Theoretical Foundations - Session #1 Flashcards
Welcome everyone! Thank you…
…for joining us for this first of three available tutor certification training courses.
My name is…
We have a LOT…
Ben Reitz. Most you already know me; I am the College Prep Zone Coordinator and Tutor Trainer for our Learning Commons and tutoring department.
We have a LOT of material to cover, so I’d like to get things going here with a quick overview of what we’ll be covering in today’s session: [read overview items]
The subject of the course is exploring the foundational theories that inform tutoring techniques in our community college setting. The course hits on key topics like…
…the theory and philosophy of education, Andragogical learning theory, constructivism, the Socratic Method of Questioning, tutoring as an interpersonal communication process, and the theory of learning preferences.
Along the way, we will discuss how to put those principles into action on a day-to-day basis in our role as RRCC tutors.
So first I’ll say a bit about the history and purpose of the tutor certification training program…
…originally, these courses were provided/taught by an outside organization, the CRLA…
But about 6 years ago, David and his predecessor Randi Landis-Eigsti realized that they could develop more trainings that offered guidance in the same topics, but was more attuned to our unique community and tutor needs…
So even as the courses have changed shape from those first iterations, the purpose has really remained consistent, and that purpose is three-fold:
1) to provide you as tutors with actionable tools that are applicable to your work here at RRCC specifically, beyond the techniques that are described in the mandatory orientation training class
2) to provide you with a potential pay increase beyond the typical adjustments given by HR to every employee each year
3) to allow you to earn a certificate that you can take with you for marketing your tutoring skills to future employers
As with all our trainings, we want…
…the experience to be comfortable and collaborative for everyone, so let’s go around and introduce ourselves. Please give:
1) your name, pronouns and subject you tutor
2) One positive experience you have had while tutoring here at RRCC
I’ll begin…
As I mentioned, I’m Ben Reitz. Pronouns are he/him/his. I have been tutoring in various contexts/centers since 2010; I have tutoring everything from Math to English Comprehension/Reading/Writing to economics to study strategies.
One thing I hope to gain from this class is your insight - I always learn as much, if not more, than what I have to share as the training instructor. Plus, I always relish the opportunity to receive feedback that will help me to continue honing this offering for future tutor trainees!
Who wants to go next?
Alright, well now that we are all familiar with one another, let’s…
…get into the overview of topics and assignments for this training course.
We’ll start by reviewing the syllabus for this short training course together….
[read syllabus document with trainees]
Let’s looks at some specific requirements and expectations for the presentation assignment…
[have a volunteer read the presentation basics section of the handout]
Great read-through! So that should give you a basic idea of the requirements for that assignment.
Wonderful…you will notice that the rubric..
…is printed on the back, to give you an idea of the exact standards by which I will evaluate the presentations (I will use this exact form)
Are there any questions about expectations for the presentation assignment?
Alright! Please be watching your email in the next week, as I will send reminders to confirm your presentation topic with me if you haven’t done so already, probably by next Wednesday.
To certify or not to certify?
Now of course, you are not required to finish the certification process. You may just want to participate in the in-class portion;
this means that once you have completed the requirements discussed up to this point, presentation included, nothing more will be expected of your participation in the course.
However, to fully certify in this training and to receive the associated raise if you are eligible, you will need to participate fully in the in-class portion/presentation AND complete the portfolio assignments…
So let’s go over the requirements for the portfolio assignments…
[have volunteers read first two sections of the portfolio expectations handout - then read and explain the reflection journal expectations]
…Are there any questions about any of those assignments? Or about the course completion requirements in general?
Terrific! Let’s go ahead and kick things off with a bit of review from your orientation as new tutors.
For some of you, this will be more recent information than for others…
But regardless of which camp you fall in, some basic review will prove helpful in framing the deep-dive material we’ll cover in this course.
First of all, you may or may not recall Ross MacDonald from orientation…
…if not, that’s okay. Ross Macdonald was the tutoring specialist education theorist from whom our department gets it 5 major goals of tutoring…
Let’s go ahead and see how many of those 5 major tutoring goals we can name/recall…
[list, define and discuss each goal]
1) Promoting independent learning - to avoid discouraging students and diminishing their skills through trained dependency
2) Personalizing instruction - helping students craft learning strategies specific to their unique needs as learners
3) Facilitating insight into the learning process, prompting students to practice metacognition - thinking about their own thinking
4) Offering tips for student and college success, so we can help the student succeed in college holistically, rather than simply succeeding in a class or on an assignment
5) Respecting differences - whether differences of culture, identity, ability, exposure or otherwise.
