My Learning…
I started this course considerably late (enrolment issues), ended
up ‘playing catch up’ so I have largely done this on my own, so far, following
the guidance of the lectures and some interaction on the discussion forums. However,
on reflection, my previous tertiary studies focused on me learning facts, but
could I convert these ‘facts’ into what Biggs’ calls functioning knowledge
(1996)? I think generally not. Certainly not after graduation. At best I able to
partially understand and contextualise these theories of learning much later in
my teaching career. This course is different because the principles of Constructive
Alignment, around which it was designed, forced me to use functioning knowledge,
analogous to the situation where Biggs wanted his students to demonstrate what they
had learnt “to improve their teaching decisions” (Biggs, 1996) rather than tick
the boxes of declarative knowledge.
I have also had an insight into the necessity of Heutagogy
and how it was connected to the educational technology revolution of the past
few decades. Unlike in my previous studies, my assessments in this course gave
me, as Hase & Kenyon note, more control and more opportunity to explore
topics (2001), while simultaneously learning to be flexible, negotiate my own
learning process, and make my learning relevant to my own context. This was
initially difficult, but I realise too that this is the way of the future, as the
current educational climate is being shaped by the 4th Industrial Revolution
(Schleicher, 2019). With the rise of AI, most future employment will consequent rise in knowledge
and creativity work (Word Economic Forum, 2020). In this context, Heutagogy
will play an important role as future workers will need “to take
personal responsibility for one’s own lifelong learning and career development”
(World Economic Forum, 2018).
My Teaching…
One thing that came to my attention during this course, was
that my current teaching environment is assessment focused. Assessment is the
pre-occupation of the students, the teachers, and institutions, but teaching is
taken for granted. Which raised a question: To what extent can the
language skills they learn here allow them to function in an
English-language-medium academic environment? Our ubiquitous and mandatory assessment
tool, the CEFR (Common European Framework) has no clues, as its descriptors are
so broad as to be highly problematic. CEFR B1, for example, covers a range from
IELTS 4 to 5.5 (IELTS, 2020). My main
challenge, as a teacher, is that my students often do not acquire functioning
knowledge of English. They pass assessments, but I feel they have largely ‘gone
through the motions’. How can I address this? I believe I have found the germ
of some answers to these questions during this course, which is discussed in my
section titled Future Directions….
Another point of reflection was Vygotskyian Constructivism
and the view that learning is socially and culturally-constructed (Berkeley
Graduate Division, 2020), meaning students construct their own learning. While
a constructivist approach is useful, I feel that at times there is a need for a
strongly pedagogical, more explicit, approach. To begin with, “…it is often
seen that constructivism too easily dismisses the roles of passive perception,
memorisation, and all the mechanical learning methods in traditional didactic
lecturing” (Fox in Liu & Matthews, 2005 p. 389). For example, I find
students often benefit from the rote learning of grammar rules (such as
irregular past tenses) this is a view supported by Walter (British Council 2010),
who states that grammatical knowledge is best taught using explicit methods.
According to her, explicit teaching of grammar has stronger theoretical and
evidence-based support behind it than an implicit methodology (2010). It is
important to note, however, that Walter does not reject implicit learning
outright, but states that explicit teaching should be included at some point in
the curriculum. I actually heard Catherine Walter speak at the EA Conference in
2012, and she noted that explicit teaching of grammar was so effective, it
survived despite being theoretically unacceptable (Walters pers. comm.) with
‘many teachers locking their doors to teach grammar’. This was because communicative language
teaching, which is based on social constructivist principles (Ashton-Hay, 2006),
was in vogue, and explicitly teaching grammar could get you into trouble.
Future directions…
Another concept useful I thought was useful was Bloom’s
Taxonomy. The nature of language teaching, as mentioned earlier, requires
students to have some mastery of the lower half of the pyramid (remembering,
understanding, applying (Orey, 2010)) with an emphasis on explicit/pedagogic
teaching; moving on to the upper half of the pyramid (analysing, evaluating,
creating (Orey, 2010)). I think that the advantage of Bloom’s taxonomy is in
its simplicity and accessibility (Bailey, 2020), which I think makes it ideal
for lesson planning. I witnessed a former colleague fail an observation. I had
told her that her lesson plan would not work, but I could not explain why. I
think if I had used Bloom’s taxonomy, I would have been able to explain that
she had essentially missed the bottom half of the pyramid.
There are, however,
situations where complexity is required, as Bloom’s Taxonomy seems convenient and
somewhat arbitrary. For instance,
language learners, even beginners, are always creating (and making mistakes!),
analysing, and evaluating, so while Bloom’s work is arbitrarily useful for
activities such as lesson planning (), it does not fully describe the actual
dynamic, multifarious process of learning. Just this week, many of my
“advanced” students who were studying phrasal verbs, forgot what they were. In
this situation does not fit Bloom’s taxonomy as a progressive heuristic, which
I feel is important for students to mark their own progress. This is why I would
prefer to use Biggs’ SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) Taxonomy
which progresses from pre-structural, unistructural, multistructural, relational
to extended abstract (Biggs, n.d.), offering a meaningful progression for the
student and the teacher, as it gives a framework that can demonstrate
how a student can relate different aspects of learning to each other and can,
at the highest level, be “generalised…to as yet untaught applications” (Biggs,
n.d.). An additional benefit of this I suspect the SOLO Taxonomy is, with some
planning, and despite its apparent complexity, scalable to any level of
learning.
