Some Thoughts on Andragogy and the Secondary Classroom

When deciding on my degree program, I ran into the first of many personal learning hurdles. What program should I undertake, if I desire to teach teachers?  Should I focus on the subject matter in the field itself (e.g., secondary curriculum), or should I focus on how to teach adult learners?  In other fields, the choice is much clearer:  e.g., to teach English Composition, one majors in the field of English, not adult education. 

I decided on subject matter as a focus and began my journey in Curriculum and Instruction (in-field). However, I soon became frustrated with the material we were learning as it mirrored my undergraduate work:  same theories, same topics, same theorists (for the most part).  Once one has "Piageted," one has "Piageted." I got it, already! 

The “move” to adult education has offered me some powerful new insights into not only how adults learn, but how I learn. Further, the study of andragogical principles has validated some of the choices I made in instructing high school students. I’m continually struck by the parallels of andragogy and self-directed learning as they pertain to secondary students and what school districts now desire of their students. These have made, and will continue to make, a huge difference in the field of secondary education. 

The push for differentiated learning, critical thinking skills, flipped classes, and Whole Child instruction –all recent “buzz” on the education front--clearly reflect andragogical principles, not just pedagogical ones. (It would be interesting to see how teachers would react to a semantical switch.)

As I straddle this fence of teaching teachers, I am wondering why these principles and theories are not offered as part of a secondary educator’s curriculum. Much like Jarvis, I am more interested in human learning than adult learning or children's learning (McCluskey,  Illeris, & Jarvis, 2007, p. 9), and the distinction between the two seems to be becoming more and more blurred, especially when considering adolescents and young adults in the secondary system. 

I suppose then, the difference all of this might make in the field of secondary education the ability of my intended learners (new teachers) to use what is warranted for their students as opposed to tying their hands with canned and prepackaged with nice educational labels by school districts. 

Did some of my high school students surpass me as their teacher? You bet! Many of my students were just far more intelligent than me, and that awareness made a huge difference in the way I taught them. 

Pedagogy had no place in some of my high school classes. In others, it had a role only at the beginning.   

I want aspiring educators to know that and accept this "contradiction of life" ((Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2011, p. 225) instead of fighting for some illusive perceived entitlement of a position of authority. If embraced by secondary educators, the use of andragogical principles would certainly make their work with students more meaningful—for themselves and the students.   

References

McCluskey, H.Y., Illeris, K., & Jarvis, P. (2007). Knowles's andragogy, and models of adult learning. In Merriam S. B., Caffarella R. S., Baumgartner, L. M., Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide (3rd ed.), 83-104. 

The Importance of Student Feedback

I had no idea how important it was to my high school students that I asked them for their feedback on our courses. The impact was far more profound than I ever imagined.

In light of the recent Duncanville issue, where student Jeff Bliss offers criticism to his teacher, the time to discuss listening to student feedback, particularly on how they're learning, is now. Had his teacher taken the time to establish a learning environment where criticism was not considered a form of disrespect, but rather, a constructive dialogue, things might have turned out differently for both of them.

Some of my former students offered their perspective on just how much they appreciated being asked for their feedback.

"Mistah Kurtz, he dead." *

• This has been such a great discussion on teaching and performing! I'd like to follow up on these points in response to "Of Masks and Myths":
  
  Some subjects are not so interesting. If you don't perform, your efforts will only be propitious in nature. Also, teachers aren't always feeling well. They must put on their best performance if they are to reach even the most despondent of students. 
   
  If you aren't enthusiastically passionate about a given topic, your students won't be either.   
   
  

   I think the science part of teaching is in the content and design of a lesson. The delivery of the lesson is an art, a performing art.

Maybe the purpose behind performing is where I struggle with its use in connection to teaching. 

A performer’s purpose is to entertain. A teacher's purpose might better be defined as to motivate others to gain knowledge and understanding.  We could say that effective teachers possess the ability to explain things in an entertaining manner, when it best serves the topic and purpose of the lesson (e.g. an overview of the Holocaust versus explaining the parts of a cell.) However, that alone doesn't make them performers because the objectives differ.

I’ll concede that elementary teachers, in particular, need to be animated and expressive—the younger the student, the more animated one would need to be, perhaps. 

However, that same level of animation won’t fly in a high school class, and I should have been specific in the previous post: effective high school teachers don’t need to be good performers. (Apologies for not clarifying!)

I’ll concede that all high school teachers need to be passionate about their subject. Also, I realize that passion can be attributed to a performer or performance.  However, the purpose of the integration of that passion is different when performing and teaching.  It’s used for different things.

In performance, whether in dance, music, or theatre, passion is used to convey emotion based on the music or script, and through movements, lyrics, dialogue. It's an explicit use of passion. 

Teachers use personal passion for their subjects to positively motivate students to learn the material in those subjects that they might not otherwise desire to learn. It is, hopefully, an inherent use of passion.