Okay, terrific! We have some strong memories in here! Let’s move on to the other of the two innovations of Ross MacDonald from orientation…
The Tutoring Cycle! This was Macdonald’s phrase for the series of phases that the ideal tutoring session will move through - though of course each session will be different.
Again, it’s no big deal if you don’t remember all this material, but let’s try to list as many of the 7 tutoring cycle phases as possible together…[list and define each]
1) Greeting - setting a positive, familiar and friendly tone from the beginning of the session
2) Setting the Agenda - our opportunity to provide students will agency and involvement in establishing what they need help with doing (and also possibly tempering expectations a bit)
3) Identifying key thought processes - both as a way of prompting the student to do metacognition related to the task, and to help us diagnose the initial understanding of the topic by the student…
4) Addressing the task - whether the student does the bulk of the work independently
5) Reviewing concepts - helping to cement those key take-aways for better student retention of the material
6) Confirmation - providing encouragement and positive praise without giving false hope
7) Next steps - connecting students with any additional relevant resources
Great work, everyone! Now that…
…we’ve warmed up with some review of our orientation basics, let’s move into the new material for this course, with our first theoretical foundations training module…
Slide: Andragogy
(Intro to Module)
Our first major module for this training is going to consist of a walk through and discussion of the concept of andragogy together. We are going to
1) start by defining our terms
2) cover some of the history of the theory,
3) give an overview of the concepts in the theory
4) along the way, we’ll discuss some applications to tutoring as well
But before we launch right in…
Slide: Andragogy: What do we know?
(Intro to KWL exercise)
I’m going to ask you to turn to the KWL worksheet in you packet, which we’ll use for different exercises in this class. These are called KWL exercises, and they are actually great for using with students in tutoring sessions if you have the time.
The idea is to write down both what you already know about a concept and what you would like to learn; then, after reviewing the material, jot down a quick recap of what you did learn.
KW Exercise: Andragogy
For the first of the three terms on the worksheet, that is andragogy, I’ll give a few minutes for you to jot down both what you believe you already know about this concept (it’s okay if you are totally unfamiliar, just write that…).
Then in the same row, 2nd column, write down what you would like to learn about andragogy, from what it is down to nitty-gritty details that you might be curious about. So we’ll take about 5 minutes for that now…
Anyone want to share out their K or W?
Slide: Andragogy: What it is (and What it isn’t)
Awesome! So now that we’ve had a chance to do some preliminary reflection, we’ll turn to the andragogy worksheet in the packet (should be the very next doc).
Please feel free to fill in the blanks and complete the short answer questions as we move through this module together.
Andragogy Definition Brainstorm
As with any discussion grounded in theory, we’ll want to begin by defining our key terms, not the least of which is andragogy itself.
So what is andragogy? Any guesses? (write ideas on whiteboard)
Andragogy Defined
There is more than one definition of andragogy in the field of educational research, but for our purposes, we’ll define it very simply as:
The theory and practice of teaching adults.
The term has its origins in the Greek word “Andragogos”, meaning “Leader of Men”.
Interestingly this term does not go back to ancient Greece, but more on that in a moment.
Also, the root of the term refers to men, but we are referring to all adults when we use it. Maybe in the future, it will be a term that is more inclusive, like “eniligogy”, from the root “enilikas”, which means simply “adult” in Greek. But for now, “andragogy” is the term the literature uses so it’s the term that we as educators are stuck with.
Pedagogy: Term Introduced
A similar Greek word, meaning “the Leader of Children”, provides the basis for our next key term: “Pedagogy”.
Fun fact: in ancient Athens, the “Paidagogos” was typically a well-educated enslaved person who was kept to educate the children of wealthy families. You see, even from the beginning, educators have been poorly compensated…
Pedagogy: Term Defined
Pedagogy, or the “theory and practice of teaching children”, eventually evolved to be the term western peoples used to refer to the science of teaching in general, as the teaching of children was the sole focus of philosophers of education for centuries.
Andragogy is NOT Pedagogy Discussion
Why we focus on comparing the two in this course…
But it’s critical for us to note that andragogy (the practice of teaching adult learners) and pedagogy (the practice of teaching child learners) are very much NOT the same. For us as tutors in a community of adult learners, its critical for us to compare these theories so that we can use that comparison to better understand the needs of the learner demographic we serve.
So let’s embark on that comparison. Can anyone think of any significant differences in how adults and children approach learning?
(write distinct answers in table on whiteboard)
Affirmation of ideas & The sources of key differences
All great thinking! This is a smart group, because not only have you all hit on many of the basic differences in these realms of education, but you’ve also identified some of the major reasons for them, from differences in psychology, adult to child, to differences of circumstance and societal expectations.