This reflection stems
from the fact that I actually borrow the IELTS public band-descriptors which
is similar to the SOLO taxonomy in that it offers the teacher and student a
rubric which is both meaningful and progressive, and can be used to help
students identify their own difficulties. In addition, SOLO taxonomy, like
IELTS band descriptors, “is accompanied by
criteria for judging the outcome of the activity” (Ennis in Hook,
2013) For instance, in essay coherence a student may present “information with
some organisation but there may be a lack of overall progression” (band 5)
(IELTS, 2018) while the student needs to “arranges information and ideas
coherently and there is a clear overall progression” (band 6) (IELTS, 2018).
This gives the student a very clear description of what they need to work on.
What is particularly powerful about this tool is that it is, taking into
account student motivation, allows students to monitor their own errors and progress.
Students can, with a little training, use and understand it with surprising
accuracy. This highlights a further limitation of the CEFR, as it treats level
descriptors as discrete rather than progressive, similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy.
This can be seen in the relationship between the following two writing
descriptors. Moving from the B1 writing descriptor “I can write straightforward
connected text on familiar topics, or of personal interest” (Council
OF Europe, 2020) to the B2 equivalent, “I can write clear, detailed text on a
wide range of subjects related to my interests” (Council of Europe, 2020). In
my view, these are so ambiguous as to offer little practical assistance to the
teacher or the student.
I have also discovered that Solo taxonomy complements Constructive
Alignment Theory. This because “SOLO taxonomy
helps to map levels of understanding that can be built into intended learning
outcomes and create assessment criteria or rubrics” (Bromley, 2015). I believe,
as I mentioned earlier, that it can also provide a framework by which students
can realise that “their own declarative and functioning learning outcomes are
the result of effort and the use of effective strategies rather than the result
of innate ability” (Bromley, 2015). I believe that this can be an
effective strategy to get students to access functioning knowledge, especially
through designing effective intended learning outcomes (ILOs) and making sure
they reflect assessment tasks (Biggs, 1996).
Closing Thoughts…
This post has been a reflection on numerous different
levels. I began by reflecting on the changes to my own understanding of the
learning process, and how it relates to an improved learning experience moving
from declarative to functioning knowledge. Interestingly, this realisation has
done much to inform my own potential transformations in both understanding and
application of teaching practice and assessment, and more importantly, how they
relate to each other. Most importantly I can see that SOLO taxonomy combined
with Constructive Alignment is a powerful tool for creating meaningful
assessments for students and teachers alike while providing a comprehensive
map of progression and complexity for both.
Reference List:
Ashton-Hay, S. (2006) Constructivism and Powerful Learning
Environments: Create Your Own! In: 9th
International English Language Teaching Convention "The Fusion of Theory
and Practice", May 3-5, 2006, Middle Eastern Technical University -
Ankara, Turkey. Retrieved from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/17285/1/17285.pdf
Bailey, D. (2020) Blog Post:
Thinking About Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy. What is Solo Taxonomy? Carmel
Research School. Retrieved from: https://researchschool.org.uk/carmel/news/blog-post-thinking-about-learning-the-solo-taxonomy/
Berkeley Graduate Division (2020) Social Constructivism. Graduate Teaching Student Instructor:
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Biggs, J. (n.d.) SOLO
Taxonomy: SOLO Taxonomy. Retrieved from:
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Biggs, J., (1996) Enhancing teaching through
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British Council (2010) British Council: Teaching grammar inductively - Catherine
Walter. [Video File]. Retrieved from: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-grammar-inductively-catherine-walter
Bromley, M. (2015) Pedagogy: The
SOLO taxonomy and constructive alignment. SecEd: The Voice for Secondary Education. Retrieved from: https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/best-practice/pedagogy-the-solo-taxonomy-and-constructive-alignment/
Council of Europe (2020) Common European
Framework of Reference for languages: The CEFR Descriptors. Retrieved from: https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/the-cefr-descriptors
Hase, S & Kenyon, C 2001, 'Moving from andragogy to heutagogy: implications for VET', Proceedings of Research to Reality: Putting VET Research to Work: Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA), Adelaide, SA, 28-30 March. Retrieved from:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37357847_Moving_from_andragogy_to_heutagogy_implications_for_VET
Hook, P. (2013) SOLO Taxonomy vs Bloom’s Taxonomy: The reasons why we prefer to use SOLO Taxonomy. HookED Wiki. Retrieved from: http://pamhook.com/wiki/SOLO_Taxonomy_versus_Bloom%27s_Taxonomy#:~:text=The%20Bloom
IELTS (2018) Writing Task2: Band
Descriptors (Public Version). Retrieved from:
https://ielts.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Writing-Band-descriptors-Task-2.pdf
IELTS (2020) Common European Framework: How should the CEFR be used by recognising institutions wishing to set language ability requirements? Retrieved from: https://www.ielts.org/ielts-for-organisations/common-european-framework
Orey, M. (2010) Emerging
Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology. Michael Orey. Retrieved
from https://textbookequity.org/Textbooks/Orey_Emergin_Perspectives_Learning.pdf
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[YouTube Video.] Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrKmM1cEffU
Schleicher, A.
(2019) What the fourth industrial revolution could
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from: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf
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- here's how. Retrieved
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