Set aside your feelings and realize that a world exists that is purely, or almost purely, in your head in the form of immaterial ideas, ideas like pure concepts and thoughts, such as those _about_ things. Yes, they can be in the form of images, and yes, they can be more or less clear. And they can be accepted or rejected or shaped in different ways--by thinking and considering, often with the help of others living and dead.
Fellow students and teachers will discuss with you what you are trying to understand or learn _about_. And writers will talk to you about these things also, because all is not in the repertoire of each student or teacher. The world of knowledge is greater than any one person.
So, there are these things--ideas--which are the stuff, the major amount of stuff, in college. Yes, college is about other things, but in the main teachers and students entertain and work with ideas, and they do so regardless of how they feel about them. Set your feelings also aside so that you too can see clearly what they are. Don't feel that you have mastered something because you have had the introduction. There is always more to know of the things themselves and about them.
Next, realize that all the cognitive content (the ideas) of what you and your fellow students and the teachers work with is not you. An idea is not yours until you decide to embrace it, that is you make it yours and with some level of feeling you own it and you represent it as how you as a unique and individual person think and will act. But because the content is not yours at the beginning, or not yet yours, you do not need to defend or justify it except on its own terms, using your head not your heart. It is separate and apart. It does not have to be about you.
Beware when answering questions such as, "What do you think about that?" This question is often answered by likes and dislikes and feelings. Which is not the answer to the question! Pay attention to the exact, specific questions before stepping into the quicksand.
When you write something or present something to a teacher or a class, you are giving evidence of your understanding of a _what_--an idea or set of ideas. What you have written or presented can thus stand outside of you as an understanding. That understanding and the way in which it is presented can be judged as good, better, best, or not good or relevant--and these according to faithfulness to the original idea or ideas and according to the correctness and effectiveness of presentation, because in this area too, there are ideas and practices (acts) for which there are accepted ways. So once you have externalized what you think in a way that can be good, better, and so forth, in communicating, all these things take on that immaterial character of ideas also and can be talked about without much if any emotion.
College is about learning the ideas and how to communicate them in ways that are understandable and actionable. Failure to be able to show evidence of your understanding by either expression or the content of expression is failure to learn one of the most important skills college has to offer.
Be aware that many if not most students do not truly learn these things in three or more years of college study. It takes a lifetime of practice to separate ideas from feelings and to combine them when the situation properly calls for an integrated response. Some people never get it. Imagine an idea half-baked, or eloquence without substance.
Next, try and then find your preferred approaches to studying and taking exams. This too is a content area with information, knowledge, and practice that have worked for others. Survey what others have said to do and experiment until you are comfortable with your approaches, and employ them if they work. Do not lose time at the beginning by ignoring this. Half or more of a term can pass by floundering around before you settle in. The earlier you settle in, the better. With practice you will refine your study and preparation skills.
Not lastly, listen carefully. Read carefully. Reflect without regret. Respond not too carefully. There is much to gain from others in college, and you are someone who can learn from others as well as from how you yourself perform.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
October 9, 2009
Implementing the penetrating-culture model
American Studies Course, the Context
Aim: The aim of the course is to familiarize students with basic information about the geography, people, and history of the United States of America in the twentieth century. These areas will be studied through relevant observations and artifacts of American culture and Culture, including but not limited to literature and the arts, other writings and contributions, physical objects, and social and human sciences themes.
Topics:
* 20th Century historical sketch of the US
* Major American authors and other contributors
* Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
* Understanding America and Americans
Objectives: As a result of taking this course, students should be able to:
* sketch a history of twentieth century America including at least three or four significant events, people, or characteristics for each decade;
* give a conventional book report of a work written in English by an American author or thinker of the twentieth century;
* properly cite and accurately summarize three American Studies secondary sources from approved online sources; and
* use a simple "culture inquiry protocol" to showcase an insight into Americans or America from readings and research.
Unit: Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
Background Learning:
1. Go to [link no longer available].
2. Read the article (popular press secondary source).
3. Now ask yourself this question: What does this article tell me about America or Americans?
4. With answers to this question, you have at least one research hypothesis (cultural insight to test). You can now look for other examples of it to illustrate what the above article told you, or didn't tell you!
Assignment 6: Describe, explain, and/or discuss the meaning of an observation of America or Americans. Use primary and secondary sources to support your insights. Submit a detailed outline and list of references for your research.
An observation is a cultural studies topic (from the previous assignment). It is specific and small. Be careful if you choose a history topic, because it will only be a very tiny observation of America or Americans about that.
Get these points clearly in mind before proceeding with identifying and researching cultural studies topics.
1. What is DESCRIPTION. At the surface level, you or someone observes a phenomenon that is possibly unique or characteristic of a culture. There is always a source--you or other.
2. What is EXPLANATION. Once that is described, one asks the question, "How is that so?" What is an explanation for that phenomenon? Usually cultural informants help with this. With an answer that is defensible, we have begun to penetrate.
3. What is UNDERSTANDING. Once we have an explanation, the ultimate question is to ask what it (the phenomenon) means to those who do it, or are in it, etc. "Why do you do that?" The only way to get to this level is to ask those who actually or should know. Sometimes even the natives can't tell you very well or easily. At this level, you or someone needs insight.
Finally an INSIGHT, especially if it stands up to rational and empirical critique, can be a little something that we can say we understand. Whew!
DON'T WORRY. An example of this assignment will be provided in class with documentation online.
How to Proceed
So, how do you do Assignment 6? Well, the easiest way is to try to follow the outline (above).
1. What is your observation? This you have yourself, or you get from your source. You should already have an idea for an observation, if not the actual observation or phenomenon, from Assignment 5!
2. Try to find out how or why it is--an explanation for your observation. Look at what you have observed and ask why is that? or how is that? where does it come from? etc.! (Remember, asking questions is important for this course and is the key for success.)
3. Try to find out what Americans say or think about this thing you have observed. Talk to one. But if you cannot find one live here in Liberec, go to the trusty Internet. Find a forum related to the subject and post your questions and watch for answers. Or, find news articles about the observation, or where people have been quoted on the subject. Or, find a book about it, or a secondary source (e.g., an article). In other words, go deeper with your observations. Maybe you have an answer (insight) right in front of you! Gather data and look at and think about them!
Aim: The aim of the course is to familiarize students with basic information about the geography, people, and history of the United States of America in the twentieth century. These areas will be studied through relevant observations and artifacts of American culture and Culture, including but not limited to literature and the arts, other writings and contributions, physical objects, and social and human sciences themes.
Topics:
* 20th Century historical sketch of the US
* Major American authors and other contributors
* Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
* Understanding America and Americans
Objectives: As a result of taking this course, students should be able to:
* sketch a history of twentieth century America including at least three or four significant events, people, or characteristics for each decade;
* give a conventional book report of a work written in English by an American author or thinker of the twentieth century;
* properly cite and accurately summarize three American Studies secondary sources from approved online sources; and
* use a simple "culture inquiry protocol" to showcase an insight into Americans or America from readings and research.
Unit: Identifying and researching cultural studies topics
Background Learning:
1. Go to [link no longer available].
2. Read the article (popular press secondary source).
3. Now ask yourself this question: What does this article tell me about America or Americans?
4. With answers to this question, you have at least one research hypothesis (cultural insight to test). You can now look for other examples of it to illustrate what the above article told you, or didn't tell you!
Assignment 6: Describe, explain, and/or discuss the meaning of an observation of America or Americans. Use primary and secondary sources to support your insights. Submit a detailed outline and list of references for your research.
An observation is a cultural studies topic (from the previous assignment). It is specific and small. Be careful if you choose a history topic, because it will only be a very tiny observation of America or Americans about that.
Get these points clearly in mind before proceeding with identifying and researching cultural studies topics.
1. What is DESCRIPTION. At the surface level, you or someone observes a phenomenon that is possibly unique or characteristic of a culture. There is always a source--you or other.
2. What is EXPLANATION. Once that is described, one asks the question, "How is that so?" What is an explanation for that phenomenon? Usually cultural informants help with this. With an answer that is defensible, we have begun to penetrate.
3. What is UNDERSTANDING. Once we have an explanation, the ultimate question is to ask what it (the phenomenon) means to those who do it, or are in it, etc. "Why do you do that?" The only way to get to this level is to ask those who actually or should know. Sometimes even the natives can't tell you very well or easily. At this level, you or someone needs insight.
Finally an INSIGHT, especially if it stands up to rational and empirical critique, can be a little something that we can say we understand. Whew!
DON'T WORRY. An example of this assignment will be provided in class with documentation online.
How to Proceed
So, how do you do Assignment 6? Well, the easiest way is to try to follow the outline (above).
1. What is your observation? This you have yourself, or you get from your source. You should already have an idea for an observation, if not the actual observation or phenomenon, from Assignment 5!
2. Try to find out how or why it is--an explanation for your observation. Look at what you have observed and ask why is that? or how is that? where does it come from? etc.! (Remember, asking questions is important for this course and is the key for success.)
3. Try to find out what Americans say or think about this thing you have observed. Talk to one. But if you cannot find one live here in Liberec, go to the trusty Internet. Find a forum related to the subject and post your questions and watch for answers. Or, find news articles about the observation, or where people have been quoted on the subject. Or, find a book about it, or a secondary source (e.g., an article). In other words, go deeper with your observations. Maybe you have an answer (insight) right in front of you! Gather data and look at and think about them!
February 1, 2009
No One Here But Me
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 12/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
A passage from Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in His Labyrinth, gives rise to a short discussion on the locus of reality. The unconcluded contemplation is that all exists in mind, mine. There is no separate external reality.
No One Here But Me
At one point in Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in His Labyrinth (2003), "José Palacios, [the General's] oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. He knew this was one of the many ways the General meditated, but the ecstasy in which he lay drifting seemed that of a man no longer of this world."
Upon awakening from this apparent trance, the General said to his servant, "Let's go . . . as fast as we can. No one loves us here."
This passage has raised this possibility: The world is located in mind, in my interior, not outside of my body somewhere. The world is not separate with an independent existence. It is only by consensus with others that we suspect an objective and separate-from-me world.
Based on this understanding, I often "just feel like" taking some action or changing course, because nothing really matters except as I would have it inside me. So much is this true for me that sometimes I even choose based on what I think is true, whether or not I can otherwise prove it.
As the General is described above and for me, there appear to be multiple realities. There are those we can sense physically and there are those of the mind, or internal. Ecstasy is of the mind. The idea that no one loves us here is also an internal experience. That idea, fact or not, seems to give the impetus for action for the General. It is his call to action, which is leaving. We also act and change course based on the world we have, the mental experiences.
What is the relationship between these realities, the physical and the mental? The contention here is that the relationship is flawed oneness. What I experience inside me is my only reality, but what I experience is not always intentional. Some stuff happens that I (we?) just (have to?) attend to.
Before I am accused of not being of this world, I declare that I am not immune from stubbing my toe on a rock or enjoying pizza and Pepsi as I write these words. Toes are real, but mine the most, as is this pizza; and, just a moment, so is my (experience of my) Pepsi. However, these supposed physical things have reality because it is I who through my intentions, awarenesses, mental experiences, and mind-directed actions accept and make them so. My internal experiences are the only things that exist that I can be sure of. Things out there do not exist, for me.
Another way to say this is to answer this old quandary. Does a tree make a sound when it falls to the forest floor? Although I am not a philosopher and this meditation is a bit speculative, I answer no, the tree makes no sound if I am not there to hear it.
Even though the reality of what I believe to be true is what I think or somehow internally experience, and this is paramount and the definition of real, other stuff happens which calls for, sometimes demands, awareness, focus, and action. Because of the call or demand, I choose to attend, that is I intend to have it real. One objection is that we may not be aware of every "intention," but after the fact of having done something means that at some level of mind (perhaps it is consciousness), there was a choice.
So I can act and change course because nothing really matters except my experience of. If I choose a course based on what I think is true, whether or not I can otherwise prove it, this might be instinct or intuition. I do not know. But this suggests a lengthier consideration.
As with the General, there is no great, unconditional affection for me, or anyone. So run as fast as you can, or silently escape as I do into my own world of a computer, music downloads, and Internet games I can play with people whose physical existence I do not acknowledge. It is as if they do not exist, or if they do, they are just objects of mind that exist for a time and later do not. I never know them. I only make choices based on my intentional engagement with their actions and the tacit understanding that their actions are part of my experience, a part of my reality, until I let them go.
