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SEDA  July 2007

SEDA July 2007

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Subject:

Re: award winning film

From:

Derek Cox <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Derek Cox <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 4 Jul 2007 13:03:13 +0100

Content-Type:

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Absolutely dead right, David.  I saw the blurb and viewed.... and would 
not put that in front of the folk on the PG Cert here at Leicester,or 
indeed anyone who didn't have a good working knowledge of the ideas on 
which it is nominally based.  Not only would any newcomer to the 
literature get a cartoonish view of constructive alignment, but a 
similarly distorted view of the 'approaches to learning' literature.  
Whatever happened to the approach to learning being depending on context? 
Here Robert is an irretrievable surface learner, and good old Susan 
unremittingly 'deep'.  And these 'characteristics' seem to  feed through 
automatically into their level of achievement.  Nothing here about 
mitigating features such as differential levels of organisation or 
ability; no, a deep student will perforce do better than a surface one.  I 
remembered that a Robert and a Susan are sketched in right at the 
beginning of 'Teaching for Quality Learning at University', so went back 
to have a look at how Biggs deals with them there.  In the book they are 
not 'deep' and 'surface' but 'Academic' Susan and 'Non-Academic' Robert 
(capitalisation and inverted commas as in the text).  The transposition of 
those terms to 'deep ' and 'surface' is for me far from trivial, and 
serves to confuse issues further in the film.  It's certainly a puzzle why 
Biggs allowed the endorsement.
 
Like you I'm very critical of the apparent excision of the idea of human 
agency in learning, and was also drawn up short by the idea that 'Whatever 
happens he ends up learning what the teacher expected'. It's as if humans 
don't bring pre-existing ideas, conceptions and prejudices to their 
learning which they use to create their own meaning out of the material 
presented by the teacher.  Often they do learn what the teacher expects, 
but along with the intended learning comes that which does not necessarily 
cohere with the intentions of the teacher.  This reductionist account 
seems to relegate the student's own meaning making beneath the superior 
will and intention of the teacher. Of course, students can't be directed 
and redirected, but the intersection of teacher intention and student 
learning is far more complex and interesting than the film indicates. 

 

I guess you could use the film as an analytical exercise after people had 
been introduced to the ideas; for example by asking them to critique the 
film in the light of their understanding of the issues.  I'd hope they 
would point out its oversimplification and reductionism.  But as a guide 
to the ideas for the uninitiated, I  don't think so...
 
Bw
 
Derek
 

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