Sharpen the saw…
This week’s reading task involved reviewing (Race, 2010) and (Ramsden, 2003) both of which are completely new texts to me. Being a bit of a presentation freak, I decided to start with (Race, 2010) and to see where that would take me. My butterfly mind instantly started to wander after about slide 2 and from there I spotted a reference to another text that sounded very interesting and so I downloaded a copy of (Race, 2006) from our library as an EBook to read through the first chapter… after only a few pages I was in my element, coming across various descriptions of different types of learning strategies and finding myself being able to relate to several of them.
I know that myself and others (Martin, 2003, Sowey, 1995, Robinson, 1998) encourage the use of analogies in our teaching to draw upon the students existing knowledge as an underpinning starting point. Having come from industry I also try to relate my industrial experience to the subject that I am teaching and I find it reassuring that there is pedagogical research that supports this approach (Lamancusa et al., 2006, Dutson et al., 1997). Particularly welcoming are texts that have received over 6,000 citations such as (Ausubel et al., 1968) which strongly advocate the use of students prior knowledge and using this knowledge to facilitate learning using techniques such as analogies.
I’ve read very few psychology texts over the years but I’m in the process of writing a paper on the use of analogies and previous experience in teaching engineers for a journal and when I discover such wonderful quotes as “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly” (Ausubel et al., 1968) it starts to provide a breadth of understanding that I’ve been struggling to articulate the past couple of weeks whilst drafting my paper.
Reading discussions comparing shallow, deep and strategic learners I found myself recognising that for the past few years, I’ve definitely behaved as a strategic learner, focusing on outputs and more specifically as a cue-conscious learner actively learning against the marking scheme. Reading through the introductory chapters of (Race, 2006) though I disagreed that strategic learners (specifically cue-conscious learners) were necessarily smarter and more focused learners as claimed. The more I considered the behaviour of cue-conscious learners, specifically the description that they were particularly adept at spotting patterns. The more I began to wonder how easy it could be to disrupt this type of behaviour as a lecturer, indeed if the questions were genuinely written to avoid strategic studying, would previously less successful methods such as deep learning start to move more to the fore of successful learning?
Indeed, if deep learning was promoted more as an acceptable strategy, with longer course modules that were examined less frequently, but more rigorously, what effect would this have on the quality of engineers and would this address some of the concerns outlined by the industry in recent years about educating engineers for the 21st century. (The Royal Academy of Engineering, 2007, The Royal Academy of Engineering, 2010, Allen, 2000, Owens, 2010, Owens, 2011) all note that there are new challenges coming through to the industry and with the advent of more complex analysis programmes that considerations such as the teaching of structural behaviour and associated analysis techniques should remain relevant in the 21st century. One of the largest challenges facing engineers and the construction industry is being able to demonstrate that they are adapting their practices and behaviour to embrace sustainability (Swamy, 2000). Drilling deeper into the subject reveals that my thoughts on using reflection to teach sustainability agrees with (Laws and Loeber, 2011) who note that Sustainability “…demands reflection, learning and creative thinking on the part of the stakeholders, sponsors and the professionals involved in projects.” which is most encouraging and something I find myself agreeing with. The more I learn about reflection, the more I think it shouldn’t be confined to just the classroom, but developed and expanded out into industry as a technique for problem solving.
I found myself genuinely enjoying reading through the introductory chapter of (Race, 2006), with gentle introductions to various theories and schools of thought such as behaviourists and the cognitive view which I shan’t pretend to fully understand but I’m slowly assembling my thought process. As I weaved my way through the chapter I could start to understand how the likes of (Ausubel et al., 1968) had helped established tools such as defining learning objectives, which I include in my lectures but only because it’s the way that the British Red Cross teach and they were organisation that trained me, although now having started on my PGCAP course I’m starting to build a better understanding now of where these theories come from. There were also numerous references to authors that I’ve heard mention in seminars over the years, but never actually got round to digging out the information to allow me to understand their contributions and I’m looking forward to learning more about the likes of Kolb and Coffield in particular in the near future.
After working my through a reasonable chunk of the introductory chapter (Race, 2006), I found that Race was starting to establish his own thoughts and theory on how students learn and at this point I decided to head back to his presentation (Race, 2010) and to constrain my butterfly mind back to the task I’d originally started.
Having worked through the 4 questions Race poses to identify which strategies have worked for you as a learner in the past, I found that I too fitted some of his common responses and was able to relate to the 5 key learning points that he started to establish… my difficulty with Race’s process though is when the 5 key points is expanded into 7 key points and Race states his argument for detaching from the existing theories (Kolb) that consider teaching and learning as being cyclical and taking onboard the alternative approaches outlined by (Wiersta and De Jong) which argue that it’s one dimensional. I’ve come across similar 7 pointed systems in the past, but not in a pedagogic context, in fact the more I read of Race’s system the more it reminded me of (Covey, 2004) although the fundamental difference between the two that I could ascertain was that Covey encourages a circle of continuous improvement and Race argues that the process is more akin to ripples in a pond, but when placed side by side, the similarities are startling.
