SitCog learning right in front of my eyes!

I recently had an opportunity to experience SitCog learning, quite by accident. My school has assigned me to tutor English to a Kindergarten student in who is a non-English speaker. Omar[1] is of Persian descent, and is non-verbal since he has been in the USA only since September. I have been meeting with Omar three times a week for about a month within in his classroom. 

In one of my first experiences with Omar, we went to a quiet corner to learn. He saw a pile of pillows and pointed to it. I said “Do you want to sit on a pillow?” He nodded. In the next minute or two, I narrated the situation using “pillow” in various contexts: “I want a pillow too. Can you bring me a pillow? Let’s put the pillow here. Let’s sit on the pillows. This is my pillow. That is your pillow.” We continued to use the pillows for the sessions. 

Several sessions later, we were working on a Goldilock's story designed to teach “big”, “medium” and “small”. There were many opportunities in the picture in the student workbook to apply adjectives of size. He struggled in pointing to the “big bear”, had a little more success with “big hat”, and “big robe”. But when we got to “big pillow”, he succeeded immediately and smiled. My information processing 'persona' told me that he had “encoded” the adjectives into LTM and was now processing the information correctly. However, after the session ended, I began to reflect on this moment of success. I recalled reading this:

“…remembering arises through interactions with the environment, and the concept of memory becomes nonexistent or irrelevant to an explanation of knowledge and learning, replaced by an emphasis on the tuning of attention and perception; this is perceptual learning.” (Young, M.F., cited by Artino, A., 2013)

The task of identifying the “big” pillow was easy because he recognized it, not from memory, but from having had an experience with a real pillow. We had had a shared interaction with it in an authentic situation. He perceived the pillow in the picture to be the same as the pillow we were sitting on. 

In another session, I saw how lack of context resulted in no learning. The task was to paste hats on different characters - a clown, a cowboy, a chef and a firefighter- in a mini-book. Despite my efforts to connect meaning to these words, it was hopeless. Omar had no context with which to complete the task. Worse, it cannot be assumed that Omar has seen any of these professions in his own culture.

Omar’s learning illustrates the powerful impact of situated learning. As teachers, we do not always see the opportunities to use SitCog, even when they are right in front of us. We seem to default to the information processing approach: teach students to store information and retrieve it from LTM as needed. The SigCog approach reverses this order: begin with context; then use that to deepen understanding, so that learners can “tune” their perception, making abstract thinking more accessible.

I’m hoping to use more SigCog with Omar. And the next time, I’ll know it when I see it.

References:

Artino, T.R., It’s Not All in Your Head: Viewing Graduate Medical Education Through the Lens of Situated Cognition, Journal of Graduate Medical Education, June 2013

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[1] Names have been changed to fictitious ones.

"Dice" what?

When I first read about Piaget’s processes or “functions” called assimilation and accommodation I wondered how students learning a foreign language use these processes to learn.  However, I quickly realized that English cognates are one of the most powerful schemes students can access. Although this skill requires some literacy, even students in 2^nd grade can use assimilation to decode a word such as “carro”. Direct instruction isn’t even necessary to teach students this skill. I simply ask students to conference with each other to come up with an answer. Students can triple their vocabulary once they use assimilation to look for an English word inside a Spanish word.

“False” cognates cause disequilibrium and require students to use accommodation to re-wire their existing English scheme. For example, the word "dice" in Spanish means "he/she says" (its pronunciaton is "DEE-say"). This causes disequilibrium on two levels – one for its meaning and the other for the way that it is pronounced. In this case, I do not want students to use assimilation since this will negatively influence the Spanish word I want them to learn. If I call attention to the fact that it looks like the word for game playing cubes in English, students will have to hurdle over the English scheme to get to the Spanish meaning every time they encounter the word. Using visual aids help remind them of the meaning, and I must use a lot of repetition with these types of words in order to “replace” their existing scheme until they simply don’t see or hear the English word nor form a mental image of “dice” in English.

Yet, I sometimes make the mistake of using a cognate with the assumption that students already have schemes in place for that word. This can cause disequilibrium among some students.  For example, when presented with the word “burrito” most students exclaimed “Oh, a burrito!” But what of the students who didn’t have any mental image? When I think about the sentence from the perspective of one of these students, I get this: "He eats [a burr?, a burp?, a butterfly?]”. Even showing students a visual may not enable them to connect with this word if they don’t have a scheme in place. This lack of scheme both for the extracting the English cognate as well as lacking a mental model affects students’ comprehension, as well as their assessment. Importantly, unless I know that they are experiencing a disequilibrium for burrito, I won’t know the real reason for their low achievement. 

