In your educational practice, do you tend to use the reductionist approach or a more holistic approach to improve your practice? How could you overcome the limitations of each approach?
In my student teaching I unintentionally focused on the reductionist approach. I primarily tried to break down concepts to their smallest ideas in an attempt to scaffold the main ideas for the students. After reading this chapter I realized that I was ignoring the holistic approach.
I think the best way to overcome the limitations of each approach is by integrating both approaches into my teaching to make sure students do not miss the big picture. The reductionist approach helped my students understand difficult concepts, but they missed out on understanding the major concept of the lesson.
Study Question: In your educational practice, do you tend to use the reductionist approach or a more holistic approach to improve your practice? How could you overcome the limitations in each approach? I think the very fact that reductionism works well in traditional sciences and engineering is reason in itself for me to believe that it is not the best way to understand human cognition. From my experiences with understanding my own learning and cognition in combination with my student teaching experiences, I view humans as absolutely more complex than machines. In my opinion, there will forever be things about the human brain and other related systems science will never be able to understand or explain. It is for these reasons why I mostly use a holistic approach in my educational practices, as it agrees with my belief that there are several factors, or possible explanations that can contribute to better understanding cognition. For example, when a student is consistently making errors in spelling, I would not simply assume that through analyzing the student’s error pattern, I could identify why they were struggling. I would instead use a holistic approach that would allow me to look at all the possible factors, including their error patterns, that could be contributing to the student’s struggle with spelling. In order to identify possible factors, I would look at the student beyond their identity as just a student, but at other parts of their lives that make them an individual, such as social, linguistic, and economic factors. I think as Dr. Inoue states in Chapter 3, viewing cognition through the middle way, or in my case incorporating aspects of reductionism into my holistic approach, will aid in me not limiting myself to one idea of thinking.
In your educational practice, can you find any cases in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts? How should we understand and approach the complex system?
My first thought about this issue is the analogy between deconstructing a computer verses deconstructing a human. When using the reductionism approach, one can easily take apart the components of a computer, put them back together, and the computer will turn on. If this same approach is taken with a living organism, where the organism is physically separated into pieces and put back together, it would clearly not survive. The point is, treating humans or (anything living) as something that can be deconstructed into parts that will make a whole again is too simplistic and unrealistic. The whole of a human being exceeds the parts that have been reduced and simplified in order to make sense of the whole.
I think most instances in education are examples of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. When we narrowly define our approach to education, we do not meet the needs of our students. Our students are complex human beings who do not resemble computers. When a student faces an academic challenge, the educator must consider the complexity of the barriers and avoid using the reductionism when searching for solutions. We should approach students as multidimensional, complex, and capable people who possess cultural capital, with various strengths, unique backgrounds, experiences and world views that influence who they are and their interactions with the world.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
I have a student who was top of the class for the first half of the year in every subject. This boy was first to raise his hand in everything and was the class facilitator, going around and helping everyone with their work. In February, his parents started going through a messy divorce that has hindered the students focus and learning. The student comes to school with bags under his eyes and seems to have a high level of anxiety. He has struggled with subjects that he use to excel in and his social interaction with others has slowly decreased as well. As an educator, I try and separate time to help the student with academics one on one and then talk about the divorce issue together. Never do I mix academics and their social life when it comes to this situation. I see that this method has helped increase the focus of the student because they know they will have time to open up to me about their home life, but when I pul him out for academics, it is time to get to work.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
I can definitely remember one student who seemed to struggle mightily in this regard last semester. Such was her struggle that my initial research desire is to focus on problem solving skills, as she would raising her hand for extra help just as soon as she moved onto another question or whenever i stopped giving out instruction. This student was an ELL, so that could be a big source of her lack of confidennce in many of the answers she has to questions, always asking me to come by and double check. This girl was also a new student to the school despite 8th grade being the last grade before high school, so any ZPD that a peer could bring her to might not have been there, as she might not have had time to make friends that she feels comfortable enough with to ask for help.
If an educator is to acquire takumi as a traditional carpenter does, what would the process look like? And if you want your student to acquire takumi in the subject area you teach, what would that process look like.
