Effective Teaching Of English

             

INTRODUCTION

                   All of us here today have at some time or other brooded about just how much our instructional activities have affected the teaching behavior of those who come to us to learn to teach English or to learn to teach English better. If not, I think this meeting is a most suitable occasion to begin to brood about these matters. During one such introspective interlude which occurred after my having observed a particularly dismal student teaching performance, I remembered the arguments hurled at me during the many verbal encounters with my liberal arts colleagues and with working secondary school English teachers- heated encounters concerning English teacher education. My liberal arts friends were unanimous in their beliefs that an intelligent teacher who was academically prepared could learn all he had to know about method and practice during the student teaching apprenticeship or from his more experienced colleagues during the first year of professional teaching. When asked where the more experienced colleagues had learned what they knew about method, it was suggested that intelligent people picked these things up from the situation itself. The working English teachers, too, were generally contemptuous of "methods" courses, at least those they had experienced, and felt that the college instructor's distance from the daily battle scene precluded his seriously contributing to tactics or even to strategies that would sway outcomes. My answers to these arguments were the ones that most of you would have given. The academically well-prepared English teacher described by the liberal arts professors is, in the first place, a rarity because of the laissez-faire, contentis-all, devil-take-the-student approach to teaching used by too many of these same liberal arts professors. And such an academically well-prepared teacher, once found, too frequently fails in the secondary school English classroom because he is too busy playing junior-professor to teach adolescents to do all of those things adolescents must do with language. If I become involved in a particularly virulent polemic and am sorely pressed, I usually lose diplomatic aplomb (of which I have precious little in the first place) and suggest that too many English professors having something to say about teacher education have little familiarity with the universe of the high school student; that the last time any of them had entered a secondary school was when they themselves had attended; that it probably was some kind of prep school anyway, and besides, they probably were in advanced English groups and didn't have the vaguest notion of what really went on in typical English classrooms! But, as I say, I only suggest these things when sorely pressed. 

Developmental Perspectives of the Learner


INTRODUCTION

          

              The Student Learning Imperative (SLI) (American College Personnel Association [ACPA], 1994) was written to spark discussion of “how student affairs professionals can intentionally create the conditions that enhance student learning and personal development” (p. 1); it is a call to transform student affairs practice to promote student learning and personal development. Although the terms student learning and personal development have different historical roots and focus on different aspects of the educational process, they are described in the SLI as “inextricably intertwined and inseparable” (p. 1). In this paper, we elaborate on this assertion and argue for an integrated view of learning and personal development. From this integrated perspective, the cognitive and affective dimensions are seen as parts of one process; dimensions as seemingly distinct as knowledge construction, meaning making, and awareness of self are presumed to be integrated within the developing human being. The SLI argued that the educational experiences offered to college students—including those sponsored by student affairs—should be intentionally grounded in the educational missions of colleges and universities. This grounding requires a clear understanding of these missions and the educational goals they embody, as these are the goals toward which educational efforts should be directed. These efforts include the creation of “educationally purposeful” (Boyer, 1990, p. 9) experiences that should enable students to learn, practice, and develop the attributes of a college-educated person. As listed in the SLI, the hallmarks of a collegeeducated person include: (a) complex cognitive skills such as reflection and critical thinking; (b) an ability to apply knowledge to practical problems encountered in one’s vocation, family, or other areas of life; (c) an understanding and appreciation of human differences; (d) practical competence skills (e.g., decision making, conflict resolution); and (e) a coherent integrated sense of identity, self-esteem, confidence, integrity, aesthetic sensibilities, and civic responsibility. (ACPA, 1994, p. 1) Although it is helpful to list particular aspects of development for purposes of clarity and specificity, it is important to note that these aspects, too, are inextricably intertwined. For example, a broad understanding and deep appreciation of human differences require a developed sense of empathy and reflective thinking skills. Effective conflict resolution presupposes a degree of self-esteem and, perhaps, civic responsibility that enable the individual to rise to the challenge of a situation in which fair treatment is at issue. The qualities associated with a college-educated person include more than the cognitive ability to engage in critical thinking; they also include such affective attributes as an eagerness to continue to learn, an appreciation of the value of working with diverse others on problems of mutual interest, the will to take personal responsibility for one’s views and actions, and the desire to make a positive contribution. From this integrated perspective, a successful educational experience simultaneously increases cognitive understanding and sense of self, personal maturity, and interpersonal effectiveness.

TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION IN EDUCATION  

   

   INTRODUCTION

   

        Information and communication technology (ICT) has become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern society. Many countries now regard understanding ICT and mastering the basic skills and concepts of ICT as part of the core of education, alongside reading, writing and numeracy. One of UNESCO’s overriding aims is to ensure that all countries, both developed and developing, have access to the best educational facilities necessary to prepare young people to play full roles in modern society and to contribute to a knowledge nation. Maintaining a capacity to advise national governments on the use of technology in schools and, in particular, on the optimal balance, given local circumstances, between ICT and older educational technologies and assisting countries in developing educational software and materials that reflect their own national and regional cultures are key components of the Organization’s strategy to achieve the Education for All goals. The present publication, Information and Communication Technology in Education: A Curriculum for Schools and Programme of Teacher Development, is the last in a series of thematically complementary publications developed in 2002 by the Division of Higher Education and should be seen as UNESCO’s contribution to assist Member States in successfully integrating the new technologies such as multimedia, e-learning and distance education delivery into their educational systems. The book pursues two key purposes. The first is to specify a curriculum in ICT for secondary schools that is in line with current international trends. The second is to propose a programme of professional development for teachers necessary to implement the specified ICT curriculum successfully. In addition, it provides a practical and realistic approach to curriculum and teacher development that can be implemented quickly and cost effectively, according to available resources.It gives me pleasure to acknowledge the genuine international co-operation spirit thanks to which this new publication has seen the light of day and the contribution of several internationally renowned experts from Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. A word of sincere thanks goes to the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) for having been the initiator of this project.

