Teaching for Change: The Power of an Inspiring Lecture

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Teaching for Change The Power of an Inspiring
Lecture
HKU SPACE TEACHERS FORUM No. 3/2005 10 December
2005

• Allan H.K. Yuen, Ph.D.
• Faculty of Education
• The University of Hong Kong
• E-mail hkyuen_at_hkucc.hku.hk
• http//www.cite.hku.hk/people/hkyuen/tfc.ppt

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Key words to describe good teaching
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Inspiring Teaching Carnegie Professors of the
Year Speak John K. Roth (Editor, 1996)
What is your expectation?

• Active teaching and learning The art of
  involvement Classroom atmosphere Community
  service Creating global classrooms Developing
  an honors program Improving teaching using
  teaching portfolios Learning communities
  Managing discussion in large classes Motivating
  and mentoring What makes a good teacher

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The Meaning of Inspiring

• inspirational , encouraging , heartening ,
  uplifting , stirring , rousing , stimulating ,
  electrifying moving , affecting , influential
• From The Oxford Paperback Thesaurus

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How we change what others think, believe, feel
and do

• http//changingminds.org

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Teaching (Education) as Agent of Change
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Seven Levers for Changing Minds (Gardner, 2004)

• Reason
• Research
• Resonance
• Representational re-descriptions
• Resources and rewards
• Real world events
• Resistances

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Reason

• Rational approach involves identifying of
  relevant factors, weighing each in turn, and
  making an overall assessment
• Pros and cons

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Research

• Complementing the use of argument is the
  collection of relevant data
• Systematic
• Using statistical tests

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Resonance

• Affective component
• A view (perspective) resonates to the extent that
  it feels right to an individual, seems to fit the
  current situation, and convinces the person
• Follows on the use of reason and/or research

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Representational Redescriptions

• Re-presentation in a number of different forms,
  with these forms reinforcing one another

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Resources and Rewards

• Mind change is more likely to occur when
  considerable resources can be drawn on

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Real World Events

• RWEs affect many individuals

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Resistances

• The six factors can all aid in an effort to
  change minds
• However, any effort to understand the changing of
  minds must take into account the power of various
  resistances
• A myth - More teaching, but no effort for
  learning

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Gardner (2004)

• However, individuals learn most effectively when
  they can receive the same message in a number of
  different ways, each re-presentation stimulating
  a different intelligence (p. 101).
• Of all seven levers, representational
  re-description is probably the most important
  way of changing the minds in educational
  settings.
• The concept of Multiple Intelligences is key
• Many entry points of re-description

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Narrative

• Telling stories about the topic and the people
  involved with it
• Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that
  fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively
  embrace and then share with our friends (Godin,
  2005, All Marketers Are Liars The Power of
  Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World)

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Quantitative

• Using examples connected to the topic
• Know the typical life experiences of your
  students and use them as examples

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Logic

• Identifying the key elements or units and
  exploring their logical connections

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Existential

• Addressing big questions, such as the nature of
  truth or beauty, life and death
• Controversial issues provide a good basis for
  knowledge application
• Teachers can identify various controversial
  issues for building discussion

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Aesthetic

• Examining instances in terms of their artistic
  properties or capturing the examples themselves
  in works of art

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Hands-on

• Working directly with tangible examples

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Cooperative or Social

• Work with peers
• Engaging in projects with others where each makes
  a distinctive contribution to successful execution

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How would you describe your teaching approach?

• What are the major challenges?

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A Summary Beliefs about Teaching and Learning

• All learning is contextual
• The acquisition and application of knowledge are
  social acts and happen in a social context
• The nature of teaching is transformative from
  passive recipients of knowledge to constructors
  of knowledge
• Webbstock (1999)

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Reflections on Artful Teaching

• D.J. Bickford J. van Vleck (1997)
• Journal of Management Education, 21 (4), pp.
  448-472.
• Dayton University
• Take art metaphor to reframe teaching as
  engaging, creative, holistic, collaborative
  learning process for both students and teachers

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Fully Engaged and Committed to Learning

• Brings mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual
  energy
• Perceives self as learner and shares this view
  with students
• Feels compelled to search for new processes and
  materials
• Uses full range of expression and demonstrates
  passion for subject

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Employs Creativity to Expand Learning

• Believes there is no perfect way to teach a
  topic and seeks new ways to stimulate learning
• Has clear learning objectives and nurtures
  variety and flexibility in achieving them,
  seeking student involvement in creation of meaning

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Grows and Stays Inspired through Play,
Experimentation, and Practice

• Try new ideas and approaches
• Play around with ideas in the hope of making a
  discovery
• Seeks to enrich ones understanding by repeating
  activities already performed

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Creating Communities of Learning

• Sees students as full partners in learning
• Studies ways of knowing and recognizes a variety
  of learning styles, trying to help all learn
• Attempts to channel materials, forming a
  connection between students and course content
• Seeks opportunities for co-construction of
  knowledge

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A Story of Change

• F.A. Amobi (2003)
• Reflections on the Transformation in a Teacher
  Educators Teaching of Educational Philosophy
• Teacher Education Quarterly, 30 (3), pp. 23-32.
• College of Education at Arizona State University
  West

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The Change in My Teaching

• Started first in my mind and thinking
• My philosophy of teaching educational
  philosophy changed from knowledge transmission
  to approach that seeks to make EP instructive to
  the everyday life of teaching in classrooms
• A continuous process and opened up opportunities
  for empowering students to become knowledge
  constructors
• Major catalyst in my transformation is the
  persistent practice of refusing to bore my
  students
• Teaching to evoke students own thinking

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Why do you teach?What is your vision for
teaching?
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Change the World

• When I was a young man, I wanted to change the
  world. I found it was difficult to change the
  world, so I tried to change my nation. When I
  found I couldn't change the nation, I began to
  focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and
  as an older man, I tried to change my family.
  Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I
  can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that
  if long ago I had changed myself, I could have
  made an impact on my family. My family and I
  could have made an impact on our town. Their
  impact could have changed the nation and I could
  indeed have changed the world.
• Author Unknown
• http//www.justgive.org/html/news/changeworld.html

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Thank You
HKU SPACE TEACHERS FORUM No. 3/2005 10 December
2005

• E-mail hkyuen_at_hkucc.hku.hk
• http//www.cite.hku.hk/people/hkyuen/tfc.ppt