Week 10 - Finding threads

Week 10 Blog

I am borrowing the format of this blog from my colleagues who reflected on their many previous blogs to find the threads between them.  So what did I discover?

Week one was an identification of the chimp (instructor) and the owl (student) and the curious and wise.  It was a look at identity and how I view myself as instructor and how I view students. I then considered my question, how the teacher/student relationship is challenged through inquiry based learning. This was a nice beginning to identify how this relationship is challenged in a variety of ways including;

1.       relational approach,

2.        sharing of power, openness to challenge and critique, co-construction of knowledge, teacher moves from expert to facilitator, learner assumes responsibility for establishing knowledge base

3.       knowledge created through transformation of experience – with context being critical

4.       Teacher demonstrates or expresses authenticity and empowerment through language

Week two focused on defining terms and being really clear about your definitions. Week 3 urged us to contextualize, to situate and to take ownership of our inferences. How do we get our students to accept that? How is context beneficial in understanding one’s own teaching? This point has me reflecting on students at various stages of their program. If students are exposed to active learning at the beginning of their program rather than the end of their program, how does that differing context shape their thinking and learning? For example, at the beginning of the program, they may have fewer instructors who use active learning techniques to compare to whereas closer to the end of the program may provide more opportunities to have experienced active and deep learning.

Week four explored pedagogical relationships and I was challenged to consider if this is possible with very large classes. Is it possible that connecting with all students in a large classroom would encourage large numbers of students to request your time outside of the classroom and could this lead to teacher burnout? Anna supported the notion that students are more connected to the material when they are connected to the instructor.

Week five, we were each given the gift and mine was articulating constructivism and positivism. This required two weeks and I found myself following up on this again for week six only this time, focusing solely on constructivism. I discovered there is an epistemological constructivist and a pedagogical constructivist. Additionally, I discovered that within the pedagogical arena, there are psychological or cognitive constructivist and the social constructivist.  Although the psychological constructivist is often thought of, I wondered how I might combine the two to ensure a focus on how power is connected to political, economic and social factors.

Week seven was when I discovered that my behaviors/actions were consistent with my thoughts/beliefs, when I wrote, “mixing my thoughts with your thoughts gives me some interesting directions”.  I was demonstrating the value I was espousing, co-construction of knowledge. I was beginning to articulate the broader issues of power relations in the classroom, beyond that of teacher and student. I was connecting social work goals and values to social work pedagogy (disorienting dilemma, perspective transformation and constructivist theory).

Week eight brought me a little deeper considering how reflexive-therapeutic (constructivist) view of social work connects to transformational learning.  Additionally, I was starting to articulate more clearly how power is inherent in relationships and that relationships are key in social work, therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to power relations. I was declaring that social relations can lead to social justice and noting the contradictions between social work values and social work action and the implications for social work education.

Week nine revealed my hidden curriculum and epistemological conflict related to drawing student’s attention to power relations.  I discovered in Schon’s work that it allows instructors to consider ethical implications of our teaching from planning through implementation.

In all of this, I discovered through reflection on action, that my words were demonstrated in action. The weekly blogs allowed me to reflect on my identity, epistemology and ethics as an instructor and my peers and instructors feedback allowed me to engage in co-construction of knowledge and meaning making, two characteristics of constructivism. My pedagogical approach became clearer to me as a result. The culmination of the week’s blogs led me to consider transformational learning and Schon’s work in reflection that provides a space for instructors to consider through reflection the ethical implications of our teaching. Additionally, my hidden curriculum became clear to me. How to help students conceptualize power relations through experiential learning? Could this be an answer to my original question?  How does inquiry based learning challenge relationships in social work education?