John Sutter

Programme Manager, EAP
University for the Creative Arts 
Falkner Road 
Farnham 
Surrey, GU9 7DS 
UK Tel: +44 (0) 1252 892991

Mob: 07813 836559

Skype: jssutter

 

 www.ucreative.ac.uk

 

 

On 4 Jun 2013, at 11:44, Norman, Kay wrote:

My first post ---- a newbie  

Dear Jeanette

I wholeheartedly agree with you; how are they supposed to 'be able to do' or 'know' something that they have never been introduced to before. So many mature learners come forward embarrassed that they don't have certain 'academic skills' (actually, most of the younger learners don't either, but they aren't reflective enough to realise and admit to that until later on in the course.. another story!) that they can apply successfully to the different modules and assessments they face.

They are the ones I've got such reward seeing 'transform' as they so often already have life skills to realise that they are 'lacking' something and endeavour to fill the gap. Just showing them how to apply reflective/critical skills to their studies transforms their whole approach and understanding of HE and their role within it.

I am currently in the situation where I may (through force of numbers) have to focus on the 'remedial' rather than coach the self-selecting, and I'm a little apprehensive....

Kay
Study Coach
Anglia Ruskin

-----Original Message-----
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Janette Myers
Sent: 04 June 2013 11:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: hhhmmm?

Dear Kal,
this is a really interesting point which kept me occupied on my new exercise regime which involves walking to a much further tube station!
I think you're right in that part of my problem with 'remedial' is that I simply don't like it, it is a knee jerk reaction. It has all sorts of connotations which a background in adult ed brings up. It's used a lot in medical education and also in dealing with doctors whose performance is sub standard. (incidentally it's interesting that the discourse around underperforming doctors is around identification in order to remediate, whereas that around underperforming teachers is of identification in order to sack- but that's another story) However, I would take issue that difference in what people are able to do leads to remediation issues. I think that many of the things students have to do in HE are new, we wouldn't expect them to have acquired high level criticality through pre HE study, or knowledge about certain discipline areas and we wouldn't expect them to have certain practical skills, such as suturing.  This doesn't make them 'remedial', but 'lacks' in other areas do, and I don't know how or why we choose those areas as the ones we expect them to already know, but not others. At the very least we should be able to clearly articulate that and we by and large don't. Does it make a difference in an Eng lit course if students are already familiar with texts? Does being unfamiliar make you remedial? Does not knowing that you don't just talk about what you liked and hated in a text make you remedial? What is the role of the programme of study in conveying a body of knowledge production and outcomes?

I'm starting to burble now, so will stop. Many thanks for posing such a provocative question Regards Janette



On 03/06/2013 16:51, [log in to unmask] wrote:

Hi,

I'm also relatively new to this list, and enjoy the conversations and

resource sharing.

I agree that this article makes good points, and with the sentiments

about the embedded, metacognitive and transformative nature of the work.

I have a question though.

I'm guessing that most would agree that some students are in more

needed of learning development than others - some are already

competently reflective, self-regulatory, critical learners; others are

less so.

So surely, the remedial piece is a part of LD work. Not all, clearly,

but surely 'remediation' is a term that shouldn't be considered a

dirty word, isn't it? After all, helping those students who have

encountered barriers they struggle to overcome, or who have failed

courses, is perhaps the most challenging and interesting aspect of

learning development work. And if we don't help them, who will?

Why is it so common to deny the remedial part of LD?

 

Really curious,

 

Kal Winston

 

Study Adviser,

Bangor University

 

Quoting Janette Myers <[log in to unmask]>:

 

Thanks for circulating this Gordon. I thought it a very positive

piece, making some succinct key points. It will be of use to me in

supporting some of the things I try to convey about embedding,

metacognition and the non-remedial (and transformative Sandra!)

nature of LD

regards

Janette

 

On 03/06/2013 13:11, Gordon Asher wrote:

 

*Raising awareness of best-practice pedagogy*

 

30 MAY 2013

 

Graham Gibbs asks what ‘study skills’ consist of and whether they

can actually be learned by students

 

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/raising-awareness-of-best-practice-pedagogy/2004204.article

 

 

SOURCE: *ALAMY*

<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/raising-awareness-of-best-practice-pedagogy/2004204.article>

 

Tunnel vision: giving students ‘how-to’ guides to learning does not

encourage the kind of flexible thinking that is required to get the

most out of higher education

 

When I was at The Open University in the 1970s, I tried to teach

adults who were studying for the first time in their lives what they

needed to do in order to learn ­effectively. When I was based at

Oxford ­Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) in the 1980s, I

was teaching students whose study habits had got them through their

A levels but were ­unequal to the larger and more ­complex tasks of

higher education. And when I later worked at the University of

Oxford, students were still asking for help with “study skills”.

