With all the amazing synchronous activities on Day 3, I barely got to engage in the Day 3 materials in our STEM-H and Critical Digital Pedagogy course. So I'm skipping my reflection there, and opting to write today about today's topic: Open Pedagogy.
Open Pedagogy was my gateway into Critical Digital Pedagogy. Open Pedagogy literally changed me as teacher. It was all Rajiv Jhangiani's fault. He came and spoke at Roger Williams my first year as an OER fellow (I had already bought into OER a few years prior) and he described projects where students were creators of content.
And all of a sudden I asked myself "What would a non-majors science textbook look like if it were written by non-majors?"
It looks like these websites.
I've written about the project for the Open Pedagogy Notebook here, but I recently sat down and thought about some of the theoretical pieces that, while I didn't really consciously think of them when designing the project, absolutely shaped the design of the project because they are deeply embedded in my brain.
First up is an education favorite, Vygotsky. Vygotsky (1978) wrote about the Zone of Proximal Development, or the ZPD. Seriously, the ZPD was one of the first things I learned about in my doctoral educations courses and I had no idea how important he was going to be in shaping the ways in which I think about how students learn. Basically, the ZPD is the place in which students learn - it's distance between what a learner can do without help and what that same learner can do with support from a “more knowledgeable other.” This more knowledgeable other can be a teacher, but it can also be a student further along in their abilities - it's basically a cognitive development justification for putting students in groups to do work. Students usually have trouble progressing past a certain point without the help of others. Conversely, if the more knowledgeable other is too far in their abilities, it can also frustrate the student - you cannot present material that is too far past their abilities an expect them to learn it without frustration.
Which leads me to my favorite concept in the world: "The Curse of Knowledge," Camerer et al. (1989). This is the idea that experts have spent so much time working within their field of expertise that they forget how they learned it - also known as an Expert Blind Spot (EBS). The EBS is where experts in a field will use powerful organizing principles, formalisms, and methods of analysis that serve as the foundation of that discipline when teaching the discipline, rather than using appropriate pedagogies for novices (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). I'm pretty sure any science person reading this can think of that professor that was actually brilliant at what they did, but was a terrible teacher as a result.
So I'm really interested in how these two concepts interact, especially in non-majors courses. If a professor's knowledge on a subject is so far distanced from that of a student, students will have a difficult time learning from them. Usually, non-majors courses are usually taught by new faculty, faculty that have more teaching experience, faculty with more pedagogical knowledge (not always the case, but I generalize here), so luckily the ZPD is shortened considerably. However, a place where the distance between student and faculty knowledge manifests itself in in textbook selection. A very common student complaint is that textbooks contain too much or too in depth material and the students lock up and have difficulty learning from them.
This is where student created textbooks and/or content comes into play. In my course, I don't need a deep involved chapter on DNA in order for my students to learn about DNA. I need some of the basics, and then examples of how DNA is used, and abused, in society. My students, who have knowledge from their own field of study to draw on in some cases, can research and write content that a) is more relevant to their peers than most content written for non-majors, and b) is at just a level higher (by literally one course) for incoming students to my class. The ZPD between the authors and the students has shrunk considerably.
Robin DeRosa described students as content creators as "an anti-elite way of thinking about expertise," in her vidcast for today. One of the most important messages that I try to get across to my students is that they, even as non-scientists, have a voice in science. A lot of my students have anxiety in science courses because of absolutely horrible experiences in middle or high school. This leads to lowered confidence in their ability to "do science." I hear it every day. Well, usually only at the beginning. Giving them the power to edit and contribute to the education of future students in the course - anecdotally (and hopefully soon supported by research) their confidence in science grows.
We are not the gatekeepers of knowledge.
References:
Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Weber, M. (1989). The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232-1254.
Nathan, M. J., & Petrosino, A. (2003). Expert blind spot among preservice teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 40(4), 905-928. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312040004905
Open Pedagogy was my gateway into Critical Digital Pedagogy. Open Pedagogy literally changed me as teacher. It was all Rajiv Jhangiani's fault. He came and spoke at Roger Williams my first year as an OER fellow (I had already bought into OER a few years prior) and he described projects where students were creators of content.
And all of a sudden I asked myself "What would a non-majors science textbook look like if it were written by non-majors?"
It looks like these websites.
I've written about the project for the Open Pedagogy Notebook here, but I recently sat down and thought about some of the theoretical pieces that, while I didn't really consciously think of them when designing the project, absolutely shaped the design of the project because they are deeply embedded in my brain.
First up is an education favorite, Vygotsky. Vygotsky (1978) wrote about the Zone of Proximal Development, or the ZPD. Seriously, the ZPD was one of the first things I learned about in my doctoral educations courses and I had no idea how important he was going to be in shaping the ways in which I think about how students learn. Basically, the ZPD is the place in which students learn - it's distance between what a learner can do without help and what that same learner can do with support from a “more knowledgeable other.” This more knowledgeable other can be a teacher, but it can also be a student further along in their abilities - it's basically a cognitive development justification for putting students in groups to do work. Students usually have trouble progressing past a certain point without the help of others. Conversely, if the more knowledgeable other is too far in their abilities, it can also frustrate the student - you cannot present material that is too far past their abilities an expect them to learn it without frustration.
Which leads me to my favorite concept in the world: "The Curse of Knowledge," Camerer et al. (1989). This is the idea that experts have spent so much time working within their field of expertise that they forget how they learned it - also known as an Expert Blind Spot (EBS). The EBS is where experts in a field will use powerful organizing principles, formalisms, and methods of analysis that serve as the foundation of that discipline when teaching the discipline, rather than using appropriate pedagogies for novices (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). I'm pretty sure any science person reading this can think of that professor that was actually brilliant at what they did, but was a terrible teacher as a result.
So I'm really interested in how these two concepts interact, especially in non-majors courses. If a professor's knowledge on a subject is so far distanced from that of a student, students will have a difficult time learning from them. Usually, non-majors courses are usually taught by new faculty, faculty that have more teaching experience, faculty with more pedagogical knowledge (not always the case, but I generalize here), so luckily the ZPD is shortened considerably. However, a place where the distance between student and faculty knowledge manifests itself in in textbook selection. A very common student complaint is that textbooks contain too much or too in depth material and the students lock up and have difficulty learning from them.
This is where student created textbooks and/or content comes into play. In my course, I don't need a deep involved chapter on DNA in order for my students to learn about DNA. I need some of the basics, and then examples of how DNA is used, and abused, in society. My students, who have knowledge from their own field of study to draw on in some cases, can research and write content that a) is more relevant to their peers than most content written for non-majors, and b) is at just a level higher (by literally one course) for incoming students to my class. The ZPD between the authors and the students has shrunk considerably.
Robin DeRosa described students as content creators as "an anti-elite way of thinking about expertise," in her vidcast for today. One of the most important messages that I try to get across to my students is that they, even as non-scientists, have a voice in science. A lot of my students have anxiety in science courses because of absolutely horrible experiences in middle or high school. This leads to lowered confidence in their ability to "do science." I hear it every day. Well, usually only at the beginning. Giving them the power to edit and contribute to the education of future students in the course - anecdotally (and hopefully soon supported by research) their confidence in science grows.
We are not the gatekeepers of knowledge.
References:
Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Weber, M. (1989). The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232-1254.
Nathan, M. J., & Petrosino, A. (2003). Expert blind spot among preservice teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 40(4), 905-928. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312040004905
Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press.
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