Theories of Critical Thinking-Hunt

 

This is my first attempt at a Blog post so I’m not sure how formal or informal to be. After reading these five articles I honestly had to do a lot of reflection especially being so new to teaching and very old school myself. To begin with, the theories on education have always been a sticky point to me. Taking information created 69 and 42 years ago respectively and applying it to students today seemed wild to me in undergrad. Times were different when the theories were written compared to now, but as I taught this previous year, I began to notice the fundamentals really stuck around. Take Bloom’s Taxonomy for example, according to Huitt (2011) the levels are meant to be successive, and students can “know” about a topic at any different level, I didn’t fully comprehend that until I started teaching and realized that students could regurgitate extremely well if they cared enough to. But to be able to take what they learned and apply it they needed to be able to create or evaluate the material which shows they fully comprehend the material. Howard Garners Theory of Multiple Intelligences stuck out to me quickly because I knew I learned differently than others and I had seen with my own eyes my sons learned in an even different manner. The issue for me here though was how to incorporate it into a lesson and now fully jumble the whole lesson. Here’s where I agree with Kuhn when he said in his article that the power of educational technology is making it easier to include these theories into our teaching (2011). That’s the main reason I started this master’s course on technology, to make it possible for me to show other teachers the tech used to make their jobs easier and further help the students.

One issue I came across with technology is the willingness of teachers to utilize it once they are set in their ways. At my school there are a high number of teachers close to retirement and have never really incorporated technology into the classroom, or if they did not very effectively. The Adoption Process, while mainly discussing farmers, made a very good argument for the different levels of adopting technology or innovations. The list of acceptance goes from Innovators to Laggards with three steps in-between. While I wish I was an Innovator I do believe I would fall under an Early Adopter or Early Majority at the very least. According to Rogers, “Some innovations diffuse from their first introduction to widespread use in a few years. Others require 50 years. (1963, p.71)” I believe the key aspects of acceptance are ease of use and a proven track record.  With both of those details met I believe more teachers would adopt different technology faster.

The key concept I try and establish before incorporating technology into the classroom is Digital Literacy. A good definition for Digital Literacy is new social competencies needed to address cyberbullying, privacy, identity protection, respect for authorship and knowledge of all aspects of digital technology (Hobbs, 2011). Technology has its uses in every avenue of daily life; the trouble is some people use it incorrectly or dangerously. I noticed as I started incorporating Chromebook use in my class last year many students only had basic knowledge of the device. They knew how to use a VPN to play the coolest game but failed to be able to do the most basic troubleshooting, couldn’t properly write an email, find information other than the first suggested thing in Chrome, or even not to fall for scams. While we in Alabama have made huge strides in Computer Science classes it hasn’t spread far or fast enough. The basic classes should be available to everyone but currently rural schools fall behind in access due to funding so it falls on the core subject teachers to incorporate Digital Literacy into their lessons or skip out on technology use altogether.

Once a good grasp is held on Digital Literacy teachers and students should start going through a change in how they teach and learn. Fullan and Langworthy discuss a “deep understanding” in their article, A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning. This deep understanding comes with a new type of pedagogy that, “shifts focus on covering all required content to focusing on the learning process, developing student’s ability to lead their own learning and to do things with their learning (Fullan&Langworthy,2014).” While I will be the first to admit I prefer direct instruction for most standards, especially in Social Studies, learning Math has shown me the need to have students own their learning. We are adopting Proficiency Scales in Jackson County this coming year and it ties in closely to the pedagogy discussed in this article. There is a lot of emphasis on students owning their learning, defining their own learning goals, and teachers taking a step back to allow students to show proficiency in other forms than formal assessment. So, my new pedagogy for this upcoming year will be a drastic change and l will be co-learning with the students as we tackle things like Project Based Learning, Inquiry Based Learning, and Student led classrooms.

References

Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2014). A rich seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. Pearson. https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/global/Files/about-pearson/innovation/open-ideas/ARichSeamEnglish.pdf

Hobbs, R. (2011). Empowering learners with digital and media literacy. Knowledge Quest, 39(5), 12–17.

Huitt, W. (2011). Bloom et al.'s taxonomy of the cognitive domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/bloom.pdf

Kuhn, M. S. (2008). Connecting depth and balance in class. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(1), 18–21.

Rogers, E. M. (1963). The adoption process II. Journal of Cooperative Extension, 1(2), 69–75. https://archives.joe.org/joe/1963summer/1963-2-a2.pdf