out about things like capacitors, resistors, transistors, conductors, soldering irons.  Then she must process this – come to conclusions like – “I will use the soldering iron to apply the conductive pattern for the electricity to flow through.  Finally, this info is still useless until she applies it. Using her new knowledge of how to make circuit boards, she designs and creates one for her radio.

What about our example?  Gather – this time, you didn’t get info, but you did collect some ideas together.  Process – you tried to work out something useful about these ideas – what might happen if this is true?  Apply – you thought of a real situation that actually exists – not just hypothetical – now you have a good reason for knowing the things you do.

What have we missed?  Why are we not experts on the initial provocation?  What would we need to do?  Think of all the info you may need to know in order to better answer this question

My Philosophy  “Typically, much of what we do in school’s does not reflect what good research says about how people get good at things”.  “I am very interested in finding our how people get good at things, and using this process in class.”  There are no ‘bank’ of abstract information that citizens need to ‘know’. Information is only useful when it is applied for a useful purpose.

Key questions.  “What does it take to get really good at something?”  “How do we do this process in class?”

Example – help it make more sense!  Think of something that you are good at – really good at. Everybody has something.  For each point we look at, see how it applies to your example.  My example – teaching!

How do we get good at something?  The project:  In a study in the US – they asked high school students what they were good at and got them to research what they and each gone through to get there.  Students interviewed various experts to find out what an expert does, what it took to be an expert, and whether it matched up with what they had discovered about themselves. Cushman, 2010.

What they found  There is a clear purpose that is important to the learner.  There is a reason to push through when it gets hard.  There is an expectation by the learner that they can and will succeed.  There is deliberate practice.  There is a performance of the learning.

Purpose  Everyone has a different purpose.  It looked like fun  Someone supported and encouraged you  The activity had an audience that mattered to you  You had a personal interest in getting better at it.  My example – audience. My audience is at work – the teachers and the students. Getting better at it matters to me.

Pushing through  “I’ll make them proud”  “I’ll prove them wrong”  “I did it!”  “It’s what I do”  “I could win!”  “I’ll get respect”  I know this!”  Me – “it’s what I do”. Teaching is a big part of my life and my identity. I see myself as someone who teaches – I feelings about myself come from how well I do that job. Motivates me to keep going and take risks when things get hard.

Expecting success  Task being important + expecting to succeed = motivation.  I have an expectation of myself that the longer I spend in this profession, the better I will be and the more I will be able to help others.  I don’t hope for this, it will come from the quality and quantity of the effort I put in.

Deliberate practice “Practice that gets the desired results of mastery”  Has an express purpose  Demands attention and focus  Involves conscious repetition and rehearsal.  Is geared to the individual.  Is not inherently enjoyable  Develops new skills and knowledge  Applies to new endeavours.

 If I am reading a quite in depth article about something to do with teaching,  I know exactly why I am doing it – will help me with my personal goal that is important to me.  It requires me to focus on it, I can’t just skim read it and then it’s in my head. I have to stop, think about what a passage means, rephrase it in my head, maybe read parts again.  It will sometimes get frustrating when I don’t understand or know how I will use it – so I have to push myself to do it.  It gives me new ideas I didn’t have before.  It will help me do something I haven’t done before – today’s class is an example.  If I come up with a new idea for a process to use in class, I do it once, then try it again the next semester, then again, then again – I don’t smash it the first time.

Performance “When you’re in a show, each performance is practice for the next show. You’re learning from it, but yet you’re treating it as a performance as well.”  Performances make what we do important.  They can take place in different ways  Before an audience.  On the job  Private satisfaction – a performance for yourself.  Me – I got up early this morning and put most of this together – I needed it for my period 5 ‘performance’!. I needed this learning to do the job I wanted to do.

How do we do this at school?  Which of the following would be possible to have at school  A personal motivation or purpose to want to learn what is in the curriculum?  A personal reason to push through when it gets hard?  Give students the expectation they will succeed?  Use deliberate practice?  Assess learning with performances?

How do we use deliberate practice?  1 – spark – need to be interested and think it is important (this is the hardest bit!)  Show us what we are aiming for – overall point of it.  Break the overall task down into small sections.  Use lots of ways to understand.  Teach us to critique and revise everything that we do.  Assess us all the time – not high stakes at the end. (Assess to help us, not to give a mark)  Chart our small successes – satisfaction at achieving small steps gives the expectation of succeeding.  Work as part of an expert team.  Extend our knowledge by using it!  Use performances to assess our learning.

Projects  The conclusion this study came to was that projects are what best leads to students learning and mastery.  Finding something in the real world and using new knowledge and skills to work towards it – not just learning this knowledge on it’s own.

Examples  Economics class – using economic principles the class had to learn along with personal research to develop solutions to the city’s traffic problems and presenting to transportation authority.  Planning a trip to go on.  Studying a local site and publishing the research.

What about our class?  Think about the first activity we did this term.  “The typical contemporary relationship is unchanged from the ‘resource’ perception”.  What are the implications of this?  Are there any current real world issues?  Unpacked the concept with a mind map

Does it work?  Look at the list on slide 21.  Which elements does this task incorporate?  Can we use it as the starting point for a project we could do this term?  What do we need to do to include all of these elements.  Do you agree with them all? – which should we add or remove?