I think an educator could acquire takumi by means of mentor relationship with an experienced and knowledgeable teacher. Unlike the student teaching experience where a teacher candidate is placed with a teacher for a semester or a year, this mentor relationship would last throughout the teaching candidate’s education and into their professional teaching experience. Both the teacher candidate and the mentor teacher would observe each other teach and have regular sit down sessions where they would discuss what they thought went well and what could be improved. Through this extended mentorship, the teacher candidate would begin to develop takumi. I find it very difficult to think of how to encourage the development of takumi in my students. It seems that a major element of takumi is exposure to the master’s work through an extended period of time. If a teacher were to become THE subject area teacher for a group of students as they continue through high school, then I could see students having the opportunity to develop takumi. But in reality where a teacher only has his students for a semester or even a year, all the teacher can do is to get the students to become familiar with the how a professional approaches the subject. One element of Social Studies takumi could be using one’s knowledge of a historical source’s context to understand and analyze that text. of the text. The process of building this takumi could begin with the teacher modeling how to approach a primary source through a think aloud activity. The teacher could then have students explicitly note the contextual information for the sources they read. Gradually, the teacher will stop asking for the students to note a source’s context and instead simply ask guiding analysis questions that require that students already have considered the source’s context.
Study Question: For educators, what are the benefits and drawbacks of conceptualizing learning as information processing represented in the diagram on the previous page? Should we conceptualize learning as a set of information processing? Could there be anything missing there?
One benefit of an educator to conceptualize learning as the information processing model, is that you would expect that all of your students are capable of putting the knowledge they are learning into their short and long term memory as you, the educator input the information. However, there are so many drawbacks to viewing this model. Learning is a complex activity, and is not as simple as the diagram depicts it to be. If it truly was as easy as the diagram depicts, a teacher would go to class and simply lecture the information to the students, the students would put it in their memory, and then output that knowledge on a test. But this model is lacking the more in-depth processes that are needed for students to ever put knowledge into their memory. As discussed later in this chapter, learning is so complex, and our brains our thinking (perceiving) multiple things at one time. This model is lacking the multi-dimensional aspects of how the brain works, and how memory is stored. What is missing in this model, and something that all educators should be aware of, is that memory occurs through association, comparing or connecting new information to previously learned information. The diagram is missing the multiple layers, which I like to think of as a web, in which the new knowledge is being connected to previously learned knowledge.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator? There was a student who worked very hard, persisted in solving problems, loved school and succeeded academically. Overtime I noticed that she started to seem disengaged, was not making connections with the content and was constantly struggling to keep up academically and socially. I then found out the student’s father had just gone to prison. As you mentioned in the book the student was, ‘so invested in this social and personal issue, that what she was learning in the class was getting mixed up with the process of the student’s social identity development.’ For this particular student I worked with her one on one with academics, and then during recess we would sit together and she would talk to me about how she was feeling. I think that providing this student with a safe environment that she could open up and talk about her emotions really helped her. I think that as an educator you can provide your students with special one on one time for academics and set aside a different time where you can provide them with opportunities to discuss the current social and personal issue that s causing them to struggle. Overall there are personal issues students might be dealing with that can affect their academic success, knowing this and figuring out ways to help your students is so important.
Study question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
In my student teaching placement there is a lot students who have a parent that is in the military. I have noticed that two of the students in my class have recently been struggling academically and socially. They have been very emotional and have been needing extra support with their school work. I recently found out that both of the students who have been struggling recently had their father deployed. This made me realize that the students have been emotional and unable to focus on school work because they have been struggling with not having their father at home. As a teacher I have been very flexible and open with the students. I tell them both that whenever they are feeling emotional or sad they can take a moment and go back to their desk and put their head down or sit outside for a little bit. I also try and support these students and give them extra attention and support because I know they are feeling lonely and upset. As their teacher I care about them and want to make sure that I can be there for them as much as possible.
If an educator is to acquire takumi as a traditional carpenter does, what would the process look like? And if you want your student to acquire takumi in the subject area you teach, what would the process look like?
First and foremost I believe educators need to embrace the fact that we will never be done cultivating our craft, it is instead a lifelong process that inherently involves long amounts of time, and therefore dedication. Our USD program seems to have some similarities to the carpenter’s lifelong process, such as observing a master (practicum), helping with minor tasks (practicum), and gradually gaining more responsibility and autonomy while simultaneously building experience and longevity (student teaching). However, after the program it is up to us to continue establishing support networks that allows us to reflect and grow with others to reap the benefits of multiple perspectives and others’ expertise.
