Dear All
A minor Friday afternoon diversion ...
I thought you might enjoy and find interesting a brief article by Walter
Tschinkel (professor of biological science at Florida State University)
that was sent to me via a colleague here in Plymouth. It explores some
common metaphors for learning and asks helpfully critical questions
about 'building blocks' and sports related images, the extent to which
they accord with reality, and their implications for teaching and
learning. He is provocative about learning, how deeply students learn,
and the instrumentalism encouraged by how we assess ... He also
discusses some alternatives.
Tschinkel asked his students about suitable metaphors for education.
They agreed with the notion of constructing a building - but he
countered:
"My observations suggest that there is another metaphor that describes
your mode of operation more closely," I said, "and that is sports. When
you play a sport, your preparation reaches a crescendo just before a
match (exam). If you win the match (exam), you get points (grades) in
proportion to your placement. You keep track of those points,
strategizing about how to get more next time. The match leaves no
residue other than the points. At the end of college, you enter the
working world with your overall standing (grade-point average) and
little more. Your approach is certainly effective in getting the points
that get you through college, but it is poor when it comes to getting an
actual education."
Hmmmm! I wonder what others might make of that ... I was, unthinkingly,
about to simply paste the full text of the article into an email and
send it to the list, but then realised there may be ethical and legal
issues around reproducing the full text in a public open list such as
ours.
This led me to seek out the source of the material to see if the article
is 'free'. It is not 'technically' free - but my journey was worth
taking - you might want to go there too!
Seeking the source of Tschinkel's article led me first to the "Science
Education Resource Center" of Carleton College in the US (Northfield,
MN): http://serc.carleton.edu/serc/about.html
This site points to a wealth of science-related and learning development
materials some of you may find useful.
From there, I found my way to "The Chronicle of Higher Education" (a US
publication) in which the Walter Tschinkel article was published. If you
are not familiar with the Chronicle (I wasn't) I thoroughly recommend
that you go to the site http://chronicle.com/ to see for yourselves. A
range of fascinating articles kept me from my urgent 'to do' list for a
good hour this afternoon!
If you are keen to pursue the article, it has been distributed and
discussed on a US email list: [log in to unmask]
http://serc.carleton.edu/mailman/listinfo/elements and the full text is
available from
http://serc.carleton.edu/pipermail/elements/2007-May/thread.html - click
on "Elements good article" posted by Dexter Perkins.
Happy weekends folks
John
John Hilsdon
Co-ordinator, Learning Development
University of Plymouth
Drake Circus
Plymouth
PL4 8AA
01752 232276
[log in to unmask]
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/learn
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