Disequilibrium and equilibrium feel like a pendulum between frustration and joy, something all people experience daily. Just today, I experienced disequilibrium when I came across this clue in the New York Times Sunday Crossword: “British terminals”. Airport terminals? Computer terminals? Batteries? Nope. Equiibrium (and delight) emerged when I discovered the answer to be…“zeds”.

References:

Ormrod, J. E. (2012). Human learning (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Britt, M, “The Psych Files” podcast, Retrieved from: www.thepsychfiles.com/2009/01/episode-84-how-to-make-learning-fun-again-part-1-piaget/

The Invisible Contract

The individual components of the relationship between teacher and student are like an ongoing dance - we must be careful not to step on their feet, but we must be firm in leading them to where we want them to go. I especially liked Ormrod's explication of this ongoing cycle of interaction between teachers and students: 

   "...educators can improve students' behaviors, which in turn can enhance students' self-efficacy and other personal characteristics, which can then support students' self-regulating behaviors, which then enable students to benefit more from their classroom experiences-and so on and so on, in an ongoing interaction among environment, behavior, and personal variables." (Ormrod, p. 137)

Rick Smith and Mary Lambert wrote an interesting article, "Assuming the Best", which addresses classroom management strategies based on the assumptions that both students and teachers bring to the relationship. They describe this as the "Invisible Contract". Students come to the classroom with the following expectation: "Please teach me appropriate behavior in a safe and structured environment." Teachers have their own side of the contract: "I will do my best to teach you appropriate behavior in a safe and structured environment."

Students test these assumptions, sometimes the first day, but often throughout the year. But rather than seeing this test as a challenge to our authority, the authors implore to change their mindset. When students behave contrary to what they already know is appropriate behavior, students are simply saying, "Is this teacher going to hold up his/her end of the deal, or is s/he going to break it?" Only by "internalizing" the idea that all students want to be taught, can teachers respond with an action that addresses this question. This seems like a mindset that teachers should strive to instill in their classrooms.

The authors offer several strategies to support this mindset, but Raymond Wlodkowski's "Two-By-Ten" strategy caught my attention. In this strategy, teachers commit to connecting personally with a student for 2 minutes in every class for 10 classes in a row.  Not only does it improve the relationship with the student, it seems to have a positive effect on the whole class.

I have used this in my classroom and I have found it to be very effective. I used proximity to the student during class, whispering helpful cues such as: "Use your eyes to follow me when I am speaking." I made sure to call upon him when I knew he would know the answer to a question, praised him in front of the class, and spoke to him after every class for 10 days in a row. Sometimes, I would just ask how he felt during class, or about a new pair of shoes; other days, when he seemed a little off, I would ask if he was feeling OK. Other students also noticed and there was considerable improvement in overall behavior. This student is no longer afraid of Spanish class. He still struggles from time to time, but he knows that I'm not going to step on his toes. 

Ormrod, J. E. (2012). Human Learning. New York, NY: Pearson.

Smith, R. & Lambert, M., (Sept., 2008) Assuming the Best, ASCD, Volume 66, Number 1, "The Positive Classroom", Pages 16-21

Wlodkowski, R. J. (1983). Motivational opportunities for successful teaching [Leader's Guide]. Phoenix, AZ: Universal Dimensions.

Learning Online - Initial Reactions

This summer, I dared myself to complete a Master's Degree online in one year. Of all the anxieties I anticipated - balancing working and studying, difficulty of content, sufficient technology knowledge - I never anticipated that writing on a discussion board would be a source of both anxiety and perception of success (or lack thereof).

As a linguist, I have always been fascinated by how verbal communication differs from written communication.  In my written communication, I use formal speech, complex sentences, and well structured paragraphs.  In speech, I am insistent, persuasive, and often sarcastic.  In a classroom environment, I ask a lot of questions, and am unafraid to be wrong, willing to take risks when arguing my point.  On the written discussion board, I am hesitant, wondering if my point is being perceived as I wrote it, or if the reader is missing my point altogether.  I am constantly muttering to myself: "Am I rambling?"; "Is anyone reading this?"; "Do I sound like an idiot?"

Despite all this anxiety, I seem to be scoring the points for the discussion board. However, I don't feel like I am learning. I don't have the benefit of nonverbal language I would receive in a F2F situation to determine if I am on the right track, nor do I get much individual feedback from the professors. On the other hand, there are certain students whose posts are interesting to me.  I do not know my classmates very well, but I do think it is possible that some students would not be as willing to speak as clearly and with so much detail in a F2F situation.