Some would say that you can gather evidence (impressions or opinions or convictions--again "immaterials") that there is affection. This would be to rely on memories (past mental experiences). At my age the idea of many loves and sensual adventures such as the General may have had, as recounted in The General in His Labyrinth, is very tempting. The better orientation is that that reality is in my head. Sex is not real or of this world without my mental-immaterial reception and recognition.
Enough for now. I appear to be drifting. Am I in a trance and no longer of this world? Am I either in meditative ecstasy or in someone's physical reality? These questions, let alone that reality only exists inside me, are way too difficult to conclude in a little over two pages. For now I say, "Let's go, as fast as I can, for there is no one here but me."
REFERENCE
Marquez, G., (2003). The General in His Labyrinth. London: Vintage.
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
A passage from Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in His Labyrinth, gives rise to a short discussion on the locus of reality. The unconcluded contemplation is that all exists in mind, mine. There is no separate external reality.
No One Here But Me
At one point in Gabriel García Márquez's book, The General in His Labyrinth (2003), "José Palacios, [the General's] oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. He knew this was one of the many ways the General meditated, but the ecstasy in which he lay drifting seemed that of a man no longer of this world."
Upon awakening from this apparent trance, the General said to his servant, "Let's go . . . as fast as we can. No one loves us here."
This passage has raised this possibility: The world is located in mind, in my interior, not outside of my body somewhere. The world is not separate with an independent existence. It is only by consensus with others that we suspect an objective and separate-from-me world.
Based on this understanding, I often "just feel like" taking some action or changing course, because nothing really matters except as I would have it inside me. So much is this true for me that sometimes I even choose based on what I think is true, whether or not I can otherwise prove it.
As the General is described above and for me, there appear to be multiple realities. There are those we can sense physically and there are those of the mind, or internal. Ecstasy is of the mind. The idea that no one loves us here is also an internal experience. That idea, fact or not, seems to give the impetus for action for the General. It is his call to action, which is leaving. We also act and change course based on the world we have, the mental experiences.
What is the relationship between these realities, the physical and the mental? The contention here is that the relationship is flawed oneness. What I experience inside me is my only reality, but what I experience is not always intentional. Some stuff happens that I (we?) just (have to?) attend to.
Before I am accused of not being of this world, I declare that I am not immune from stubbing my toe on a rock or enjoying pizza and Pepsi as I write these words. Toes are real, but mine the most, as is this pizza; and, just a moment, so is my (experience of my) Pepsi. However, these supposed physical things have reality because it is I who through my intentions, awarenesses, mental experiences, and mind-directed actions accept and make them so. My internal experiences are the only things that exist that I can be sure of. Things out there do not exist, for me.
Another way to say this is to answer this old quandary. Does a tree make a sound when it falls to the forest floor? Although I am not a philosopher and this meditation is a bit speculative, I answer no, the tree makes no sound if I am not there to hear it.
Even though the reality of what I believe to be true is what I think or somehow internally experience, and this is paramount and the definition of real, other stuff happens which calls for, sometimes demands, awareness, focus, and action. Because of the call or demand, I choose to attend, that is I intend to have it real. One objection is that we may not be aware of every "intention," but after the fact of having done something means that at some level of mind (perhaps it is consciousness), there was a choice.
So I can act and change course because nothing really matters except my experience of. If I choose a course based on what I think is true, whether or not I can otherwise prove it, this might be instinct or intuition. I do not know. But this suggests a lengthier consideration.
As with the General, there is no great, unconditional affection for me, or anyone. So run as fast as you can, or silently escape as I do into my own world of a computer, music downloads, and Internet games I can play with people whose physical existence I do not acknowledge. It is as if they do not exist, or if they do, they are just objects of mind that exist for a time and later do not. I never know them. I only make choices based on my intentional engagement with their actions and the tacit understanding that their actions are part of my experience, a part of my reality, until I let them go.
Some would say that you can gather evidence (impressions or opinions or convictions--again "immaterials") that there is affection. This would be to rely on memories (past mental experiences). At my age the idea of many loves and sensual adventures such as the General may have had, as recounted in The General in His Labyrinth, is very tempting. The better orientation is that that reality is in my head. Sex is not real or of this world without my mental-immaterial reception and recognition.
Enough for now. I appear to be drifting. Am I in a trance and no longer of this world? Am I either in meditative ecstasy or in someone's physical reality? These questions, let alone that reality only exists inside me, are way too difficult to conclude in a little over two pages. For now I say, "Let's go, as fast as I can, for there is no one here but me."
REFERENCE
Marquez, G., (2003). The General in His Labyrinth. London: Vintage.
Tailoring Learning for International Students
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 11/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
A unit of instruction that uses the Internet in a variety of ways needs a context. The context in this discussion is a traditional college course and how it is designed for students coming from different countries. What follows is a sketch of the course and its units of instruction. These center around classroom and computer laboratory meetings. The meetings have a structure, or process, and the instructor has a limited number of roles to play. Student learning is based on choices in objectives and computer learning activities. The sketch concludes with an example learning objective and some different types of Internet activities to help meet that objective.
Tailoring Learning for International Students
Introduction to Computers is a beginning college course for intermediate level English students (at the Anglo-American College, Prague.) The course takes place in the classroom and the computer laboratory with the instructor acting as a meeting facilitator, content presenter, and tutor. Although the course is documented online and uses the Internet, it is traditional face-to-face pedagogy (Wuensch, Aziz, Ozan, Kishore, & Tabrizi, 2008).
Because students come from different national educational systems and they have different computer skills already, the course has to make room for these differences. Giving choices of which learning objectives to work on helps students develop their computer literacy as well as demonstrate practical skills.
The course has ten three-and-a-half hour classroom-lab meetings. Each meeting is a three-step process. The process gives the instructor the roles above and looks like this.
1. What have you discovered? This is a review of required readings and what students have been working on so far.
2. What do you need to know? This step introduces new material and gives time for discussions and student presentations.
3. What do you need to be able to do? This step is about discovering and demonstrating skills in the computer laboratory.
The topics for the class meetings show the general scope of the course. The student chooses one or more of the objectives for each meeting. If the objectives and their learning activities for a meeting do not give the student something new to learn, he or she can work with the instructor and decide what is best.
Here are example objectives students can choose for the first five class meetings.
1. Course Overview, Computers and the Internet: The learner should be able to design a directory structure for a student taking three courses, or for an office worker involved in three projects. The design should include folder and file naming, the types of files included, and sample content for each.
2. Hardware and Software: The learner should be able to analyze a recent version of MS Windows and report on what it should have to be an operating system.
3. Word Processing: The learner should be able to create and print or upload a one-page, double-spaced text document showing as many features of the program as possible--fonts, point size, tables, columns, pagination, and so forth.
4. Presentations with Media: The learner should be able to produce a simple outline of a presentation for school or work with at least five PowerPoint slides.
5. Spreadsheets: The learner should be able to create two original spreadsheets, one showing a personal or project budget with monthly and annual sample numbers and one showing the formulae for the calculations.
These are the rest of the topics for the meetings: Mid-Course Exam; Databases; Sharing Information on the Web; Current Issues and Review; Final Presentations and Exam.
To show how this course uses the Internet to meet learning goals or aims for different students, the first thing to remember is that the course’s approach already tells the teacher what to do. When a student selects an objective for a topic, choices of what the student does in order to learn opens up. Here is an example from meeting three. The learning objective is that the student should be able to list five Internet applications for school or work. The list should include why each application is helpful.
Computer lab activities to help learn or demonstrate meeting this objective include the following types and examples. A student would work on one or more of these.
Search: Search for "computer operating system" using Google and define what it is.
Quest: Go to the Web sites for two different operating systems and find what applications come with them and what each does. Afterwards, open the programs menu on your computer and find out if you have these applications.
Message Board: Go to the university learning server and leave a message on the Newbie forum about programs students find most useful for their school work. How many different programs do students list? Are any from the Internet?
OCLC: Go to the university library catalog online and find this article: Pierre Dillenbourg (2008). Integrating technologies into educational ecosystems. Distance Education, 29(2), 127-140.
E-mail: Copy and paste the abstract of this article into an e-mail and send your instructor a copy.
Reading: Read the article. Does it say anything about Internet application programs?
Self-archiving: Put a short bibliography for a paper on one of the free bibliography Web sites. Then retrieve it in print or document form.
Document Storage: If you have a Gmail or Yahoo account, go to the document storage area and upload a document, maybe a draft of one of your papers.
Reference: Look up APA style guide online. Can you use any of the information presented to complete assignments for this course?
If one sees these activities as part of the design of teaching a lesson, the above fall into place in the process. First is in the classroom. The teacher talks about two or three things you can use computers and the Internet for. The teacher leads a discussion. Step two is also a classroom activity. It might be to hear and watch a PowerPoint presentation on how to access some online resources like the ones in the lab learning activities. The instructor would make the presentation. Finally, the students work out their own list of applications to help them in work or school. The instructor circulates in the lab helping and tutoring to make sure students are learning and completing the work each chose.
Reference
Wuensch, K. L., Aziz, S., Ozan, E., Kishore, M., & Tabrizi, M. H. N. (2008). Pedagogical Characteristics of Online and Face-to-Face Classes. International Journal on ELearning, 7(3), 523-532.
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
A unit of instruction that uses the Internet in a variety of ways needs a context. The context in this discussion is a traditional college course and how it is designed for students coming from different countries. What follows is a sketch of the course and its units of instruction. These center around classroom and computer laboratory meetings. The meetings have a structure, or process, and the instructor has a limited number of roles to play. Student learning is based on choices in objectives and computer learning activities. The sketch concludes with an example learning objective and some different types of Internet activities to help meet that objective.
Tailoring Learning for International Students
Introduction to Computers is a beginning college course for intermediate level English students (at the Anglo-American College, Prague.) The course takes place in the classroom and the computer laboratory with the instructor acting as a meeting facilitator, content presenter, and tutor. Although the course is documented online and uses the Internet, it is traditional face-to-face pedagogy (Wuensch, Aziz, Ozan, Kishore, & Tabrizi, 2008).
Because students come from different national educational systems and they have different computer skills already, the course has to make room for these differences. Giving choices of which learning objectives to work on helps students develop their computer literacy as well as demonstrate practical skills.
The course has ten three-and-a-half hour classroom-lab meetings. Each meeting is a three-step process. The process gives the instructor the roles above and looks like this.
1. What have you discovered? This is a review of required readings and what students have been working on so far.
2. What do you need to know? This step introduces new material and gives time for discussions and student presentations.
3. What do you need to be able to do? This step is about discovering and demonstrating skills in the computer laboratory.
The topics for the class meetings show the general scope of the course. The student chooses one or more of the objectives for each meeting. If the objectives and their learning activities for a meeting do not give the student something new to learn, he or she can work with the instructor and decide what is best.
Here are example objectives students can choose for the first five class meetings.
1. Course Overview, Computers and the Internet: The learner should be able to design a directory structure for a student taking three courses, or for an office worker involved in three projects. The design should include folder and file naming, the types of files included, and sample content for each.
2. Hardware and Software: The learner should be able to analyze a recent version of MS Windows and report on what it should have to be an operating system.
3. Word Processing: The learner should be able to create and print or upload a one-page, double-spaced text document showing as many features of the program as possible--fonts, point size, tables, columns, pagination, and so forth.
4. Presentations with Media: The learner should be able to produce a simple outline of a presentation for school or work with at least five PowerPoint slides.
5. Spreadsheets: The learner should be able to create two original spreadsheets, one showing a personal or project budget with monthly and annual sample numbers and one showing the formulae for the calculations.
These are the rest of the topics for the meetings: Mid-Course Exam; Databases; Sharing Information on the Web; Current Issues and Review; Final Presentations and Exam.
To show how this course uses the Internet to meet learning goals or aims for different students, the first thing to remember is that the course’s approach already tells the teacher what to do. When a student selects an objective for a topic, choices of what the student does in order to learn opens up. Here is an example from meeting three. The learning objective is that the student should be able to list five Internet applications for school or work. The list should include why each application is helpful.
Computer lab activities to help learn or demonstrate meeting this objective include the following types and examples. A student would work on one or more of these.
Search: Search for "computer operating system" using Google and define what it is.
Quest: Go to the Web sites for two different operating systems and find what applications come with them and what each does. Afterwards, open the programs menu on your computer and find out if you have these applications.
Message Board: Go to the university learning server and leave a message on the Newbie forum about programs students find most useful for their school work. How many different programs do students list? Are any from the Internet?