There are basically 4 major categories of difference one might use as a general framework for comparing pedagogy on the one hand and andragogy on the other:
1) Pedagogy is more subject-centric but andragogy offers more student centric lessons
Focusing mostly on the subject matter of a discipline for a child learner can be effective, as they tend to require less engagement with ultra-specific learning needs that humans tend to develop over a whole lifetime.
However, adults learn best if their long-established needs as students are factored into the presentation of lessons.
2) Then we have knowledge transfer, typical of pedagogy, vs. knowledge sharing, more characteristic of andragogy
Child learners often see themselves as sponges in education, sopping up information that instructors, whom they assume to be “in the know”, present in a “deposit” of knowledge
Adult learners much prefer to have learning be a journey of mutual discovery, on which they embark as peers with instructors and tutors. This provides them with a sense of autonomy (self-involvement) and agency (control over educational methods) in the process.
3) Then there is the key difference that pedagogy tends to be more authoritative, while andragogy can afford to be more collaborative.
Child learners are often more comfortable if adult instructors present information with final authority, as they are used to looking to authority figures for initiation into core concepts in their young quest to make sense of the world.
By contrast, adult learners already have long-established exposure to core concepts shared across society, so there is much more mutual common ground for discussion with educators.
If higher educators fail to collaborate with adult learners in their educational journey, and try to dictate instead, they will come across as condescending, infantilizing students and they will risk losing student engagement.
4) Finally, there is the critical difference that pedagogy usually uses more formal assessment methods, whereas andragogy relies on a mutual and less formal assessment of a student’s progress with material
Child learners are not expected to assess their own learning styles and progress; they are expected to rely on the formal assessment of their progress through grades and teacher to parent feedback. They are often removed from the assessment check-in process altogether.
On the other hand, adult learners check their own progress as much as instructors do, assessing their own skill and knowledge level with feedback from co-equals in an ongoing, mutual exchange….
Slide: Andragogy: Brief History of the Theory
So when did educators start thinking about differences in how to practice teaching from child to adult learners?
Well, for hundreds of years, pedagogy was the only term used to refer to the science of teaching in general, largely because philosophers of education didn’t consider learning to be a truly ongoing process after the transition from childhood.
Alexander Kapp
But then, in the 1830s Alexander Kapp, a German grammar school teacher and education theorist, coined the term “andragogy”. He was mostly concerned with how best to teach children. But he was the first to frame his approach to that question with a comparison to how adults learn.
His discussion of adult learning didn’t get very far, but he was the first to suggest that adults continue their education well beyond their transition from childhood. He argued that adult learners keep learning from three sources throughout life:
1) instructors/mentors
2) self-reflection
3) life experience
Kapp never went into much detail on these points, at least not to the extent that he ever developed a proper “theory of andragogy”
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
It wasn’t until the 1920s that Kapp’s term “Andragogy” even gained any traction in education theory, with its next major use being in the work of German sociologist Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.
Rosenstock-Huessy offered some thoughts on the nature of learning as a social phenomenon, insisting that in modern society, it can be thought of as a shared experience of mutual discovery between people trying to solve communal problems.
He also argued that a learner’s background and personal history/experience were major sources of data as different learners try to gain knowledge about the world.
Malcolm Knowles
Of course, none of this was fleshed out in any systematic theory until education researcher Malcolm Knowles, in the 1960s, articulated his famous “6 Assumptions of Adult Learners”
Slide: Adult Learning Theory: Knowles’ Six Assumptions
Knowles’ Theory really is the first significant analysis of the unique attributes of adult students, so we are now going to devote some time to watching a video, specifically covering each assumption. As we do, you’ll want to go ahead and fill out the bottom half of the andragogy worksheet.
Afterward, we discuss together to see how clear the concepts in the video were for everyone.
[Play video]
Knowles’ Six Assumptions Discussion Intro
So now that we’ve seen the video, let’s take Knowles’ assumptions one at a time and discuss how each may affect how we interact with adult learners in the tutoring context…
The first of Knowles’ assumptions was, of course, the adult learner’s Need to Know…
What was Knowles’ assumption on that point?
The Need to Know
Yes, great!
Essentially, the need-to-know assumption answers the question: Does it matter to me as a learner to know why the material I’m being taught is important?
Child learners would typically answer: “No.” They tend to trust that those teaching know why this will be vital knowledge as they grow older.
Adult learners would typically answer: “Yes.” They must know why each concept is important in the context of the whole subject, and how the subject is relevant to to their life goals.
Explanation of the Need to Know
It is often very telling when teenagers begin to question why their class material is relevant as in, “When will I ever use the quadratic formula?” It shows that they are in a state of transition to the adult-learning “need to know”