Since takumi is driven by a “deem omoi and sincere respect for the practice,” our students must have at least a touch of omoi for the educational experience. It is our job to do what we can to create meaning for the students so that they can create their own value that they attach to school, so the process would involve tapping into the students as humans and connecting the subject matter to them in a way that gives it purpose. Ultimately, takumi has to come from the students as it is a process, not product, oriented practice. It will be a messy process with lots of mistakes, but ultimately just takes time, experience, and “mileage.”
Q. (p. 46): Could you find any dialectic relationship between two or more factors that constitute your educational practice? What does it tell you about your teaching?
I would say that I am often guilty of one-directional thinking in my teaching practice. Sometimes I naively assume that a student’s behavior is a reaction to my teaching, when in fact, that student is coming into my classroom with his or her own complex, personal story. It is important for me to constantly keep my one-directional thinking “in-check,” and understand that teaching, learning, and behaviors that happen in the classroom occur as a dialectic relationship. In other words, most of the relationships that I see as one-directional are actually complex, dynamic, dialectical relationships.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
I have one student who has gender identity issues and suffers from severe anxiety. She sometimes cannot attend school because the anxiety is so bad. One good days, the student participates in class and is focused, but other days this student is easily distracted and disconnects from the class. As an educator, I do my best to create a non-threatening environment for this student. I let her sit on the couch during class or listen to music. I am sure not to single the student out or put her on the spot. Essentially I do everything I can to make the student feel comfortable in class. I have also been in contact with her mother through email and we work together to put sure that this student gets her work done. Her mom has given me a lot of valuable insight into this student's struggles and what works and doesn't work for her. Deadlines and pressure give the student increased anxiety, so I am sure to provide her with extra time to complete her assignments.
In your educational practice, do you tend to use the reductionist approach or a more holistic approach to improve your practice? How could you overcome the limitations of each approach?
ReplyDeleteIn my student teaching I unintentionally focused on the reductionist approach. I primarily tried to break down concepts to their smallest ideas in an attempt to scaffold the main ideas for the students. After reading this chapter I realized that I was ignoring the holistic approach.
I think the best way to overcome the limitations of each approach is by integrating both approaches into my teaching to make sure students do not miss the big picture. The reductionist approach helped my students understand difficult concepts, but they missed out on understanding the major concept of the lesson.
Study Question: In your educational practice, do you tend to use the reductionist approach or a more holistic approach to improve your practice? How could you overcome the limitations in each approach?
ReplyDeleteI think the very fact that reductionism works well in traditional sciences and engineering is reason in itself for me to believe that it is not the best way to understand human cognition. From my experiences with understanding my own learning and cognition in combination with my student teaching experiences, I view humans as absolutely more complex than machines. In my opinion, there will forever be things about the human brain and other related systems science will never be able to understand or explain. It is for these reasons why I mostly use a holistic approach in my educational practices, as it agrees with my belief that there are several factors, or possible explanations that can contribute to better understanding cognition. For example, when a student is consistently making errors in spelling, I would not simply assume that through analyzing the student’s error pattern, I could identify why they were struggling. I would instead use a holistic approach that would allow me to look at all the possible factors, including their error patterns, that could be contributing to the student’s struggle with spelling. In order to identify possible factors, I would look at the student beyond their identity as just a student, but at other parts of their lives that make them an individual, such as social, linguistic, and economic factors. I think as Dr. Inoue states in Chapter 3, viewing cognition through the middle way, or in my case incorporating aspects of reductionism into my holistic approach, will aid in me not limiting myself to one idea of thinking.
In your educational practice, can you find any cases in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts? How should we understand and approach the complex system?
ReplyDeleteMy first thought about this issue is the analogy between deconstructing a computer verses deconstructing a human. When using the reductionism approach, one can easily take apart the components of a computer, put them back together, and the computer will turn on. If this same approach is taken with a living organism, where the organism is physically separated into pieces and put back together, it would clearly not survive. The point is, treating humans or (anything living) as something that can be deconstructed into parts that will make a whole again is too simplistic and unrealistic. The whole of a human being exceeds the parts that have been reduced and simplified in order to make sense of the whole.