OCLC: Go to the university library catalog online and find this article: Pierre Dillenbourg (2008). Integrating technologies into educational ecosystems. Distance Education, 29(2), 127-140.
E-mail: Copy and paste the abstract of this article into an e-mail and send your instructor a copy.
Reading: Read the article. Does it say anything about Internet application programs?
Self-archiving: Put a short bibliography for a paper on one of the free bibliography Web sites. Then retrieve it in print or document form.
Document Storage: If you have a Gmail or Yahoo account, go to the document storage area and upload a document, maybe a draft of one of your papers.
Reference: Look up APA style guide online. Can you use any of the information presented to complete assignments for this course?
If one sees these activities as part of the design of teaching a lesson, the above fall into place in the process. First is in the classroom. The teacher talks about two or three things you can use computers and the Internet for. The teacher leads a discussion. Step two is also a classroom activity. It might be to hear and watch a PowerPoint presentation on how to access some online resources like the ones in the lab learning activities. The instructor would make the presentation. Finally, the students work out their own list of applications to help them in work or school. The instructor circulates in the lab helping and tutoring to make sure students are learning and completing the work each chose.
Reference
Wuensch, K. L., Aziz, S., Ozan, E., Kishore, M., & Tabrizi, M. H. N. (2008). Pedagogical Characteristics of Online and Face-to-Face Classes. International Journal on ELearning, 7(3), 523-532.
Abbreviated Thematic Analysis of an Interview: Mrs. Joan Lash
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 12/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
The author asks a text to reveal what life was like. The text is a short oral history interview, and it reveals several major themes as a result of textual analysis. These are then reported and discussed in terms of an alternative to a hypothetical standard history text. A partial yet richer understanding of a person and a period appears as a result.
Abbreviated Thematic Analysis of an Interview: Mrs. Joan Lash
An oral interview can write history (Geraci 2005), but in some important respects, it tells a different story than that in a learned, bound volume. It is a story for richer understanding of what life was like. This then is the central question for storytellers and -gatherers. A close examination of one example can uncover this richer, personal texture of a time in history we might otherwise gloss over.
The act of commemorating by asking someone to recount may also be about forgetting (Hamilakis and Labanyi 2008), and an oral history may reveal as much about that as what is remembered in the moment. In addition, the act of telling one's history can reveal tensions that a carefully crafted text might overlook, or ignore all together (Saikia 2000).
What of all of this--in a concrete example? "Mrs Joan Lash, wife of an ADC [aide-de-camp] to the Governor of Madras," talked in 1985 about everyday life in India to Mary Thatcher. The text of the interview, made available by the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge, has been included here. An abbreviated thematic analysis of what was said is this paper and a suggestive object lesson in what history does not always tell us.
To let the text speak, the transcribed version of the Lash interview, including Thatcher's questions, was first formatted in a table with 108 rows, one for each sentence, and three columns for numbering and notes. Repeated readings generated questions and comments--the notes--for many sentences. From these notes, larger categories, tentative themes in the third column, were isolated. A careful reading of the text, including the words of both interviewer and interviewee, showed it had many more candidate themes than those highlighted and can be reported here.
Textual analysis focused on Mrs. Lash and at the sentence rather than word or phrase level. However, the importance of the themes selected come from the words and phrases, or their equivalents, that Mrs. Lash provided. Thus, adherence to the text and what it says gave rise to the themes. Independent of the text, as may be seen below, the themes stand on their own as important in the texture of a life.
The themes selected for further study and analysis after the sifting out was a result of a back and forth reading/re-reading process, a kind of hermeneutic spiral both up and down until the briefest, cursory analysis could be summarized (Gadamer 1988).
Mrs. Joan Lash, at the time of the interview and in the eighth decade of her life, showed "placid acceptance" of "the pattern of life" as she knew and experienced it. She also showed she had "different mothers" and different ideas about what and where "home" was. Forgetting about or not remembering figure into the themes of home and different mothers. Tensions around "Being abandoned everywhere" (Line 107) relate to home and mother as well as seem to have contributed to placid acceptance of the pattern of life.
The pattern of life is Mrs. Lash's phrase, and she uses it three times (Lines 2, 31, and 80). In lines 28 and 79, she also uses phrases which can readily be understood as the pattern of life. Five references to the way it was for her, combined with being placid and accepting (Line 45) and just taking it (Line 46), strongly suggest a way of being.
Telltale in this pattern of the way of Mrs. Lash is how she refers to what happened. She is often acted upon rather than acting. Consider what she says after "just taking it": "And then when you became eighteen my father and mother were both out in India then and I then went out to India." It is as if there was a protocol for people of her background or station, that that next step was natural, a part of a known process. When she reflects that she may not have been proper when in Madras enjoying herself (Line 77), as if that were terrible, there is this preoccupation(?) with some determined-by-other way.
Mrs. Lash has one mother, the one she cherishes with a particularly vivid memory from childhood (Line 2 and following). This is the same person she can describe as her mother in the third person, without much detail or emotion. "She was a very beautiful person, very lovely, rather helpless I suppose" (Line 12). This is perhaps the same mother she yearned for (Line 44).
One wonders what the specifics were that Mrs. Lash could describe her one mother in such general terms: The cherished mother is forgotten in the interview as commemoration.
Mrs. Lash appears to have spent her early years away from her mother, perhaps both of them coming or going between England and India. She also has mother figures in nannies, unnamed aunts, and an unnamed nun.
As has been stated, Mrs. Lash was abandoned everywhere, even in early childhood (Line 9). Everywhere raises the matter of different houses. Home seems to have been England and India. The tensions Mrs. Lash felt in her houses-not-homes of boarding school and various aunts are less clear but strongly expressed (Lines 40 and 30 respectively).
In the end, although this theme would seem to figure large in the texture of a life, we have few details except the presumed number of houses in different places of residence. Perhaps Mrs. Lash did not place much importance on them.
This oral history is rich as the above analysis, transcript, and comments suggest. However, it is partial. We have a sense of Mrs. Lash, but her life is sketched only. We do not have the luxury of follow-up questions, and the analysis can help us get just so far in understanding.
Some themes are quite clear and suggest further inquiry. How did the life of a young man or young woman turn upon parents in service of the empire? What is done to the notion of home when two or more places could be called so? Women and mothers adapted in earlier times, yes, but in the main how did they? And how was life for these patriots abroad, a prescribed pattern to be followed and placidly accepted, or was there zest and excitement enough as with Mrs. Lash (Line 108)?
Mrs. Lash gives us an insight in this interview that we cannot gloss over, but lest that be all there is, history, the history of people, would be and is much more--a story for richer understanding.
References
Gadamer, H-G. (1988). ‘On the circle of understanding’ in J. M. Connolly & T. Keutner (Eds.), Hermeneutics versus science? Three German views (pp. 68-78), Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Geraci, Victor W. 2005, ‘Letting Sources Become the Narrative: Using Oral Interviews to Write History’, The Public Historian 27, no. 1 (January 1): 61-66.
Hamilakis, Y., Jo Labanyi 2008, ‘Introduction: Time, Materiality, and the Work of Memory’, History and Memory 20, no. 2 (October 1): 5-17.
'Interview: Mrs. J. Lash by Mary Thatcher' (1985), Centre of South Asian Studies 004, viewed 5 December 2008.
Saikia, Yasmin 2000, ‘Creating Histories: Oral Narrative and the Politics of History-Making’, The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4 (November 1): 1084-1085.
[Appendixes omitted.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
The author asks a text to reveal what life was like. The text is a short oral history interview, and it reveals several major themes as a result of textual analysis. These are then reported and discussed in terms of an alternative to a hypothetical standard history text. A partial yet richer understanding of a person and a period appears as a result.
Abbreviated Thematic Analysis of an Interview: Mrs. Joan Lash
An oral interview can write history (Geraci 2005), but in some important respects, it tells a different story than that in a learned, bound volume. It is a story for richer understanding of what life was like. This then is the central question for storytellers and -gatherers. A close examination of one example can uncover this richer, personal texture of a time in history we might otherwise gloss over.
The act of commemorating by asking someone to recount may also be about forgetting (Hamilakis and Labanyi 2008), and an oral history may reveal as much about that as what is remembered in the moment. In addition, the act of telling one's history can reveal tensions that a carefully crafted text might overlook, or ignore all together (Saikia 2000).
What of all of this--in a concrete example? "Mrs Joan Lash, wife of an ADC [aide-de-camp] to the Governor of Madras," talked in 1985 about everyday life in India to Mary Thatcher. The text of the interview, made available by the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge, has been included here. An abbreviated thematic analysis of what was said is this paper and a suggestive object lesson in what history does not always tell us.
To let the text speak, the transcribed version of the Lash interview, including Thatcher's questions, was first formatted in a table with 108 rows, one for each sentence, and three columns for numbering and notes. Repeated readings generated questions and comments--the notes--for many sentences. From these notes, larger categories, tentative themes in the third column, were isolated. A careful reading of the text, including the words of both interviewer and interviewee, showed it had many more candidate themes than those highlighted and can be reported here.
Textual analysis focused on Mrs. Lash and at the sentence rather than word or phrase level. However, the importance of the themes selected come from the words and phrases, or their equivalents, that Mrs. Lash provided. Thus, adherence to the text and what it says gave rise to the themes. Independent of the text, as may be seen below, the themes stand on their own as important in the texture of a life.
The themes selected for further study and analysis after the sifting out was a result of a back and forth reading/re-reading process, a kind of hermeneutic spiral both up and down until the briefest, cursory analysis could be summarized (Gadamer 1988).
Mrs. Joan Lash, at the time of the interview and in the eighth decade of her life, showed "placid acceptance" of "the pattern of life" as she knew and experienced it. She also showed she had "different mothers" and different ideas about what and where "home" was. Forgetting about or not remembering figure into the themes of home and different mothers. Tensions around "Being abandoned everywhere" (Line 107) relate to home and mother as well as seem to have contributed to placid acceptance of the pattern of life.
The pattern of life is Mrs. Lash's phrase, and she uses it three times (Lines 2, 31, and 80). In lines 28 and 79, she also uses phrases which can readily be understood as the pattern of life. Five references to the way it was for her, combined with being placid and accepting (Line 45) and just taking it (Line 46), strongly suggest a way of being.
Telltale in this pattern of the way of Mrs. Lash is how she refers to what happened. She is often acted upon rather than acting. Consider what she says after "just taking it": "And then when you became eighteen my father and mother were both out in India then and I then went out to India." It is as if there was a protocol for people of her background or station, that that next step was natural, a part of a known process. When she reflects that she may not have been proper when in Madras enjoying herself (Line 77), as if that were terrible, there is this preoccupation(?) with some determined-by-other way.
Mrs. Lash has one mother, the one she cherishes with a particularly vivid memory from childhood (Line 2 and following). This is the same person she can describe as her mother in the third person, without much detail or emotion. "She was a very beautiful person, very lovely, rather helpless I suppose" (Line 12). This is perhaps the same mother she yearned for (Line 44).
One wonders what the specifics were that Mrs. Lash could describe her one mother in such general terms: The cherished mother is forgotten in the interview as commemoration.
Mrs. Lash appears to have spent her early years away from her mother, perhaps both of them coming or going between England and India. She also has mother figures in nannies, unnamed aunts, and an unnamed nun.
As has been stated, Mrs. Lash was abandoned everywhere, even in early childhood (Line 9). Everywhere raises the matter of different houses. Home seems to have been England and India. The tensions Mrs. Lash felt in her houses-not-homes of boarding school and various aunts are less clear but strongly expressed (Lines 40 and 30 respectively).
In the end, although this theme would seem to figure large in the texture of a life, we have few details except the presumed number of houses in different places of residence. Perhaps Mrs. Lash did not place much importance on them.
This oral history is rich as the above analysis, transcript, and comments suggest. However, it is partial. We have a sense of Mrs. Lash, but her life is sketched only. We do not have the luxury of follow-up questions, and the analysis can help us get just so far in understanding.
Some themes are quite clear and suggest further inquiry. How did the life of a young man or young woman turn upon parents in service of the empire? What is done to the notion of home when two or more places could be called so? Women and mothers adapted in earlier times, yes, but in the main how did they? And how was life for these patriots abroad, a prescribed pattern to be followed and placidly accepted, or was there zest and excitement enough as with Mrs. Lash (Line 108)?
