Week 8 discussion summary

We started the week off with three questions from LaKrisha:

1.       Compare banking education with the K-12 systems you have knowledge of.  Do you feel this form of education is of benefit to the student in early education?  Does it hinder the student in higher education?         

                                                                                                                            

2.       As adult educators, briefly describe how you propose we move adult students from the oppressive mentality of learning to being independent intellectuals.

3.       At what point does the oppressor become the teacher-student?  Is this a realization encouraged by the oppressed?

I answered the first question talking about how I saw banking education as beneficial in certain situation, like teaching introductory courses or laying a foundation of facts for future use. I also relayed some of my experiences from college and how teachers and professors need to understand their students and adjust their teaching styles.

Claire then discussed her own experience teaching in middle school and how she saw baking education in practice. She relayed how different classes influenced how much banking education occurred. For example, when she taught social studies she had 40 students in a room that was too small so it lead to more lecture/worksheet assignments. However, when she taught journalism the projects had very long deadlines so it gave her the opportunity to get more creative with the learning. She said that teaching this way gave her the opportunity to come up with some of her coolest ideas. It was obvious from reading her post that she enjoyed the creativity of the journalism class over the structured lecture base of the social studies class.

LaKrisha then followed up our post by asking us more questions and we discussed more about how teachers should determine what type of style to use. Whether it should be age/grade based or determined by the individuals in the classroom.

For question 2 we talked a lot about overcoming an oppressive education mentality and getting students more involved in their own education. We all agreed that different learning styles are important regardless of class size. Claire talked about how she has had a class of only 7 and still has seen all four different learning styles represented. We also talked about getting both professors and students out of their comfort zones and encouraging them to try different tactics for learning information. Personal experiences regarding classes and things we have tried to break up the routine of classes were again offered to bring more substance to the discussion.

Question 3 became a summary of the topic of sorts for the other two discussions. We again talked about how to break the oppressive education system and how difficult this can be because schools are inherently setup in such a manner. We all agreed that the democratic approach is an effective way, and LaKrisha summed up the discussion with a quote from Sir Ken Robinson who state “We get educated out of our creativity.”

Our group is definitely coming together and getting much more comfortable at completeing discussions. Each member is bringing valuable personal experience and good insights to foster healthy and creative discussions based on the readings. 

To further our bibliography, I have located the following sources in regards to High Impact Practices.

Annotated Bibliography

Kuh, G. D. (2008, September 22). Why Integration and Engagement are Essential to Effective Educational Practice in the Twenty-first Century. Peer review : emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education, 10(4), 27-28.

In this article Kuh discusses six processes of high impact practices that first year students engage in. First is the devotion of time to a purposeful task, second is the demand to interact with faculty and other students about substantial matters. Third, is the experience of diversity through people who are different than them. Fourth, is the opportunity for frequent feedback in their opportunities, fifth is the opportunity to see how learning works on and off campus and finally sixth is the deep learning they participate in that helps them put their learning into context of a broader perspective.

Malika Tukibateva, R. M. (2014). High Impact Practices and the First-Year Student. New Directions for Institutional Research, 2013(160), 19-35.

This article discusses three different types of service learning; Service Learning, Learning Communities and Undergraduate Research. It discusses different examples of each type and studies their impacts on first year students. Ultimately it found that Service Learning takes place among smaller institutions, Learning Communities occur at large institutions and Undergraduate Research is the least utilized option by first year students. Data and regression analysis are used to support their findings.

O’Neill, N. (2010). Internships as a High Impact Practice: Some Reflections on Quality. Peer review : emerging trends and key debates in undergraduate education, 12(4), 4-8.

This article builds on the George Kuh’s six principles and delves deeper into internships and their effectiveness as high impact learning. O’Neill discusses what constitutes an internship, how universities can create them and how it takes everyone involved, from the student to the faculty, the advisor and the employer to make the experience worthwhile.

Week 4 Group Discussion Board Summary

The week started off well.  Nick acted as our facilitator and posted 4 questions for us to select 3 to answer - listed below. I took the role of scribe and LaKrisha took the role of analyst.

1. How can a historical foundation be beneficial to all who engage in the education of adults?
2. Why are social movements and adult education interdependent on each other?
3. What benefits does a social movement bring to both the community and adult education?
4. From The Profession and Practice of Adult Education, compare and contrast the different types of historical interpretation. How does understanding these interpretations benefit adult education?

I appreciated having the option of selecting three from the list to dive into. LaKrisha and I both selected the first question dealing with the benefits of understanding the historical foundations.  We looked at both adult education in general as well as an institutions history.  The bottom line was that we must get to the root of where these decisions and institutional pathways began in order to understand where they are today.  This will also help us in looking to the future.

We both focused on social movements and adult education being interdependent on each other.  I gave a brief breakdown of the movements in the Rewriting the History of Education article. LaKrisha made a good point that social movements cause people to look at the “why” of their actions and beliefs.  She said, “They become positively inquisitive.” I think this is a great way to think about next level thinking.

Nick continued to push us to next level thinking ourselves throughout the week by asking us to dive deeper in response back to each one of our replies.  And I believe we did just that.  It definitely turned into more of a back and forth than traditional discussion boards by Nick asking us to go a step further.  He did a great job of connecting the original questions to the reading and even more so in his follow up questions even bringing in material from last week connecting to prior learning in the course.

When LaKrisha was speaking to the benefits of a social movement to a community Nick asked, “Do you think formal adult education programs should be more active in teaching social movement learning, similar to what Myles Horton did in Tennessee with the Highlander Folk School, or is a social movement more of an informal education environment?” This is a great example of connecting the dots through the course.

Social movements do benefit adult and community education. These both fulfill a need.  Institutions were built to fulfill the need to educate the population.  Social movements are what continue to change the world of education.  Individual student needs as well as collectivistic needs of the community and workforce continue to shape the world of academia. LaKrisha gave a real world example of social movement calling for change with a program her organization uses called Getting Ahead.  While I attempted to give some advice in building buy in from certain cultures we were reminded that this can be difficult without additional resources and in this can money to pay graduates of the program to return to help in some way.