Monthly Archives: March 2013

Our topic for this week in Contemporary Pedagogy was scheduled to be related to the “Authentic Teaching Self”. However, par for the course in this class the discussion wanders to the seemingly related (comparison of acting and teaching) to the certainly disconnected (some girl’s story about taking some geography class last year). I was pretty(…) Continue reading →

Is the professor responsible for everything that occurs in the microcosm of the class event? Yes, says the reflective planner. The competency of the practitioner to recognize problems within the course of the practice is a given. Things are going to go wrong, and the practitioner should be able to recognize non-optimal performance. Failure would result in incompetent practice.

A practitioner should also know when bureaucracy is getting in the way, and the actions that will be required to fix problematic operating variables. This is a basic telling of the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. To save time and warp your brain, here is 1,000’s of pages of material condensed into a quick example.

Example: You drive your car to school and the tires go flat; this happens every time you drive to school.

Incompetency: You do not recognize this problem and continue driving.

Single Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you fix the tires.

Double Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you also realize that fixing the tires repeatedly isn’t solving the problem.

If you want more info but hate the tl;dr aspect of grad school here are some sites for more info:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm
http://www.aral.com.au/resources/argyris.html

This idea goes even further nowadays though, incorporating an even higher level of learning, that actively changes the practitioner into a post modern mess. I’m not sold, but here is some info:

http://www.coachforauthenticleaders.com/how-we-work/triple-loop-learning/
http://www.thorsten.org/wiki/index.php?title=Triple_Loop_Learning

So what does this have to do with pedagogy class?  Professors are going to get things wrong. Things are going to happen in the classroom that require different teaching applications. Thinking about why things are going wrong and making necessary modifications to your teaching practice is going to help you in your daily work life, or at least help you better understand your daily work life. Continue reading →

Is the professor responsible for everything that occurs in the microcosm of the class event? Yes, says the reflective planner. The competency of the practitioner to recognize problems within the course of the practice is a given. Things are going to go wrong, and the practitioner should be able to recognize non-optimal performance. Failure would result in incompetent practice.

A practitioner should also know when bureaucracy is getting in the way, and the actions that will be required to fix problematic operating variables. This is a basic telling of the work of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. To save time and warp your brain, here is 1,000’s of pages of material condensed into a quick example.

Example: You drive your car to school and the tires go flat; this happens every time you drive to school.

Incompetency: You do not recognize this problem and continue driving.

Single Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you fix the tires.

Double Loop learning: You realize that car tires going flat is a problem and you also realize that fixing the tires repeatedly isn’t solving the problem.

If you want more info but hate the tl;dr aspect of grad school here are some sites for more info:
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm
http://www.aral.com.au/resources/argyris.html

This idea goes even further nowadays though, incorporating an even higher level of learning, that actively changes the practitioner into a post modern mess. I’m not sold, but here is some info:

http://www.coachforauthenticleaders.com/how-we-work/triple-loop-learning/
http://www.thorsten.org/wiki/index.php?title=Triple_Loop_Learning

So what does this have to do with pedagogy class?  Professors are going to get things wrong. Things are going to happen in the classroom that require different teaching applications. Thinking about why things are going wrong and making necessary modifications to your teaching practice is going to help you in your daily work life, or at least help you better understand your daily work life. Continue reading →