Mrs. Lash gives us an insight in this interview that we cannot gloss over, but lest that be all there is, history, the history of people, would be and is much more--a story for richer understanding.
References
Gadamer, H-G. (1988). ‘On the circle of understanding’ in J. M. Connolly & T. Keutner (Eds.), Hermeneutics versus science? Three German views (pp. 68-78), Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Geraci, Victor W. 2005, ‘Letting Sources Become the Narrative: Using Oral Interviews to Write History’, The Public Historian 27, no. 1 (January 1): 61-66.
Hamilakis, Y., Jo Labanyi 2008, ‘Introduction: Time, Materiality, and the Work of Memory’, History and Memory 20, no. 2 (October 1): 5-17.
'Interview: Mrs. J. Lash by Mary Thatcher' (1985), Centre of South Asian Studies 004, viewed 5 December 2008
Saikia, Yasmin 2000, ‘Creating Histories: Oral Narrative and the Politics of History-Making’, The Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4 (November 1): 1084-1085.
[Appendixes omitted.]
Options Versus Goals
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 11/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Deborah Davis (2006) identifies one way of developing critical thinking. That is, we can develop our skills by looking at options and their advantages and disadvantages (p. 83). This leads to selecting the best option under the circumstances to solve a problem.
What Davis does not develop is what an option is. It seems to be a course of immediate, practical action. I would propose that problem solving is not as simple as that. At least among options you have an embedded problem. Given two or more options for problem one, then the next problem is to select which one? How do you do that without carrying out this problem-options process again and again?
I would like to suggest a way to stop this regress by turning an option into a step towards a goal or objective that needs to come about because of some action. What am I trying to accomplish by doing this versus that? Once I have that, all the rest falls into place.
For example, in this exercise, how can I answer the question of which critical thinking skill can I or should I develop more? I can say one option for this problem is to stay up all night to get this paper turned in on time. Another answer is a goal, a condition or state of what it would be like that I want to have.
That desired state might be something like this: I will always be prepared for the requirements of school. From this ideal, action steps (options) come, and may include for me to prioritize everyday challenges at school such that I can turn my work in on time and perhaps get better grades. The option of staying up all night for a one-page paper then is not optimal. It does not help me get to my goal or objective very well. Think of what it would mean for me. I have. Staying up late or working all night will deprive me of my beauty rest, another important goal of mine.
Reference
Davis, D., (2006). Adult Learner' S Companion. City: Houghton Mifflin Company.
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Deborah Davis (2006) identifies one way of developing critical thinking. That is, we can develop our skills by looking at options and their advantages and disadvantages (p. 83). This leads to selecting the best option under the circumstances to solve a problem.
What Davis does not develop is what an option is. It seems to be a course of immediate, practical action. I would propose that problem solving is not as simple as that. At least among options you have an embedded problem. Given two or more options for problem one, then the next problem is to select which one? How do you do that without carrying out this problem-options process again and again?
I would like to suggest a way to stop this regress by turning an option into a step towards a goal or objective that needs to come about because of some action. What am I trying to accomplish by doing this versus that? Once I have that, all the rest falls into place.
For example, in this exercise, how can I answer the question of which critical thinking skill can I or should I develop more? I can say one option for this problem is to stay up all night to get this paper turned in on time. Another answer is a goal, a condition or state of what it would be like that I want to have.
That desired state might be something like this: I will always be prepared for the requirements of school. From this ideal, action steps (options) come, and may include for me to prioritize everyday challenges at school such that I can turn my work in on time and perhaps get better grades. The option of staying up all night for a one-page paper then is not optimal. It does not help me get to my goal or objective very well. Think of what it would mean for me. I have. Staying up late or working all night will deprive me of my beauty rest, another important goal of mine.
Reference
Davis, D., (2006). Adult Learner' S Companion. City: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Social Research Ethics, Preliminary Thoughts
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 11/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
The title alone of McIntyre’s article (2002) about doing the right thing in conducting social research suggests another, first-order matter not to be dismissed easily. Is it ever possible to know if a researcher has done, or is doing, the right thing? In considering this matter, I found I could work with the following questions to come up with some preliminary if tentative thoughts. Here are these presented with the idea that they might lead to a greater insight into social research ethics and the ultimate concern McIntyre’s article rests upon.
One: "Is it possible for anyone to genuinely consent to being objectified through the research process?" (Davidson).
Two: Do voluntary participation, informed consent, risk of harm, confidentiality, and anonymity (Trochim) pretty much cover the bases for ethical research on human subjects?
Whether quantitative or qualitative research approaches are employed to study human phenomena, the knowledge quest rests on the thing--the object of study. Whether researchers, ethics committees, the public, or others like it or not, human subjects become objects in the service of an other's discovering, confirming, or advancing knowledge.
Objectification comes with all that is the research enterprise. If, however, in a clinical or confidential study, a subject, or we can now say object, is not treated per proper procedure and respect, there may be cause for complaint. Any ethics violation may then have to be determined by those closest to what was actually proposed and done.
Davidson's question seems more philosophical than practical. It may not be nice or politically correct to objectify people in some ideal world or in some contexts, but in the interests of research we do it, just as we do it elsewhere in our lives (e.g., picture the finals in a body building competition).
Voluntary participation, informed consent, risk of harm, confidentiality, and anonymity are not the only matters for care in planning and conducting research involving human subjects. No doubt any ethics committee or listing of standards, rules, or procedures would specify these and others, and in some detail. However, there is at least one additional base to cover regardless of the group to be satisfied or the expectations to be met.
The expectation or standard should be articulated that ethics should be addressed whenever researching human subjects. This may seem self-evident, but if not stated in whatever fashion the governing or advisory body wishes to, not having some self-referential language about the advisability or requirement of the process itself has a possible negative consequence. For example, if there is no process, the possible claim above of violation could not be addressed except out of the good citizenship or manners involving those closest to the action. Another possibility is that if researchers as a group do not "require" the process of reviewing the ethics of what is proposed, a researcher need not review. If review is required, then the substance and process of research, its approval, and--it is hoped--research implementation will help ensure the proper treatment and care of those studied.
By and large, research today is not carried out by independent researchers. It is sanctioned by higher education by having research and publication as a part of the academic’s job description. Grants and contracts routinely require as much quality and transparency as is humanly possible, or affordable. The public can scrutinize pharmaceutical companies and governments when their work involves health and the common good. The researcher or sponsor that does not adhere to ethical precepts risks being ignored by an academy that embraces the almost universal norm of doing so.
There are some research studies that need to be covert, that is the object of study need not or should not be disclosed beforehand. Disclosing might in these cases bias results. This seems to contradict the principle of informed consent, but this depends. An ethnographic study might be an example exception. If a cultural informant knows he or she is being viewed as such, results might be other than what would be without this knowledge. Margaret Mead reportedly got into this difficulty with the subjects of her classic study (2001). Degree of disclosure as an ethical expectation needs to be carefully worked out for each social research study, for the integrity of the study as well as the protection of the subjects.
Now, given all of the above, is it ever possible to know if a researcher has done the right thing? It appears that as much as we prescribe and proscribe trying to ensure that we do right in social research, it appears as if the answer is akin to the imperfection we de facto accept in our lives. However, there is a difference. In social (and other) research, we would try to be extra deliberate and careful about achieving incontrovertible explanations and understandings, reducing the chances of making errors and doing wrong. Otherwise, what are we trying to accomplish?
Works Cited
McIntyre, Lisa J. “Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in Social Research.” The Practical Skeptic. Mcintyre, Lisa (Ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Perennial Classics, 2001.
Trochim, William M. K. “Ethics in Research.” Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006 25. Nov. 2008
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
The title alone of McIntyre’s article (2002) about doing the right thing in conducting social research suggests another, first-order matter not to be dismissed easily. Is it ever possible to know if a researcher has done, or is doing, the right thing? In considering this matter, I found I could work with the following questions to come up with some preliminary if tentative thoughts. Here are these presented with the idea that they might lead to a greater insight into social research ethics and the ultimate concern McIntyre’s article rests upon.
One: "Is it possible for anyone to genuinely consent to being objectified through the research process?" (Davidson).
Two: Do voluntary participation, informed consent, risk of harm, confidentiality, and anonymity (Trochim) pretty much cover the bases for ethical research on human subjects?
Whether quantitative or qualitative research approaches are employed to study human phenomena, the knowledge quest rests on the thing--the object of study. Whether researchers, ethics committees, the public, or others like it or not, human subjects become objects in the service of an other's discovering, confirming, or advancing knowledge.
Objectification comes with all that is the research enterprise. If, however, in a clinical or confidential study, a subject, or we can now say object, is not treated per proper procedure and respect, there may be cause for complaint. Any ethics violation may then have to be determined by those closest to what was actually proposed and done.
Davidson's question seems more philosophical than practical. It may not be nice or politically correct to objectify people in some ideal world or in some contexts, but in the interests of research we do it, just as we do it elsewhere in our lives (e.g., picture the finals in a body building competition).
Voluntary participation, informed consent, risk of harm, confidentiality, and anonymity are not the only matters for care in planning and conducting research involving human subjects. No doubt any ethics committee or listing of standards, rules, or procedures would specify these and others, and in some detail. However, there is at least one additional base to cover regardless of the group to be satisfied or the expectations to be met.
The expectation or standard should be articulated that ethics should be addressed whenever researching human subjects. This may seem self-evident, but if not stated in whatever fashion the governing or advisory body wishes to, not having some self-referential language about the advisability or requirement of the process itself has a possible negative consequence. For example, if there is no process, the possible claim above of violation could not be addressed except out of the good citizenship or manners involving those closest to the action. Another possibility is that if researchers as a group do not "require" the process of reviewing the ethics of what is proposed, a researcher need not review. If review is required, then the substance and process of research, its approval, and--it is hoped--research implementation will help ensure the proper treatment and care of those studied.
By and large, research today is not carried out by independent researchers. It is sanctioned by higher education by having research and publication as a part of the academic’s job description. Grants and contracts routinely require as much quality and transparency as is humanly possible, or affordable. The public can scrutinize pharmaceutical companies and governments when their work involves health and the common good. The researcher or sponsor that does not adhere to ethical precepts risks being ignored by an academy that embraces the almost universal norm of doing so.
There are some research studies that need to be covert, that is the object of study need not or should not be disclosed beforehand. Disclosing might in these cases bias results. This seems to contradict the principle of informed consent, but this depends. An ethnographic study might be an example exception. If a cultural informant knows he or she is being viewed as such, results might be other than what would be without this knowledge. Margaret Mead reportedly got into this difficulty with the subjects of her classic study (2001). Degree of disclosure as an ethical expectation needs to be carefully worked out for each social research study, for the integrity of the study as well as the protection of the subjects.
Now, given all of the above, is it ever possible to know if a researcher has done the right thing? It appears that as much as we prescribe and proscribe trying to ensure that we do right in social research, it appears as if the answer is akin to the imperfection we de facto accept in our lives. However, there is a difference. In social (and other) research, we would try to be extra deliberate and careful about achieving incontrovertible explanations and understandings, reducing the chances of making errors and doing wrong. Otherwise, what are we trying to accomplish?
Works Cited
McIntyre, Lisa J. “Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in Social Research.” The Practical Skeptic. Mcintyre, Lisa (Ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Perennial Classics, 2001.
Trochim, William M. K. “Ethics in Research.” Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006 25. Nov. 2008
Beacon for Human Dignity
[An academic exercise and part of a larger project on authenticity in writing, 11/08.]
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Peace Prize Laureate, remains under house arrest in Myanmar (Burma), her silence and absence from public life calling for moral action and democratic contribution where once only her writing, speeches, and demonstrations did so. Her life and work stem from and illustrate the leadership quality of charisma. She is a transformational leader in word, deed, and silence with human rights and human dignity her campaign..
Beacon for Human Dignity
"The great work we are acknowledging has yet to be concluded. She is still fighting the good fight. Her courage and commitment find her a prisoner of conscience in her own country, Burma" (Sejersted, 1999).
So the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee introduced Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Peace Prize Laureate. She remains today under house arrest in Myanmar (Burma), her silence and absence from public life calling for moral action and democratic contribution where once only her writing, speeches, and demonstrations did so.
Today, leaders and others from around the world acknowledge Aung San Suu Kyi as a beacon for human dignity, and they persistently urge the Myanmar military leaders to release her and her country so that both may enjoy the freedom and independence her father, Aung San, died for.
Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon in 1945, and she received her education in Burma, India, and the U. K., earning her doctorate from the University of London. In 1988, she returned to Burma and helped found the National League for Democracy. She ran for the office of Prime Minister, but the military junta nullified the election she had won. For most of the period 1988 to the present, Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest. Reporters and dignitaries have been barred from visiting her, but the world is conscious of her struggle and keeps vigil.
According to the Nobel Presentation Speech, Aung San Suu Kyi has acknowledged that the major influences in her life were her father and Mahatma Gandhi. Her father was a military general and helped negotiate Burma's independence from Great Britain in 1947. Aung San Suu Kyi embraced Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. Her development as a thinker, activist, and leader thus embraced deep respect for people and therefore human rights.
In her "Freedom from Fear" speech, she says, "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it" (San, 1995).
These words echo down the years for Burma and the world, and ensure Aung San Suu Kyi's stature as a leader. Here she asks all of us, including those in power, to act in the interest of human rights and dignity, and she invites contribution through political reform which cherishes and protects people. Fear as felt or fostered by any of us prevents realizing the dignity of each and everyone. Social and political systems can support or suppress fear. Aung San Suu Kyi's claim is that democracy, founded on respect for human rights, is the antidote to fear.
To the cheers of her countrymen and -women and the recognition and acclimation of those around the world, Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be seen as a moral and democratic beacon. She has been honored with more than fifteen awards and distinctions (United States Campaign for Burma).
Charisma is a universally recognized leadership trait. And through Aung San Suu Kyi's words and long suffering, she continues to hold the civilized world accountable for the injustices she and others endure. That charisma stems from enlightened simplicity, as is manifest in the Bhuddist way and nonviolent action. That she stands tall and confronts oppression honors Aung San Suu Kyi's father's fight for independence.
Aung San Suu Kyi may also be described as a transformational leader. According to the leadership behaviors identified by Kuhnert and Lewis (1987), she has articulated goals, built an image, demonstrated confidence, and aroused motivation. And decidedly, she has followers (p. 650).
Call her leadership charismatic or transformational, Aung San Suu Kyi speaks to our sense of right and good. The world acknowledges her and has not forgotten the struggle to realize a better life for each and all. Many have resonated with her call and followed: Though a silent beacon at present, her leadership inspires and moves us.
References
Kuhnert, W., Lewis, P. (1987). “Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Constructive/Developmental Analysis.” Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review, 12(4), 648.
San, A., Michael, A., Havel, V., & Tutu, D. (1995). Freedom from Fear. New York: Penguin Books.
Sejersted, F. (1999). “The Nobel Peace Prize 1991: Presentation Speech.” In Abrams, I. (Ed.). Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Retrieved on 25 November 2008, from http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/presentation-speech.html
United States Campaign for Burma. “Semi-Complete List of Awards Won by Aung San Suu Kyi.” Retrieved on November 25, 2008, from http://uscampaignforburma.org/assk/awards.html
[THIS PAPER MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR IN PART FOR ILLUSTRATION OR INSTRUCTIONAL PURPOSES WITH OR WITHOUT PERMISSION.]
Abstract
Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Peace Prize Laureate, remains under house arrest in Myanmar (Burma), her silence and absence from public life calling for moral action and democratic contribution where once only her writing, speeches, and demonstrations did so. Her life and work stem from and illustrate the leadership quality of charisma. She is a transformational leader in word, deed, and silence with human rights and human dignity her campaign..
Beacon for Human Dignity
"The great work we are acknowledging has yet to be concluded. She is still fighting the good fight. Her courage and commitment find her a prisoner of conscience in her own country, Burma" (Sejersted, 1999).
So the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee introduced Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Peace Prize Laureate. She remains today under house arrest in Myanmar (Burma), her silence and absence from public life calling for moral action and democratic contribution where once only her writing, speeches, and demonstrations did so.
Today, leaders and others from around the world acknowledge Aung San Suu Kyi as a beacon for human dignity, and they persistently urge the Myanmar military leaders to release her and her country so that both may enjoy the freedom and independence her father, Aung San, died for.
Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon in 1945, and she received her education in Burma, India, and the U. K., earning her doctorate from the University of London. In 1988, she returned to Burma and helped found the National League for Democracy. She ran for the office of Prime Minister, but the military junta nullified the election she had won. For most of the period 1988 to the present, Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest. Reporters and dignitaries have been barred from visiting her, but the world is conscious of her struggle and keeps vigil.
According to the Nobel Presentation Speech, Aung San Suu Kyi has acknowledged that the major influences in her life were her father and Mahatma Gandhi. Her father was a military general and helped negotiate Burma's independence from Great Britain in 1947. Aung San Suu Kyi embraced Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. Her development as a thinker, activist, and leader thus embraced deep respect for people and therefore human rights.
In her "Freedom from Fear" speech, she says, "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it" (San, 1995).
These words echo down the years for Burma and the world, and ensure Aung San Suu Kyi's stature as a leader. Here she asks all of us, including those in power, to act in the interest of human rights and dignity, and she invites contribution through political reform which cherishes and protects people. Fear as felt or fostered by any of us prevents realizing the dignity of each and everyone. Social and political systems can support or suppress fear. Aung San Suu Kyi's claim is that democracy, founded on respect for human rights, is the antidote to fear.
To the cheers of her countrymen and -women and the recognition and acclimation of those around the world, Aung San Suu Kyi continues to be seen as a moral and democratic beacon. She has been honored with more than fifteen awards and distinctions (United States Campaign for Burma).
Charisma is a universally recognized leadership trait. And through Aung San Suu Kyi's words and long suffering, she continues to hold the civilized world accountable for the injustices she and others endure. That charisma stems from enlightened simplicity, as is manifest in the Bhuddist way and nonviolent action. That she stands tall and confronts oppression honors Aung San Suu Kyi's father's fight for independence.
Aung San Suu Kyi may also be described as a transformational leader. According to the leadership behaviors identified by Kuhnert and Lewis (1987), she has articulated goals, built an image, demonstrated confidence, and aroused motivation. And decidedly, she has followers (p. 650).
Call her leadership charismatic or transformational, Aung San Suu Kyi speaks to our sense of right and good. The world acknowledges her and has not forgotten the struggle to realize a better life for each and all. Many have resonated with her call and followed: Though a silent beacon at present, her leadership inspires and moves us.
References
Kuhnert, W., Lewis, P. (1987). “Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Constructive/Developmental Analysis.” Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review, 12(4), 648.
San, A., Michael, A., Havel, V., & Tutu, D. (1995). Freedom from Fear. New York: Penguin Books.
Sejersted, F. (1999). “The Nobel Peace Prize 1991: Presentation Speech.” In Abrams, I. (Ed.). Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. Retrieved on 25 November 2008, from http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/presentation-speech.html
United States Campaign for Burma. “Semi-Complete List of Awards Won by Aung San Suu Kyi.” Retrieved on November 25, 2008, from http://uscampaignforburma.org/assk/awards.html
May 6, 2008
Academic exercise
[Prior to your interview, we would be grateful if you would complete the attached pre-interview task. The task will provide a basis for discussion in the interview of academic writing and your approaches to academic skills in general. Please only refer to the text rather than any other outside sources and do not spend more than two-three hours on the task. Please complete the essay within two days of receiving this message and e-mail it to. . . .
The prospective employer cleverly "revised" a text, the above mentioned attachment, the original for which seems to be "Salvaging Liberalism from the Wreck of the Enlightenment," available as of this date at http://www.crvp.org/book/Series01/I-26/introduction.htm.
Here is the response with but small changes from what was submitted, provided here as a writing sample and illustration of selected principles (highlighted below)for beginning academic writers. Also, the response is an example of sifting through the jell-o, before you can get to the good stuff.]
Cultural Creation of Free and Equal, A Critique
In his paper, entitled "The Cultural Creation of Free and Equal Individuals," Professor ??? argues that liberal democracies need a form of civic education which produces and sustains people "who identify themselves and one another as free and equal individuals." This education rests on a civic culture, "a culture supportive of citizenship" with clear, coherent, articulated central ideas. Professor ??? claims that in the absence of sufficient numbers of citizens with the requisites for proper citizenship, liberal democracy itself is in danger. States built on this model thus need to ensure a properly democratized citizenry.
Professor ??? also asserts that the citizens of a liberal democracy need members who "at least insofar as they act within the public sphere, see their membership in such communities as in some sense subordinate to their membership in the broader civic community." To paraphrase, civic education, resting on the shoulders of a civic culture, should teach citizens to think (and act?) first in the interest of the state or government and then based on their own particular identity in terms of ethnicity, class, and/or religion.
Professor ???'s paper on civic education in a liberal democracy has flaws in expression and rationale--at least one of either in almost every paragraph in the first half. The thesis, regardless of its merits as a standalone statement, thus suffers greatly. Any call to action will fall on skeptical if not uncomprehending readers.
The first paragraph of Professor ???'s paper gives general background for his argument and ends with the assertion that human beings are "made rather than found," "produced through the influence of . . . political culture." A careful reading of this assertion would suggest a glaring omission. Families as micro-political systems need to be included as powerful influences for the development of individual identity. This qualifying statement is absent here. All seems to begin and end with things political at a more macro level. Consider this omitted qualification a minor point. The author, after all, is just beginning to develop his topic.
The second paragraph claims in part that the notion of free and equal "is alien to the perspectives that most immediately shape human life." These perspectives are listed as ethnic, class, and religious. Although the author cites human development as a key to understanding human beings (first sentence, second paragraph), there is no mention of what human growth and development or other disciplines have had to say about the most obvious influence that "immediately shape[s] human life," mom! The absence of a qualifying statement about mothers and children and family influence in the first paragraph now detracts from the overall argument. There is little doubt that nature and nurture in the earliest years help shape whether or not an individual even cares to participate in society, regardless of its descriptive label or prevailing norms. To assert that shaping human life does not in the first instance include mother, parents, relatives, and so forth is to ignore the self-evident.
Hark back to a beginning English writing course. With all due respect for Professor ???, a writer should avoid omitting the most obvious questions or observations that qualify and clarify what he or she is trying to say. There is a lapse here at the very beginning of Professor ???'s paper.
The third paragraph suffers at the outset by claiming that the second paragraph's assertion sans qualification is a fact. The paper does not acknowledge or address the expected order of things again: Mothers before governors in shaping human life.
It is easy to debunk ideas by picking at details and lack of qualifying statements that an author has not deemed important enough to include. We can look at things more constructively. According to the philosopher and psychologist Ken Wilber, who coincidentally has also commented on the same matters that Professor ??? does in this essay, everybody holds at least a part of the truth. That paragraph four follows number three with flaws however important places it as suspect from the first word. Rather than focus on what might be problematic with this paragraph, we can point to its reasonableness and strength, that it holds part of the truth that should be noted.
A liberal democratic state, especially if it does not have a constituency, or only a weak one, needs to create one. The influx of civil society programs into the former Eastern (Soviet) Bloc just after the Berlin Wall's demise shows acknowledgement of this wisdom. The challenges to civil society in Iraq today can be seen as an example of Professor ???'s warnings here in paragraph four. Commonly held knowledge lends support to what this paper attempts to express.
However, the credibility of the author continues to erode in paragraph five. "Forms of government based on principles intrinsic to ethnic, class, and religious world views" do "face precisely this sort of cultural and educational challenge." Imagine instituting a governmental system based on ethnicity without precedent for it. That system would have the same vulnerability as a liberal democratic one without its support structures and procedures. If paragraph four has the merit highlighted above, then the unrevised opening statement of five contradicts it. We are no closer to giving the essay or its author a nod of agreement, nor has the notion that a liberal democracy with subordinate other allegiances been demonstrated as workable or preferred.
Paragraph six assumes that the prerequisite for governance is a kind of cultural self-understanding, particularly an understanding of the principles underlying authority. What or who is to say that democracies, liberal or not, have a populace or a portion of it that has or needs this understanding? What or who says that states deemed not liberal democracies have people who do not understand what underlies sanctioned and unsanctioned political and public behavior?
Two examples illustrate how these questions, and questions like them, must be addressed. Consider first, if in a liberal democracy individuals are free and equal, then you as citizen are free not to be conscious of or concerned about anything other than having a roof over your head, food on the table, and a television to watch. Second, if what is allowed and what is not determines whether or not you live or die, there is little to understand. Civic education in the first instance might be a good idea. In the second, there is little point except to know what it is that will get you killed. The first is optional and recommended civic education, a nicety in democratic societies. The second is all about survival and requisite knowledge, usually thoroughly understood without formal means of message transmission.