Philosophical Perspectives

INTRODUCTION 

      Theoretical perspectives such as behaviorism, cognitivism, cognitive constructivism, sociocultural/historicism, and situativity theory provide frameworks for describing learning and designing instruction. Finding roots in philosophy, these perspectives differ with respect to their ontological and epistemological assumptions. Learning theories and instructional theories are developed and linked to a particular set of assumptions, supposedly consistent with one of the theoretical perspectives. Duffy and Jonassen (1992) argued that instructional strategies and methods are clearly influenced by the philosophical assumptions and that theories of knowing and learning are implicit in the instructional design. If not implemented entirely by a cookbook approach, then when situational variables require some decision on the part of the educator an underlying set of assumptions (whether they be tacit or explicit) will drive the decision (Barab and Duffy, 2000). It is inconceivable that a teacher or instructional designer would advocate a particular lesson or activity without at least a tacit theory of how students think and learn. In the literature, we see various classifications for these different perspectives; for example, Greeno et al. (1996) described behaviorist/empiricist, cognitivist/ rationalist, and situative/pragmatist-sociohistorical perspectives. Prawat and Floden (1994) used worldviews to define their classifications: mechanistic (including information processing approaches), organismic (including radical constructivism), and contextualist (including social constructivism). Wood (1995) grounded his categories in the application of learning theory to technology: Skinner and neo-behaviorism, Piaget and constructivist theory, Vygotsky and social constructivism and situated cognition. Unfortunately, when considering theoretical perspectives and the learning theories that have developed within them, it is not always clear what the underlying philosophical roots are. In fact, it becomes confusing when considering the descriptions from authors distinguishing differently among theoretical perspectives. Driscoll (1994), for example, stated that Piaget’s developmental theory and constructivism were interpretivist based. Cobb (1994), when distinguishing among the cognitive and socioconstructivists, aligned the cognitive constructivist with the views of von Glasersfeld (1989), who used Piaget as his example; yet, von Glasersfeld described the basis as pragmatist. Greeno and colleagues (1996), Cobb (1994), and Driscoll (1994) placed the socioconstructivist or sociohistorical perspective under the roots of pragmatism as well, calling on the views of Vygotsky. Phillips (1995) distinguished among the various sects of constructivism, placing the perspectives by Piaget and Vygotsky together based on the unit of analysis. Greeno and colleagues (1996) classified constructivism along with cognitivism, finding roots in rationalism. Ertmer and Newby (1993) located cognitivism and behaviorism within the objectivist perspective, with cognitivism as well as constructivism being rationalism. To further confound things, Garrison (1995) equated contemporary social constructivism with what he defined as pragmatic social behaviorism based on the work of Dewey, indicating a relationship between constructivism and adaptations of behaviorism. Garrison also stated that situated cognition (classified within the situative/pragmatist-sociohistoric category by Greeno et al., 1996) has made an important contribution to social constructivism. Greeno (1998) stated that the situative perspective could subsume both the behaviorist and the cognitivist perspectives. Whereas Prawat and Floden (1994) combined social constructivism and situativity perspectives, Derry (1992) distinguished between constructivist and culturally situated learning views. Among situated perspectives, Lave (1997) further divided what she termed cognition plus, interpretivist views, and her situated social practice view. What factors are being used to distinguish the above theoretical perspectives? Epistemological or ontological assumptions? For seasoned theorists in the field, these distinctions may be trivial to sort out, or maybe some believe that these distinctions have little practical significance. For those beginning their scholarship in the field, confusion seems to reign. Further, for those interested in designing practical applications of instruction and seeking the grounding that a theoretical foundation can provide, it may be difficult to understand the foundation on which they are building. It is in response to these questions, and with the goal of providing sharper boundaries among these categories to inform learning architects, that we have written this chapter. We describe theoretical perspectives as subsumed under five categories and clarify these categories by defining the mind/body relations, epistemology, ontology, and the unit of analysis. Then, we turn to the instructional implications of these five categories. It is important to recognize that these distinctions are situated within the context of providing sharper boundaries and stimulating discussion. As such, we have drawn lines among perspectives that may seem overly defined and may not even exist within other contexts and for other purposes; for example, some theorists would not separate situativity and constructivist perspectives or would not build connections between objectivism and cognitivism. In writing this paper, therefore, we have made epistemological and ontological commitments—a process that we suggest is useful for instructional designers and educational psychologists to undertake. This is not to imply that we have simply constructed these distinctions based on our fancy; in fact, we have aligned each conjecture with citations from colleagues in the field, stacking our allies if you will (Latour, 1987). Our hesitancy in forwarding these categories is that readers will take these brief and overly simplified categories as fixed and rigid rules or, even worse, as substitutes for involved study of the particular philosophical works discussed. It is our intention that these categories should not be used for compartmentalizing but should serve as a backdrop for continued discussion and for broader discourse among our colleagues.