Their intelligence and achievements were intimidating, so what was

the ­problem?

 

The educational interventions that make most difference to student

performance are not to do with improving teachers or curricula, and

certainly not with policy or organisational changes, but involve

improving students: changing what it is they do in order to learn.

For example, teachers can often help students more by encouraging

them to tackle feedback differently than by altering the feedback

itself.

 

So what does “improving ­students” actually consist of? “How to”

guides on study skills – how to take notes, how to structure an

essay and so on – contain what appears to be sound enough advice

(although the similarity between them is both striking and

s­uspicious).

 

However, attempts to back up this consensus with evidence of the

effectiveness of the techniques described have had little success.

Students’ scores on “study habits inventories” – questionnaires made

up of lists of the kinds of things contained in these books – hardly

correlate with examination performance at all. An exception is how

to be organised (by managing one’s time, for example).

“Organisation” predicts performance where the use of most “skills”

does not.

 

Students also rarely use the methods they read about in how-to-study

books or are taught on study skills courses, and for all kinds of

reasons. Most importantly, the skills may be too rigid to span the

range of demands that students actually face.

 

For example, lectures may primarily convey facts, or explain

procedures, or exemplify the use of the discourse of the discipline,

and so on. Each requires a different kind of note-taking, and

students have to be able to spot these varied demands and do

something different in response, not simply use the same methods

every time. Disciplines also vary in their demands and conventions:

a student studying sociology and history may find that their

­writing gains good marks in one but not the other.

 

*Fit for purpose*

 

It appears that successful students (and successful academics for

that matter) do an extraordinary variety of things when they take

notes or set about writing. They have found, often through trial and

error, idiosyncratic ways that work well enough for them, given

their purposes and the particular learning tasks in front of them.

 

It is possible to train students to use specific technical skills,

but they transfer very poorly from one context to another (for

example, from a training course back to everyday study, or from

studying one subject to another). It is much better, instead, to

develop a learner’s ability to study a subject within that subject.

 

For example, efforts at some Ivy League universities to improve

students’ writing by hiring experts in communication who run generic

courses in how to write have tended to be abandoned. Instead,

postgraduates within subjects are trained to give feedback on

assignments that leads students to reflect on their writing, rather

than only on the content of the ­assignment.

 

When I acted as a “study skills counsellor” at Oxford Polytechnic, I

noticed that many of the bewildered students in my caseload were

unable to describe what they did when they were ­studying (such as

reading a chapter in a book, for example). Their ­studying was

habitual and unreflective. In contrast, effective students can tell

you all about how they go about their task, have a sensible

rationale for doing so and change what they do when they notice that

the context or task demands are ­different.

 

In the educational literature, this is termed “metacognitive

awareness and control”, and it is the most influential of all

aspects of “study skills”. Improving students appears to involve

raising their awareness of what they are doing, increasing their

repertoire so that they can choose to do different things when it

seems appropriate and tuning them in to task demands so that they

can recog­nise what is required.

 

*Right answer, wrong approach*

 

Two crucial aspects of studying effectively are not about “skills”

at all but about understanding. Research at Harvard University into

why its very bright students sometimes study in unintelligent ways

has revealed how important it is for ­students to understand the

nature of knowledge and what they are ­supposed to do with it.

 

The study found that unsophisticated students would try to spot the

right answers in ­lectures, which they would note down in order to

memorise for a test, a method described in the literature by the

phrase “quantitative accretion of discrete rightness”. They were

fantas­tically efficient at this and it had served them well at

school, but it was the wrong thing to do at ­Harvard.

 

Similarly, studies at the University of Gothenburg have revealed

that students have quite different conceptions of what “learning”

means, and these conceptions evolved through experience until,

ideally, learning is seen as attempting to “apprehend reality”.

 

Skills have to serve the purposes associated with these evolving

concep­tions of knowledge and of learning: without appropriate

­purposes, the skills can be worse than useless.

 

PRINT HEADLINE:

 

Article originally published as: /Self-reflective improvement/ (30

May 2013)

 

AUTHOR:

 

Graham Gibbs is professor of higher education at the University of

Winchester.

 

 

--

I work Mon-Thur at St George's

 

Dr Janette Myers SFHEA

Senior Lecturer in Student Learning and Support,

Division of Population Health Sciences and Education,

Section for Medical and Healthcare Education,

6th floor Hunter Wing,

St George's, University of London

Cranmer Terrace

London

SW17 0RE

 

020 8725 0616

 

 

 

 

 

 

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--
I work Mon-Thur at St George's

Dr Janette Myers SFHEA
Senior Lecturer in Student Learning and Support,
Division of Population Health Sciences and Education,
Section for Medical and Healthcare Education,
6th floor Hunter Wing,
St George's, University of London
Cranmer Terrace
London
SW17 0RE

020 8725 0616