If careful readers are looking for evidence to support the argument of necessity, in liberal democracies, for a form of civic education which subordinates the ethnic, class, and religious identities of its citizens, they have lost sight of this idea or any support for it. Paragraphs seven through the end of the paper hold promise, but the weaknesses thus far discourage further reading. In addition, the next paragraphs continue with problems in expression, which in turn affect the effectiveness of thesis and argument. The author has difficulty saying what in all likelihood he intends. "[E]very democracy needs a countervailing culture--a culture supportive of citizenship." Countervailing is the problem word. To harken back to one of the principles of coherent writing: Proper expression leads to comprehending thoughts and answering calls to action.
To suggest how the author could salvage what has been commented on thus far and to strengthen the second half of the paper might be to focus on first things first.
If a liberal democracy is the manifestation of free and equal, then we need go no further than to focus on the meaning of this language. If we in a given state are free and equal, without restraint we can order our personal universe in ways we choose. And if we choose not to participate in the body politic, we do not need to. If we choose to make ethnic identity the center of daily life, then we can do that, just as our equals can choose to do what they choose.
According to Professor ???, this might endanger the very values citizens in a liberal democracy live by, but given the mix of all peoples in a hypothetical state, some will be stewards of the system as it is and can be. Others will concern themselves with other pursuits, such as the search for truth, beauty, or goodness. In the experiment that is democracy, some who think citizens do not know or value enough the idea of free and equal will create the opportunities needed to ensure people get the message. After all, liberal democracies defined as free also have their evangelists.
Free and equal are ideas and values that have some limits. Of these Professor ??? does not mention or develop, and they are imperative to discuss or acknowledge in any treatment. Although in the main the author is correct that for a liberal democracy free and equal are requisite, these concepts need to be carefully defined for socio-political contexts. As common wisdom says, you are not free to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater where there is no fire. There are subordinations, or limits, and these must be suggested or addressed given the Professor's topic.
In sum, the argument for a civic culture and its creation and maintenance through education, leading to subordination of other identities citizens have is not convincing. It is not in part because of flaws in expression. A reader should not easily find minor or major faults with almost every paragraph. The thesis is also not convincing because of an apparent neglect of the very tenets of liberal democracy as specified by the author himself--free and equal members of a state. In other words, one does not have far to look for liberal democracy's clear, coherent, articulated central ideas; and the meaning of free and equal includes those whose education may be deficient, or whose "preferences" may be other than civic.
Professor ??? concludes with a warning. Losing the capacity to form habits of citizenship threatens "the citizens of North Atlantic liberal democracies today." Whether an accurate assessment or not, Professor ???'s words call us to take heed. But what North Atlantic liberal democracy today needs an influx of civil society programs such as supported the socio-political (and economic) transitions in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s? Or, what cultural or other phenomena are at play somewhere to give us the idea that an act of civic education needs to be performed? It would be nice to know; some might think it imperative. Professor ??? is conspicuously silent.
April 25, 2008
Cozumel, Mexico
+ Approximately 2000 words
+ Flesch Reading Ease (target audience)--college students
+ Writing principles to be gleaned from the above critique.
1. Mean what you say and say what you mean.
2. Answer questions your reader will naturally ask.
3. Do not introduce a new thesis in the conclusion.
4. Soften assertions and opinions enough so that your reader does not question everything you say.
5. Define your terms.
6. Use examples to demonstrate or explain or clarify.
7. Use changes in register sparingly.
8. Respect the author and what s/he says even though you disagree.
9. Note the difference between effect and affect.
10. If you are going to copy something from the Internet, copy the original and keep it as is. Cite the source so your reader can find it.
January 25, 2008
Constituting 2
Screenshot of the learning portal (Moodle learning management platform) for courses taught/supported online during the first term of the 2006-07 academic year at the Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic. Titles shown link to course-level navigation pages.
Constituting 1
Screenshot of a drama course's navigation page (partial). From here, participants access resources and activities for developing and demonstrating learning.
July 30, 2007
Fear and loathing in Liberec
[This transcript and its audio (podcast) version were never made available to my students of teaching. I still have an uneasy feeling about the level of the language this piece was written in and how direct it is in some places. I also have misgivings about revealing my own inadequacies in coming to terms as a stranger in a foreign land.]
There are very specific limits to my fear and loathing, and I am sure introducing these terms to the intended audience would have caused conclusions not bound by exactly what is said. My fear and loathing are more rhetorical devices to highlight and critique a system than actual personal feelings. This nuance would have been lost to most, and perhaps still will be.
All this aside, the commentary on one of the purposes of education may be of some value. And the exercise to script an instructional podcast in limited space was useful to me in the early days when I was experimenting with alternatives in content delivery. The rhetorical question at the end should be the subject of another piece. Perhaps this was a necessary exercise to get to that.]
This is a download for one of my courses. I am Kevin Mactavish, and I am a student of teaching at the Technical University of Liberec in the Czech Republic. My remarks here are to help students succeed in their studies in English.
The title of this presentation is "Fear and loathing in Liberec".
The title of this rant is "Fear and loathing in Liberec". I fear for most of the students I have had. They will never get it. That is, they will never understand, one sense of "get it". And they will never understand even half of what their education has to offer. They will not capture, that is get a hold of it. They will miss it. They will miss out. They, or perhaps you, in some sense, will be illiterate.
Some days I loathe teaching. In fact, most days I just plain hate it, but loathe is a better word. Why I loathe teaching can be a subject for when we have more time. But to answer this question quickly here, let's just say teaching doesn't work in this environment. Learning works. But teaching doesn't.
But I will start with fear. As I test and examine students--I am not sure there is a difference, but it is clear that the university is an exam factory. . . . My experience shows two things stand out when I ask questions, questions not about language or grammar, but questions about a subject.
1. Students may know a few facts, like dots on some piece of paper.
2. They cannot relate the facts, and often the courses they are taking, to anything within or outside the subject. They can't connect the dots showing relations and the picture the connected dots may reveal.
In short, students have little knowledge and almost no skills with which to understand the little they have. Not a very complimentary observation, I admit. But now, just think about the prospect of teaching under these conditions! Does teaching students who even after courses and courses perform to the level of the least common denominator invite you to start the day? to go into the teaching profession?
What the careful and thorough teacher must do in a situation like this is dot all the i's and cross all the t's, although I know and it is ironic, and perhaps symbolic, that in Czech handwriting, t's are not crossed.
If the teacher has to teach everything in order to get higher levels of performance, that job is thankless, overwhelming, and not doable. And if higher levels of performance is defined from the start as more facts to recall, teaching becomes telling, sometimes explaining. In other words, teaching is just talking. This is not a very interesting or expansive role for a teacher. In fact, if you think about it, it is quite dull. A more familiar expression for the Czech English speaker might be boring. Who wants to bore students with presenting and reviewing and testing facts? Would you?
I fear this role you have for me here, and often I loathe it. But what's the problem? Why do we teachers and students find ourselves in this situation? in this environment? Are students not able? Are they, in their word, stupid? This is a taboo term in my courses. It is not a term I would use, but I use it here because it communicates. I would offer better wording with a more accurate description for this question. Are students less or not capable of better performance? Don't believe you aren't. You are not stupid. You are quite able.
Well, the next question then is, what is it in your environment and history that somehow prevents or doesn't encourage a deeper knowledge of details and better critical thinking? Why is it that you have isolated dots on the paper and no sense of how to connect them to reveal the larger parts and wholes, the beautiful landscapes or portraits hidden from your view?
I suspect it's either culture or schooling--some would say that these are the same, that teachers and schools are culture carriers and that students become part of the culture through schooling. Culture or schooling has not shown you that there are possible numbering schemes for the dots. And numbering suggests something else. The more dots you have, like pixels on a computer screen, the easier it is to make out the picture. And if the dots are ordered well enough in some way, the easier it is to know what the image you see communicates, or means.
These are the objects in education: to see and to understand. You want to see the complete if complex picture and try to understand what it means. Perhaps the fault, if I can use that word, lies with what you have experienced, your history. I believe the system has failed you somehow. And now you are at my doorstep thinking I am unrealistic or crazy for wanting more for you.
Do not assume immediately that what I am saying is totally culturally bound and narrow. If I say in-depth knowledge and the ability to use and expand it are the right goals for teaching and learning but you think your goals are better, whatever they are, I would have you look outside the classroom door and see if the everyday world rewards--that is pays for--people who do less than what I suggest.
Now, after having talked about all of this, I still fear for you and your future based on my experience, or history, in Czech universities. And I sometimes loathe teaching. In this environment I still resist telling you facts and giving simple explanations for words you can look up yourself. You can have a book or a podcast do that job for you. There are dictionaries for people who want to use the language for more than ordering a Coke on some Spanish beach. For this, you don't need a teacher who is interested in helping you put together the puzzle and talk in English about what the puzzle means in your and our lives.
So I leave you with this. Teachers love to stump, that is puzzle, students. The title of these remarks is an allusion to a book in English by a famous, or infamous, author who took his life not too long ago. He lived in a famous American ski town and wrote about, among other things, Las Vegas. Who was this author and what is the allusion? And for the better students, why this title for these remarks?
You can play this download again or read the transcript, or both. Should be a good English lesson for you, if not something to begin to think about: Do few facts and an inability to put together analyses and conclusions about a subject summarize you and your goals for your time spent in school?
Approx 1100 words
June 21, 2006
There are very specific limits to my fear and loathing, and I am sure introducing these terms to the intended audience would have caused conclusions not bound by exactly what is said. My fear and loathing are more rhetorical devices to highlight and critique a system than actual personal feelings. This nuance would have been lost to most, and perhaps still will be.
All this aside, the commentary on one of the purposes of education may be of some value. And the exercise to script an instructional podcast in limited space was useful to me in the early days when I was experimenting with alternatives in content delivery. The rhetorical question at the end should be the subject of another piece. Perhaps this was a necessary exercise to get to that.]
This is a download for one of my courses. I am Kevin Mactavish, and I am a student of teaching at the Technical University of Liberec in the Czech Republic. My remarks here are to help students succeed in their studies in English.
The title of this presentation is "Fear and loathing in Liberec".
The title of this rant is "Fear and loathing in Liberec". I fear for most of the students I have had. They will never get it. That is, they will never understand, one sense of "get it". And they will never understand even half of what their education has to offer. They will not capture, that is get a hold of it. They will miss it. They will miss out. They, or perhaps you, in some sense, will be illiterate.
Some days I loathe teaching. In fact, most days I just plain hate it, but loathe is a better word. Why I loathe teaching can be a subject for when we have more time. But to answer this question quickly here, let's just say teaching doesn't work in this environment. Learning works. But teaching doesn't.
But I will start with fear. As I test and examine students--I am not sure there is a difference, but it is clear that the university is an exam factory. . . . My experience shows two things stand out when I ask questions, questions not about language or grammar, but questions about a subject.
1. Students may know a few facts, like dots on some piece of paper.
2. They cannot relate the facts, and often the courses they are taking, to anything within or outside the subject. They can't connect the dots showing relations and the picture the connected dots may reveal.
In short, students have little knowledge and almost no skills with which to understand the little they have. Not a very complimentary observation, I admit. But now, just think about the prospect of teaching under these conditions! Does teaching students who even after courses and courses perform to the level of the least common denominator invite you to start the day? to go into the teaching profession?
What the careful and thorough teacher must do in a situation like this is dot all the i's and cross all the t's, although I know and it is ironic, and perhaps symbolic, that in Czech handwriting, t's are not crossed.
If the teacher has to teach everything in order to get higher levels of performance, that job is thankless, overwhelming, and not doable. And if higher levels of performance is defined from the start as more facts to recall, teaching becomes telling, sometimes explaining. In other words, teaching is just talking. This is not a very interesting or expansive role for a teacher. In fact, if you think about it, it is quite dull. A more familiar expression for the Czech English speaker might be boring. Who wants to bore students with presenting and reviewing and testing facts? Would you?
I fear this role you have for me here, and often I loathe it. But what's the problem? Why do we teachers and students find ourselves in this situation? in this environment? Are students not able? Are they, in their word, stupid? This is a taboo term in my courses. It is not a term I would use, but I use it here because it communicates. I would offer better wording with a more accurate description for this question. Are students less or not capable of better performance? Don't believe you aren't. You are not stupid. You are quite able.