I think most instances in education are examples of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. When we narrowly define our approach to education, we do not meet the needs of our students. Our students are complex human beings who do not resemble computers. When a student faces an academic challenge, the educator must consider the complexity of the barriers and avoid using the reductionism when searching for solutions. We should approach students as multidimensional, complex, and capable people who possess cultural capital, with various strengths, unique backgrounds, experiences and world views that influence who they are and their interactions with the world.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
ReplyDeleteI have a student who was top of the class for the first half of the year in every subject. This boy was first to raise his hand in everything and was the class facilitator, going around and helping everyone with their work. In February, his parents started going through a messy divorce that has hindered the students focus and learning. The student comes to school with bags under his eyes and seems to have a high level of anxiety. He has struggled with subjects that he use to excel in and his social interaction with others has slowly decreased as well. As an educator, I try and separate time to help the student with academics one on one and then talk about the divorce issue together. Never do I mix academics and their social life when it comes to this situation. I see that this method has helped increase the focus of the student because they know they will have time to open up to me about their home life, but when I pul him out for academics, it is time to get to work.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
ReplyDeleteI can definitely remember one student who seemed to struggle mightily in this regard last semester. Such was her struggle that my initial research desire is to focus on problem solving skills, as she would raising her hand for extra help just as soon as she moved onto another question or whenever i stopped giving out instruction. This student was an ELL, so that could be a big source of her lack of confidennce in many of the answers she has to questions, always asking me to come by and double check. This girl was also a new student to the school despite 8th grade being the last grade before high school, so any ZPD that a peer could bring her to might not have been there, as she might not have had time to make friends that she feels comfortable enough with to ask for help.
If an educator is to acquire takumi as a traditional carpenter does, what would the process look like? And if you want your student to acquire takumi in the subject area you teach, what would that process look like.
ReplyDeleteI think an educator could acquire takumi by means of mentor relationship with an experienced and knowledgeable teacher. Unlike the student teaching experience where a teacher candidate is placed with a teacher for a semester or a year, this mentor relationship would last throughout the teaching candidate’s education and into their professional teaching experience. Both the teacher candidate and the mentor teacher would observe each other teach and have regular sit down sessions where they would discuss what they thought went well and what could be improved. Through this extended mentorship, the teacher candidate would begin to develop takumi.
I find it very difficult to think of how to encourage the development of takumi in my students. It seems that a major element of takumi is exposure to the master’s work through an extended period of time. If a teacher were to become THE subject area teacher for a group of students as they continue through high school, then I could see students having the opportunity to develop takumi. But in reality where a teacher only has his students for a semester or even a year, all the teacher can do is to get the students to become familiar with the how a professional approaches the subject. One element of Social Studies takumi could be using one’s knowledge of a historical source’s context to understand and analyze that text. of the text. The process of building this takumi could begin with the teacher modeling how to approach a primary source through a think aloud activity. The teacher could then have students explicitly note the contextual information for the sources they read. Gradually, the teacher will stop asking for the students to note a source’s context and instead simply ask guiding analysis questions that require that students already have considered the source’s context.
Study Question: For educators, what are the benefits and drawbacks of conceptualizing learning as information processing represented in the diagram on the previous page? Should we conceptualize learning as a set of information processing? Could there be anything missing there?