| Race | Covey |
| WANT – Fun; enthusiasm | Be proactive |
| NEED – identify targets | Begin with the end in mind |
| DOING – Active learning, practice | Put first thing first |
| FEEDBACK – Timely, “feed forward” | Think win/win |
| MAKE SENSE – How we learn, empower to help others. | Seek first to understand, then to be understood |
| UNDERSTAND – First themselves, then explain to peers. | Synergise |
| ASSESSING – First themselves, then their peers. Identify how to improve. | Sharpen the saw |
Table 1 – Comparison between Race and Covey’s 7 Steps…
I’ve got to confess that the engineering part of my brain probably got in the way here, but something about the ripple analogy just didn’t sit too well in my mind and it started me thinking. Ripples by their very nature start to lose strength the further from the centre of the ripple the wave propagates, until the amplitude of wave eventually becomes zero and the wave ceases to exist. What relevance does this behaviour of a ripple play in Race’s analogy I wonder? Similarly as the waves propagate from the centre, their circumference increases, meaning that each circle starts to include a larger and larger area… again I found myself wondering if this was relevant. The more I reflected on Race’s analogy the more I came to conclusion that perhaps my imagination was just overly furtive, but the idea of learning until you ran out of ‘power’ just didn’t sit comfortably with me and I personally could relate more to Covey’s constant improvement system. I do agree with Race however that the process isn’t a systematic route around a circular path, but how could this be visualised? and at which points might you detach from the circle? But shouldn’t you always have a mechanism to reset back to the beginning of the process, even if your starting point is to learn something subtly different that builds on the previous learning you’ve done?
Below is my attempt at rationalising the process that fits comfortably with my own experience and I’m sure it’s flawed in many ways but it’s how my brain has made sense of my reading so far. I’m well aware though, that the likes of Race are intellectual titans in this area of research and study and could pull apart my attempts in the blink of an eye, but I’ve an engineering brain and I like to doodle and sketch things to help assemble the logic in my own mind. Over the coming weeks I’ll butcher, detach and re-attach various parts of this diagram until I get to the point I’m happy with it.
For me I like the figure of eight diagram, it shows that the process isn’t closed and you can come back round on yourself and continue to learn and improve, but the way that the loop doubles back over itself offers the opportunity to shortcut sections of the learning process and encompasses both Race’s and my own thought process that learning doesn’t always happen in a strict order. I’m not sure that I’ve drawn it in the right order, or that I’ve ironed out all of the creases. I think that perhaps there may be other points within the loop that might want to form a natural exit point rather than waiting until you’ve gotten to the central cross over point, I’m tempted to superimpose Race’s 7 point onto the loop and see how this fits as a scenario. Clearly I need to read Kolb and the various counter arguments to increase my understanding… but it’s late and I need some sleep.
I’m amazed I’ve spent so long on this one text today, it’s sent me on such a merry journey and I’ve another text to go through yet!
References
ALLEN, H. 2000. Engineering education in the 21st century. The Structural Engineer, 78, 17-20.
AUSUBEL, D. P., NOVAK, J. D. & HANESIAN, H. 1968. Educational Psychology: A cognitive view, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
COVEY, S. R. 2004. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change., London, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd.
DUTSON, A. J., TODD, R. H., MAGLEBY, S. P. & SORENSEN, C. D. 1997. A review of literature on teaching engineering design through project-oriented capstone courses. Journal of Engineering Education, 86, 17-28.
LAMANCUSA, J. S., ZAYAS, J. L., SOYSTER, A. L., MORELL, L. & JORGENSEN, J. 2006. The Learning Factory: Industry-Partnered Active Learning. Journal of Engineering Education, 97, 5-11.
LAWS, D. & LOEBER, A. 2011. Sustainable development and professional practice. Engineering Sustainability, 164, 25-33.
MARTIN, M. A. 2003. ” It ís like… you know”: The Use of Analogies and Heuristics in Teaching Introductory Statistical Methods. Journal of Statistics Education [online], 11.
OWENS, G. 2010. Structural enginering education in the 21st century: the way forward. The Structural Engineer, 88, 15.
OWENS, G. 2011. Transforming undergraduate structural engineering education in the 21st Century. The Structural Engineer, 89, 18-20.
RACE, P. 2006. Learning – A natural human process. The Lecturer’s Toolkit: A practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching. Third ed. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis e-Library.
RACE, P. 2010. How students really learn; ripples model of learning (updated Aug 2010) [Online]. Leeds. Available: http://voicethread.com/ – q.b2250451.i11964012 [Accessed 30th September 2011.
RAMSDEN, P. 2003. The nature of good teaching in higher education. Learning to Teach in Higher Education. Third ed. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
ROBINSON, J. A. 1998. Engineering Thinking and Rhetoric. Journal of Engineering Education, 87, 227-229.
SOWEY, E. R. 1995. Teaching Statistics: Making It Memorable. Journal of Statistics Education [online], 3.
SWAMY, R. 2000. Educating engineers: the sustainability challenge. The Structural Engineer, 78, 13-16.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING 2007. Educating Engineers for the 21st Century. London: The Royal Academy of Engineering.
THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING 2010. Engineering graduates for industry. London: The Royal Academy of Engineering.
