Where's the fire?

I was reminded today of the study from Darley and Batson (1973) about some students at Princeton Theological Seminary. From the abstract:

Examined ... the helping behavior of 40 theology students in an emergency situation suggested by the parable of the Good Samaritan. Ss going between 2 buildings encountered a shabbily dressed person slumped by the side of the road. Ss in a hurry to reach their destination were more likely to pass by without stopping. Some Ss were going to give a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan, others on a nonhelping relevant topic; this made no significant difference in the likelihood of their giving the victim help. ...

What I had forgotten, or failed to notice before, was the role that being in a hurry had on the students' choices in regards to the person in need. Here is one person's summary of the results:

Overall 40% offered some help to the victim. In low hurry situations, 63% helped, medium hurry 45% and high hurry 10%. ...

And the conclusion:

Ironically, a person in a hurry is less likely to help people, even if he is going to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Some literally stepped over the victim on their way to the next building!). The results seem to show that thinking about norms does not imply that one will act on them. Maybe that "ethics become a luxury as the speed of our daily lives increases". Or maybe peoples cognition was narrowed by the hurriedness and they failed to make the immediate connection of an emergency. Many subjects who did not stop did appear aroused and anxious when the arrived at the second site. 

They were in a conflict between helping the victim and meeting the needs of the experimenter. Conflict rather than callousness can explain the failure to stop. 

This brought to mind the conflict teachers are facing with the end of the year rapidly approaching: preparing students versus nurturing learners. There is content to cover, content that will be on next year's standardized-test, and teachers want their students to be adequately prepared because the school's adequate yearly progress may be at stake. But the teachers also recognize that all this cramming is taking the joy out of learning, and many of these teachers would rather be exploring content with their learners rather than force feeding it to them. What wins out? Well, there are high-stakes and very little time.

Are we, as teachers, stepping over the victim (students) to meet some important appointment we think we must meet (curriculum)?

One last connection before I let you have your say. An old friend used to remind me whenever I was complaining about all I had to get done, "there is enough time." When I would begin to argue, listing all the important stuff I still had to do, he would reply with something like this:

"The only thing you HAVE to do today is breathe in and breathe out. You could survive the day without food or water or sleep. The things you have listed are things you want to do - things you or others find urgent. But at the end of the day, everything that must get done gets done, and that begins and ends with breathing. Anything else you accomplish is just frosting on the cake." 

So teachers, please take a breath, slow down, enjoy Teacher Appreciation Week, and accept that everything that needs to get done will get done.

Why learners?

The following was originally posted on my other blog, the Learning Museum. But I noticed this week that I have not given that blog any attention in almost a year. So I considered shutting it down and moving some of the posts here. I was having a hard time deciding where to start though. An exchange on Twitter today provided me with an answer. The exchange got me thinking about why I try to use the term learner instead of student when talking about the people that I teach. Consequently, this post seemed to be a good one to move since it includes the video that first introduced me to the idea of teaching learners rather than students. 

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For those of you familiar with my TEDx Talk, it will come as no surprise that the first exhibit in the Learning Museum included the following video from the Council on 21st Century Learning (C21L). If we want to know what learning looks like, we need to identify some of its key characteristics. This Venn diagram might help us in identifying these characteristics as we consider what learners do compared to what students do in the video.

Here is the first in a series of three videos available from C21L that attempt to get at the differences between students and learners.

How are students and learners alike and how are they different? Here are some of the characteristic identified by teachers in training:

• Both students and learners produce products;
• Students seem extrinsically motivated (e.g. Grades); and
• Learners seem intrinsically motivated.

What would you add to this list?

What did we learn?

At the end of each semester, I try to make sure that my learners have time to reflect. If their learning is to last, then they must have a chance to consolidate it. This past semester I used three workshops to support their efforts to look back and look forward.

The first workshop asked the learners to focus on the course objectives.

They identified those in which they considered themselves proficient and what contributed to their proficiency. So much occurs during a semester and too often learners do not recognize what was learned. This task represents a metacognitive activity that makes it more likely that the learners will be aware of all they have accomplished. It also provides me with important assessment data that will inform how I teach the course in the future.

In the next workshop, learners write letters to future students as a way to prepare and encourage them to be successful in my course. Here are two from this semester:

I will share the letters with future learners because people often accept advice more easily from their peers than their teachers. This is not the sole reason for the activity, however. It also provides the letter writers with the chance to reflect on their own growth as learners over the semester. I hope that both current and future learners will benefit from this wisdom borne out of experience.

The final workshop asks them to create a 3 minute (or less) TED Talk about what they have learned this semester. This year I found out the power of showing the Student vs Learner clips early on. Many of them commented on how these videos helped to frame the entire semester. I will now try using them the first day in all of my courses.

The presentations are ungraded and usually very informal. Amazingly, this sometimes leads to more preparation on the part of the learners. Regardless of the time they put into them, I find their sharing to be quite profound and at times moving. Here is an example from this semester:

I remember teachers saying to me, "You'll thank me for this later." This typically accompanied some particularly distasteful tasks. I bristle at this notion and hold the belief that I am not in this for people's thanks but because I believe in what I do. Still, I hope I am getting better at accepting people's gratitude as well as their criticisms. After all, both are a part of the learning process.