ReplyDeleteOne benefit of an educator to conceptualize learning as the information processing model, is that you would expect that all of your students are capable of putting the knowledge they are learning into their short and long term memory as you, the educator input the information. However, there are so many drawbacks to viewing this model. Learning is a complex activity, and is not as simple as the diagram depicts it to be. If it truly was as easy as the diagram depicts, a teacher would go to class and simply lecture the information to the students, the students would put it in their memory, and then output that knowledge on a test. But this model is lacking the more in-depth processes that are needed for students to ever put knowledge into their memory. As discussed later in this chapter, learning is so complex, and our brains our thinking (perceiving) multiple things at one time. This model is lacking the multi-dimensional aspects of how the brain works, and how memory is stored. What is missing in this model, and something that all educators should be aware of, is that memory occurs through association, comparing or connecting new information to previously learned information. The diagram is missing the multiple layers, which I like to think of as a web, in which the new knowledge is being connected to previously learned knowledge.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
ReplyDeleteThere was a student who worked very hard, persisted in solving problems, loved school and succeeded academically. Overtime I noticed that she started to seem disengaged, was not making connections with the content and was constantly struggling to keep up academically and socially. I then found out the student’s father had just gone to prison. As you mentioned in the book the student was, ‘so invested in this social and personal issue, that what she was learning in the class was getting mixed up with the process of the student’s social identity development.’ For this particular student I worked with her one on one with academics, and then during recess we would sit together and she would talk to me about how she was feeling. I think that providing this student with a safe environment that she could open up and talk about her emotions really helped her. I think that as an educator you can provide your students with special one on one time for academics and set aside a different time where you can provide them with opportunities to discuss the current social and personal issue that s causing them to struggle. Overall there are personal issues students might be dealing with that can affect their academic success, knowing this and figuring out ways to help your students is so important.
Study question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
ReplyDeleteIn my student teaching placement there is a lot students who have a parent that is in the military. I have noticed that two of the students in my class have recently been struggling academically and socially. They have been very emotional and have been needing extra support with their school work. I recently found out that both of the students who have been struggling recently had their father deployed. This made me realize that the students have been emotional and unable to focus on school work because they have been struggling with not having their father at home. As a teacher I have been very flexible and open with the students. I tell them both that whenever they are feeling emotional or sad they can take a moment and go back to their desk and put their head down or sit outside for a little bit. I also try and support these students and give them extra attention and support because I know they are feeling lonely and upset. As their teacher I care about them and want to make sure that I can be there for them as much as possible.
If an educator is to acquire takumi as a traditional carpenter does, what would the process look like? And if you want your student to acquire takumi in the subject area you teach, what would the process look like?
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost I believe educators need to embrace the fact that we will never be done cultivating our craft, it is instead a lifelong process that inherently involves long amounts of time, and therefore dedication. Our USD program seems to have some similarities to the carpenter’s lifelong process, such as observing a master (practicum), helping with minor tasks (practicum), and gradually gaining more responsibility and autonomy while simultaneously building experience and longevity (student teaching). However, after the program it is up to us to continue establishing support networks that allows us to reflect and grow with others to reap the benefits of multiple perspectives and others’ expertise.
Since takumi is driven by a “deem omoi and sincere respect for the practice,” our students must have at least a touch of omoi for the educational experience. It is our job to do what we can to create meaning for the students so that they can create their own value that they attach to school, so the process would involve tapping into the students as humans and connecting the subject matter to them in a way that gives it purpose. Ultimately, takumi has to come from the students as it is a process, not product, oriented practice. It will be a messy process with lots of mistakes, but ultimately just takes time, experience, and “mileage.”
Elizabeth Grant
ReplyDeleteQ. (p. 46): Could you find any dialectic relationship between two or more factors that constitute your educational practice? What does it tell you about your teaching?
I would say that I am often guilty of one-directional thinking in my teaching practice. Sometimes I naively assume that a student’s behavior is a reaction to my teaching, when in fact, that student is coming into my classroom with his or her own complex, personal story. It is important for me to constantly keep my one-directional thinking “in-check,” and understand that teaching, learning, and behaviors that happen in the classroom occur as a dialectic relationship. In other words, most of the relationships that I see as one-directional are actually complex, dynamic, dialectical relationships.
Study Question: Among the students you know, think of a student who often forgets what you taught and struggles academically. What are the possible social and personal issues related to the struggles? What kind of help can you give as an educator?
ReplyDeleteI have one student who has gender identity issues and suffers from severe anxiety. She sometimes cannot attend school because the anxiety is so bad. One good days, the student participates in class and is focused, but other days this student is easily distracted and disconnects from the class. As an educator, I do my best to create a non-threatening environment for this student. I let her sit on the couch during class or listen to music. I am sure not to single the student out or put her on the spot. Essentially I do everything I can to make the student feel comfortable in class. I have also been in contact with her mother through email and we work together to put sure that this student gets her work done. Her mom has given me a lot of valuable insight into this student's struggles and what works and doesn't work for her. Deadlines and pressure give the student increased anxiety, so I am sure to provide her with extra time to complete her assignments.