Well, the next question then is, what is it in your environment and history that somehow prevents or doesn't encourage a deeper knowledge of details and better critical thinking? Why is it that you have isolated dots on the paper and no sense of how to connect them to reveal the larger parts and wholes, the beautiful landscapes or portraits hidden from your view?
I suspect it's either culture or schooling--some would say that these are the same, that teachers and schools are culture carriers and that students become part of the culture through schooling. Culture or schooling has not shown you that there are possible numbering schemes for the dots. And numbering suggests something else. The more dots you have, like pixels on a computer screen, the easier it is to make out the picture. And if the dots are ordered well enough in some way, the easier it is to know what the image you see communicates, or means.
These are the objects in education: to see and to understand. You want to see the complete if complex picture and try to understand what it means. Perhaps the fault, if I can use that word, lies with what you have experienced, your history. I believe the system has failed you somehow. And now you are at my doorstep thinking I am unrealistic or crazy for wanting more for you.
Do not assume immediately that what I am saying is totally culturally bound and narrow. If I say in-depth knowledge and the ability to use and expand it are the right goals for teaching and learning but you think your goals are better, whatever they are, I would have you look outside the classroom door and see if the everyday world rewards--that is pays for--people who do less than what I suggest.
Now, after having talked about all of this, I still fear for you and your future based on my experience, or history, in Czech universities. And I sometimes loathe teaching. In this environment I still resist telling you facts and giving simple explanations for words you can look up yourself. You can have a book or a podcast do that job for you. There are dictionaries for people who want to use the language for more than ordering a Coke on some Spanish beach. For this, you don't need a teacher who is interested in helping you put together the puzzle and talk in English about what the puzzle means in your and our lives.
So I leave you with this. Teachers love to stump, that is puzzle, students. The title of these remarks is an allusion to a book in English by a famous, or infamous, author who took his life not too long ago. He lived in a famous American ski town and wrote about, among other things, Las Vegas. Who was this author and what is the allusion? And for the better students, why this title for these remarks?
You can play this download again or read the transcript, or both. Should be a good English lesson for you, if not something to begin to think about: Do few facts and an inability to put together analyses and conclusions about a subject summarize you and your goals for your time spent in school?
Approx 1100 words
June 21, 2006
July 7, 2007
A course not taught
Since the early days of Cultural Studies courses, a number of approaches developed which have proved useful and popular. Cultural Studies as area studies focuses on knowledge about peoples and places, and courses along this line often have the character of geography or social studies. Cultural studies as history and literature tend to appear in departments of languages and literature, or perhaps the visual and dramatic arts. Those cultural studies benefiting from the human sciences, including social theory and political science, focus on themes such as race, gender, government, and power. An integral studies approach might look at a society and its worldviews in terms of its evolution along developmental continua.
Regardless of which of the above approaches and their respective methods for inquiry and knowledge building, if Cultural Studies is at least about gaining greater understanding of the other, and thereby ourselves, then the academic discipline is as important today as ever; and this overarching concern--understanding--can anchor any one or a combination of emphases.
This means that to understand others through different disciplines or themes requires the perspectives and methods appropriate to those along with whatever specific content is chosen in the name of culture or Culture. That is, some disciplinary or interdisciplinary ways of understanding must exist or be taught along side of who these people are, where they live, and why it is important to know something about them. Students need knowledge and sound methodology in order to slice through the thickets of culture.
This two-tiered approach is sometimes daunting if the discourse is in a second language, since primary sources and public discourse are always in a people's own language. Admittedly, much today is available in English, plus one can often access facts and information about another culture or people in one's own language. But although facts and information are important, alone they are not enough. Factual information always begs the question of so what. Some scaffolding for knowledge and understanding needs to be built to hold raw data. And these scaffolds are more and more available in one's native language through different departments in institutions of higher learning, the library and bookstores, and the Internet.
Gaining greater understanding of the other, and thereby ourselves, is what we can agree on as the why for Cultural Studies, but to what end? The application of understanding is communication, or more accurately it is interaction involving what we know and the successful transmission-reception of same. The foundation for this is literacy, cultural literacy.
Literacy as not just the structure of the language and its vocabulary, but also broad and shared knowledge. When it comes to understanding the other, we need to know a lot of what they know. Shared contexts inform our words and deeds. Cultural literacy then is the names, phrases, events, artifacts, and other items that are familiar to the natives allowing them to communicate, work, and live together. What constitutes this body of knowledge? and if it can be listed and defined, will it help the outsider discover the other? Yes. This is the contention here.
Cultural studies is then information about people and peoples and their places. It is about history, arts, artifacts, and the values and themes they are concerned about. Cultural studies is also about their place in the world developmentally and relationally. Not finally, Cultural Studies is about the unique ways people and a people communicate among themselves and with others in their language.
How does one learn this stuff of the essence of what it is to be of and from one nation or group other than one's own? Admittedly, no one class or course or field of study will provide the whole picture. But the study of ourselves and others can take a middle yet practical road, and one specific to future teachers of English.
Briefly.
Regardless of which of the above approaches and their respective methods for inquiry and knowledge building, if Cultural Studies is at least about gaining greater understanding of the other, and thereby ourselves, then the academic discipline is as important today as ever; and this overarching concern--understanding--can anchor any one or a combination of emphases.
This means that to understand others through different disciplines or themes requires the perspectives and methods appropriate to those along with whatever specific content is chosen in the name of culture or Culture. That is, some disciplinary or interdisciplinary ways of understanding must exist or be taught along side of who these people are, where they live, and why it is important to know something about them. Students need knowledge and sound methodology in order to slice through the thickets of culture.
This two-tiered approach is sometimes daunting if the discourse is in a second language, since primary sources and public discourse are always in a people's own language. Admittedly, much today is available in English, plus one can often access facts and information about another culture or people in one's own language. But although facts and information are important, alone they are not enough. Factual information always begs the question of so what. Some scaffolding for knowledge and understanding needs to be built to hold raw data. And these scaffolds are more and more available in one's native language through different departments in institutions of higher learning, the library and bookstores, and the Internet.
Gaining greater understanding of the other, and thereby ourselves, is what we can agree on as the why for Cultural Studies, but to what end? The application of understanding is communication, or more accurately it is interaction involving what we know and the successful transmission-reception of same. The foundation for this is literacy, cultural literacy.
Literacy as not just the structure of the language and its vocabulary, but also broad and shared knowledge. When it comes to understanding the other, we need to know a lot of what they know. Shared contexts inform our words and deeds. Cultural literacy then is the names, phrases, events, artifacts, and other items that are familiar to the natives allowing them to communicate, work, and live together. What constitutes this body of knowledge? and if it can be listed and defined, will it help the outsider discover the other? Yes. This is the contention here.
Cultural studies is then information about people and peoples and their places. It is about history, arts, artifacts, and the values and themes they are concerned about. Cultural studies is also about their place in the world developmentally and relationally. Not finally, Cultural Studies is about the unique ways people and a people communicate among themselves and with others in their language.
How does one learn this stuff of the essence of what it is to be of and from one nation or group other than one's own? Admittedly, no one class or course or field of study will provide the whole picture. But the study of ourselves and others can take a middle yet practical road, and one specific to future teachers of English.
Briefly.
- In order to have basic and shared knowledge of a people or country, one must know what they know (cultural literacy).
- In order to understand their current place and development, one must know their past (geography and history).
- In order to access the native culture in its own words, one must hear or read its memorable words and know which it considers representative and important (literature and writing).
- In order to assess what the other values, one must examine what they say about what they do, or what their artifacts are (cultural insights).
- And in order to acquire an attitude of constant consciousness about language to be learned or taught, one must experience as much of the target/native language as possible (language studies).
July 3, 2007
I am your teacher.
The best learning is designing and enacting experiences which will consume and exhume us. The best of these is like a great feast. You can't get enough of all the good things to devour. The best of these experiences also brings new life and vigor to dormant or deadened parts of ourselves. We sometines need to awaken suddenly and force march to places we've never been before with the urgency that we know we are late but we hope to get there as soon as possible.
The problem with school and education is we think teachers should do this great and dirty work for us. But I don't do great and dirty work like that. That is for the teacher within you. I am just here to invite you to the feast and whisper from time to time, "Wake up."
The problem with school and education is we think teachers should do this great and dirty work for us. But I don't do great and dirty work like that. That is for the teacher within you. I am just here to invite you to the feast and whisper from time to time, "Wake up."
AS syllabus
KAJ-->FP TU v Liberci, 3. ročník, ZS 2006/2007 (studijní obor anglický jazyk) AMERICKÉ STUDIE 1(1+1 z) (2 kredity) – sylabus
Instructor: Kevin Mactavish, Ph.D., Building S, Room 606, Ex. 4267
Aims: Cultural literacy is the basic knowledge and awarenesses that we need to understand those from a different country or culture. This course aims to increase all of these--knowledge, awareness, understanding--of the United States of America and its people, from its beginnings to 1900.
The focus of this course is an introduction to the field of American Studies, and specifically to America's past, wherein present day phenomena, including aspects of American English and culture, have their roots.
This is a blended learning course, part online and part with the teacher in person. It is also a course that endorses common learning outcomes for all students and unique learning outcomes for each.
Schedule: (tentative)
1. (Even Calendar Week) Lecture: "Administrivia" and Introduction (in class) and Pre-test (online)
Seminar A: How do you know what you know?
2. (Odd Calendar Week) Seminar B and C: How do you know what you know?
3. Lecture: What is American Studies? and Penetrating Culture (both online)
Seminar A: Penetrating Culture, Washington Crossing the Delaware
4. Seminar B and C: Penetrating Culture, Washington Crossing the Delaware
5. Lecture: Getting Started with American Studies (online)
Seminar A: Literature Topic (TBA)
6. Seminar B and C: Literature Topic (TBA)
7. Lecture: An American Fairy Tale (evening film and discussion) and Mid-term test (online)
Seminar A: Student Presentations
8. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
9. Lecture: Reading, Founding Documents (online)
Seminar A: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
10. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
11. Lecture: History and Literature (online practice test)
Seminar A: Student Presentations
12. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations
Christmas
13. (Odd Week) Seminar B and C: First sitting, end-of-term test OR Review and Conclusion
14. (Even Week) Seminar A: Second sitting, end-of-term test OR Review and Conclusion
Assessment: This course follows the departmental policy of continuous assessment. Students should continuously show that they are making progress. An end-of-term written test may be given. Students passing any tests and completing all other work including readings will get credit.
Readings and Resources: These provide the core readings and resources for the course.
Available from Knihovna Technické univerzity v Liberci
(Citations per OPAC)
Author: High, Peter B.
Title: Outline of American literature
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: London : Longman, 1986
Physical descr. : 256 s. : il.
Signatures: A 35843
Author: O'Callaghan, Bryn
Title: <>illustrated history of the USA
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: Harlow : Longman, 1990
Physical descr. : 144 s. : il.
Signatures: A 54570
The course Web site also has links to required primary and secondary source materials. See http://wbl-en.com/sl.
Recommended readings and additional information are below.
Date: September 15, 2006
---
Participation: Participating in class, or in tutorial or other sessions, and online from start to finish will show that a student is making progress.
Participation is defined as contributing to one's own learning and that of others. Assignments must be turned in on time and be the student's own work.
Copying from someone else without mentioning it and without including a citation will show you are not participating. Not participating in this way results in no credit for the term or course.
Readings and Resources: These provide the core readings and resources for the course.
Available from Knihovna Technické univerzity v Liberci
(Citations per OPAC)
Required:
Author: High, Peter B.
Title: Outline of American literature
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: London : Longman, 1986
Physical descr. : 256 s. : il.
Signatures: A 35843
Author: O'Callaghan, Bryn
Title: <>illustrated history of the USA
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: Harlow : Longman, 1990
Physical descr. : 144 s. : il.
Signatures: A 54570
The course Web site also has links to required primary and secondary source materials.
Recommended:
Author: Inge, M. Thomas
Title: A nineteenth-century American reader
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1991
Physical descr. : xx, 584 s. : il.
Signatures: A 37949
[selections only]
Title: An Outline of American History
Edition: 1. vyd.
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1994
Physical descr. : 407 s.
Signatures: A 38387
Author: Birdsall, [written by Stephen S.
Florin], John
Title: Outline of American geography : regional landscapes of the United States
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: [Washington : United States information agency], 1992
Physical descr. : 197 s. : il.
Signatures: A 47808
Clack, George (ed.). Outline of U.S. History. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. 2005.