I must ask, though: If the subject matter is somewhat dry and uninteresting but nonetheless absolutely valuable, rather than putting a sparkly performance all over it, why don’t we acknowledge its dryness and uninteresting…ness?

For example, I have many issues with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Ugh. I’d just rather eat dirt than read it again. However, I know that it’s a rich text for AP Lit students, and I don’t want to deny them the opportunity. 

Rather than work through the pretense that “isn’t this just the bestest most wonderfullest, most interesting book ever” (i.e. “perform”) and try to muster up enthusiasm and passion where none exists, I was open and honest about my evaluation of it.

“I have a real issue with this book,” I’d begin, “I find it a very slow, boggy read.  Have any of you ever experienced that with a text?”

What would follow would be a powerful entry discussion into a school of literary criticism:  reader response.  As a marginally proficient actor, I probably could have “faked” it, extolling the virtues of this book's structure, but why?  

Why lose out on a more engaging and authentic discourse for the sake of making something seem interesting when, maybe, it isn’t?

I’ll also concede that lesson delivery—if you’re up in the front of the class delivering information—entails good public speaking skills (eye contact, vocal inflection, articulation, appropriate emphasis, and the like).

However, if you view lesson delivery as a performance, you put students in “passive audience” mode because the goal is to present an entertaining explanation. It’s a directive method as opposed to an exchange of ideas.  

Why not explain something to students in the context of their currently held beliefs, experiences, and ideas  of a topic instead of through presentational prowess?   

High school students don’t need us to be entertaining. They need to see our intellectual curiosity of the material and what others think about that material.   

They don’t need us to perform through an illness; they need us to “let them in” on our state of being, to be authentic and frank.  “Guys, I’m not feeling well, today, so bear with me!”

Despondent students don’t need to see any more artifice than they already see day in and day out. They need to see and hear what a mature adult does to cope when things aren't going well.

They need to see the best of who we already are. : )

* From T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"

Of Masks and Myths

Recently, my co-authors and I were guests at a roundtable discussion (a radio show) on effective teaching.  The host and I fundamentally disagreed on one point:  that teachers need to be good performers to be effective. 

His theory was that in order to keep students engaged in the material, the teacher had to be able to present it in an interesting and somewhat entertaining way. 

As an actor, musician, and vocalist, I can tell you:  the skill set is completely different. Performance skills are personal, internal, more "inside" for lack of a better explanation. Teaching skills entail the depth to which one can motivate others. It has nothing to do with me. It's comparing apples and...lettuce.

We derive part of this myth from media. If you do an image search for “teaching”, you’ll see that most of the images include a person in the spotlight, standing at the front of the class with an attentive group of children listening. That’s a performer and an audience. 


That might be teaching, but is that effective teaching?

An audience, even in an audience-participatory piece, never lets go of that sense they are watching, not doing. At any point, the audience member can disengage. That shouldn’t happen within a class. Thus, one shouldn't perform at all.

Even if the teacher must demonstrate for purposes of a lesson, which entails some watching, the time spent in demonstration should be minimal. The goal is to get the students to “do”, moving the teacher from the spotlight to facilitation, which is where the learning happens.

Authentic, ingrained, mastery learning doesn’t happen when we watch someone else do something. 

Another part of the myth is derived from teachers. While I’m sure most of you would heartily agree that the ability to perform doesn’t equate to effective teaching, I challenge you to gauge how much time you spend in the spotlight in your class.  Ten minutes? Twenty?   Thirty?

If your standard approach to lessons entails presentation of information followed by student-regurgitation of some sort, rethink it. How can you create a lesson that hinges more upon students “doing” as opposed to “watching”? 

“But, what,” you may ask, “can I do if I really have to explain something? Besides, they won’t do anything on their own!” 

One lesson I particularly enjoyed was teaching Oedipus to ninth graders. (My justification was that since they were required to read Antigone in tenth grade, this would help them out.) And as is the case with ancient Greek plays, the most difficult aspect of the play was dealing with the Choral Odes. The concept of a Chorus, even with the analogy to the mice in Babe, is rough for 14 yr-olds.  

Rather than cope with the Choral Odes while reading the play, we “jumped” over them. (Blasphemy!) However, after reading the play, student groups dove into the text to determine what the Chorus was supposed to be and do. From there, they worked in groups to analyze a designated, particular ode, based on its location within the play—bonus, they had to read some of the play again. 

After analysis, they then had to work up how the chorus might have presented this ode at this point in the play. Complete with masks, they used their voices and bodies to become the Chorus of Theban Elders.  

Did they “get” the function of the chorus? You bet. Memorable? Yeppers. Me as performer? No way.

The effective teacher steps out of the spotlight. 



Mindy and some of her former students recently published Transparent Teaching of Adolescents, a discussion of effective teaching strategies for high school. Join the conversation!