Available from the Instructor (for a 200 CZK deposit)
Author: Inge, M. Thomas
Title: A nineteenth-century American reader
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1991
Physical descr. : xx, 584 s. : il.
Signatures: A 37949
[Available from the Instructor (200 CZK deposit).]
and
Lemay, J.A. Leo (ed.), An Early American Reader. Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency. 1991.
[Available from the Instructor (200 CZK deposit).]
Commitment:
In-class and online (required) = 21 hours (estimate)
Out-of-class (study time plus online resources) = 31 hours (estimate)
Total = 52 hours
Topics/Key Questions:
What is this discipline called American Studies?
What information is essential for cultural literacy?
How can we understand America and Americans?
What are some specific insights into America's past?
Objectives: As a result of this course, students should be able to:
* describe American Studies as an academic discipline;
* write general outlines for the history and literature of the US to 1900, and give details for at least two or three topics in each of these outlines;
* list ten major American authors to 1900 and the title and character of one or two of their writings; or alternatively,
* read and report on a list of required readings;
* describe the requirements for valid and useful descriptions of a people; and
* demonstrate an understanding of American culture by giving a rich interpretation of a cultural artifact prior to 1900.
Grading Scheme: (most common)
1 = 9, 10 points (for best work)
2 = 7, 8 (for above average work)
3 = 5, 6 (for average work)
Failing = 1, 2, 3, 4 points (for something)
0 = 0 (for no work)
This course also tries to assess whether or not students show separate and connected ways of knowing. How facts relate to one another is important.
Prerequisites: Upper intermediate level English proficiency; Introduction to Cultural Studies or a related course.
Instructor: Kevin Mactavish, Ph.D., Building S, Room 606, Ex. 4267
Aims: Cultural literacy is the basic knowledge and awarenesses that we need to understand those from a different country or culture. This course aims to increase all of these--knowledge, awareness, understanding--of the United States of America and its people, from its beginnings to 1900.
The focus of this course is an introduction to the field of American Studies, and specifically to America's past, wherein present day phenomena, including aspects of American English and culture, have their roots.
This is a blended learning course, part online and part with the teacher in person. It is also a course that endorses common learning outcomes for all students and unique learning outcomes for each.
Schedule: (tentative)
1. (Even Calendar Week) Lecture: "Administrivia" and Introduction (in class) and Pre-test (online)
Seminar A: How do you know what you know?
2. (Odd Calendar Week) Seminar B and C: How do you know what you know?
3. Lecture: What is American Studies? and Penetrating Culture (both online)
Seminar A: Penetrating Culture, Washington Crossing the Delaware
4. Seminar B and C: Penetrating Culture, Washington Crossing the Delaware
5. Lecture: Getting Started with American Studies (online)
Seminar A: Literature Topic (TBA)
6. Seminar B and C: Literature Topic (TBA)
7. Lecture: An American Fairy Tale (evening film and discussion) and Mid-term test (online)
Seminar A: Student Presentations
8. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
9. Lecture: Reading, Founding Documents (online)
Seminar A: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
10. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations, facilitated by student(s)
11. Lecture: History and Literature (online practice test)
Seminar A: Student Presentations
12. Seminar B and C: Student Presentations
Christmas
13. (Odd Week) Seminar B and C: First sitting, end-of-term test OR Review and Conclusion
14. (Even Week) Seminar A: Second sitting, end-of-term test OR Review and Conclusion
Assessment: This course follows the departmental policy of continuous assessment. Students should continuously show that they are making progress. An end-of-term written test may be given. Students passing any tests and completing all other work including readings will get credit.
Readings and Resources: These provide the core readings and resources for the course.
Available from Knihovna Technické univerzity v Liberci
(Citations per OPAC)
Author: High, Peter B.
Title: Outline of American literature
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: London : Longman, 1986
Physical descr. : 256 s. : il.
Signatures: A 35843
Author: O'Callaghan, Bryn
Title: <
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: Harlow : Longman, 1990
Physical descr. : 144 s. : il.
Signatures: A 54570
The course Web site also has links to required primary and secondary source materials. See http://wbl-en.com/sl.
Recommended readings and additional information are below.
Date: September 15, 2006
---
Participation: Participating in class, or in tutorial or other sessions, and online from start to finish will show that a student is making progress.
Participation is defined as contributing to one's own learning and that of others. Assignments must be turned in on time and be the student's own work.
Copying from someone else without mentioning it and without including a citation will show you are not participating. Not participating in this way results in no credit for the term or course.
Readings and Resources: These provide the core readings and resources for the course.
Available from Knihovna Technické univerzity v Liberci
(Citations per OPAC)
Required:
Author: High, Peter B.
Title: Outline of American literature
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: London : Longman, 1986
Physical descr. : 256 s. : il.
Signatures: A 35843
Author: O'Callaghan, Bryn
Title: <
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: Harlow : Longman, 1990
Physical descr. : 144 s. : il.
Signatures: A 54570
The course Web site also has links to required primary and secondary source materials.
Recommended:
Author: Inge, M. Thomas
Title: A nineteenth-century American reader
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1991
Physical descr. : xx, 584 s. : il.
Signatures: A 37949
[selections only]
Title: An Outline of American History
Edition: 1. vyd.
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1994
Physical descr. : 407 s.
Signatures: A 38387
Author: Birdsall, [written by Stephen S.
Florin], John
Title: Outline of American geography : regional landscapes of the United States
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher/year: [Washington : United States information agency], 1992
Physical descr. : 197 s. : il.
Signatures: A 47808
Clack, George (ed.). Outline of U.S. History. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. 2005.
Available from the Instructor (for a 200 CZK deposit)
Author: Inge, M. Thomas
Title: A nineteenth-century American reader
Publisher/year: Washington : United States Information Agency, 1991
Physical descr. : xx, 584 s. : il.
Signatures: A 37949
[Available from the Instructor (200 CZK deposit).]
and
Lemay, J.A. Leo (ed.), An Early American Reader. Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency. 1991.
[Available from the Instructor (200 CZK deposit).]
Commitment:
In-class and online (required) = 21 hours (estimate)
Out-of-class (study time plus online resources) = 31 hours (estimate)
Total = 52 hours
Topics/Key Questions:
What is this discipline called American Studies?
What information is essential for cultural literacy?
How can we understand America and Americans?
What are some specific insights into America's past?
Objectives: As a result of this course, students should be able to:
* describe American Studies as an academic discipline;
* write general outlines for the history and literature of the US to 1900, and give details for at least two or three topics in each of these outlines;
* list ten major American authors to 1900 and the title and character of one or two of their writings; or alternatively,
* read and report on a list of required readings;
* describe the requirements for valid and useful descriptions of a people; and
* demonstrate an understanding of American culture by giving a rich interpretation of a cultural artifact prior to 1900.
Grading Scheme: (most common)
1 = 9, 10 points (for best work)
2 = 7, 8 (for above average work)
3 = 5, 6 (for average work)
Failing = 1, 2, 3, 4 points (for something)
0 = 0 (for no work)
This course also tries to assess whether or not students show separate and connected ways of knowing. How facts relate to one another is important.
Prerequisites: Upper intermediate level English proficiency; Introduction to Cultural Studies or a related course.
Cultural studies
[I taught a Cultural Studies course at the Technical University of Liberec during the Winter Term of 2006-07 called "Life and Institutions of English-speaking Countries." Here are some highlights. I place these here to remind myself of how difficult inter-cultural relations are to manifest. And manifesting probably doesn't come from cognitive and rational stuff--such as this.]
COURSE CONTENT RESOURCE 1
Orienting generalizations can help us remember how we are the same and how we are different across cultures. They can also guide us in making statements about what we know and what we don't about the other.
1. We seek truth, beauty, and goodness--what can be observed or demonstrated as true (science), what attracts me and I find pleasing (art), and what we together feel or value (culture).
2. We can start from what we think culture is. "Everything characteristic of or produced by a group of people" is one definition.
What I find characteristic may be the same or different from my own culture. Intercultural understanding starts at home.
3. We need all knowledge perspectives--single, plural, inside, outside, the I , the We, the It, and the Its (things plural)--to understand culture.
No one (perspective) has all the answers.
4. The knowledge we claim to have about a culture is determined by following a method for a given perspective, looking at the results the method produces, and confirming if others agree.
It is beer experts who best can tell us which beer is the best . . . after, of course, extensive tasting, I mean testing.
Final example. Eat what an American says is a "good hamburger." Then ask: Do I like it? This is the personal test. Do people who know hamburgers like it? The We test. Is it made of the right ingredients? The It test--for a true hamburger. Does it serve the nutritional or economic or other needs of the people who eat them? The Its test.
Knowledge claim. Different and not always compatible answers to the questions are the rule. You might not like the good hamburger, but it might serve key interests (e.g., economic, social) of the culture or country.
---
COURSE CONTENT RESOURCE 2
Questions, questions, questions
In addition to questions you have of your study or topic, there are always more. Here are some possibilities categorized according to perspective.
Formalist (structural)
How do various elements of the object of study reinforce meanings?
How are the elements related to the whole? What is the major organizing principle?
What issues does the subject raise? How does the structure resolve these issues?
Biographical
Are there facts about people's lives relevant to your understanding of the object of study?
Are people and events seen as bound to their lives and experiences? Are these factual?
How are people's lives reflected in the object of study?
Psychological
How does the object of study reflect personal psychology(ies)?
What do people's emotions and behavior show about their psychological states?
Are psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire shown consciously or unconsciously?
Historical
How does the object of study reflect its period?
What influences helped to shape the form and content of the object of study?
How important is the historical context to understanding?
Marxist
How are class differences presented in the object of study?
Are people aware of the economic and social forces that affect them?
What ideological values are explicit or implicit? Does these challenge or affirm the social order?
Feminist (gender)
Is the form or content of the object of study influenced by gender? your gender?
What are the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict?
Does the object of study challenge or affirm traditional ideas about women? and men?
Mythological
How does the object of study resemble other stories, settings, symbols, etc.?
Are archetypes present, such as quests, initiations, scapegoats, withdrawals and returns?
Do people undergo transformations, such as from innocence to experience?
Reader-Response
How do your own experiences and expectations affect your understanding?
What is object of study's original or intended audience or participant?
To what extent are you similar to or different from that audience or participant?
Deconstruction
How are contradictory and opposing meanings expressed in the object of study?
How does meaning break down in the language of the object of study?
Would you say that definitive meanings are impossible to determine?
How are implicit ideological values revealed in the object of study?
---
GUIDE TO COMPLETING THE SEMESTER ASSIGNMENT
Ways of approaching your project, or study.
One has to understand what one is looking at before making evaluative statements, or statements of agreement or disagreement. Makes sense, no?
Two requirements for being able to understand an authentic cultural (or literary, historic, etc.) phenomenon are to
1. Hold it at arm's length (impersonally look at it), and
2. Try to see it from one or more points of view.
One or more people can do this together. A common description for this interpretive activity is academic discourse.
Academic discourse is grounded in dialectics (logic and reasoning), and questioning. Ask as many questions as you can about your object of study before and as the discourse proceeds, and you are well on your way to grasping what it is, what it means, what its context is.
As a proof of competence in understanding, you make observations and statements and insights, and you do this in different ways--online and in the classroom.
By writing it all out, others can look at what you say, discuss that, and come to an understanding. The My Study space is reserved for this particular way of learning that connects you and your work with others and theirs.
To say you understand is to make a knowledge claim. How are these made?
* Follow a method (particular to your point of view).
* Look at the results (do the data show something).
* Ask if experts agree (cite references).
We have highlighted some points of view or perspectives thus far that we can use. Although it was rightly pointed out that perhaps your education does not equip you to use any of these as perhaps an expert would, there is enough awareness and knowledge to make use of selected ones to make tentative understanding/knowledge claims.
---
CLASSROOM HANDOUT
KEY QUESTION: What in your view should be the main aims of a ‘cultural syllabus’ in EFL/ESL programs and how might these be best achieved?
OUR COURSE DESCRIPTION: The aim of the course is to deal with a variety of topics concerning English-speaking countries and to revise and extend essential background information in history, literature, social and cultural life, and basic institutions. The actual program will be adjusted to individual student needs and interests.
SUB QUESTIONS
1. Why study culture at all?
2. What are some of the problems in deciding on a cultural syllabus?
3. Should the syllabus include Places?
4. Should the syllabus include History?
5. Should the syllabus include Institutions?
6. Should the syllabus include Art, Music and Literature?
7. Should the syllabus include Artifacts and Popular Culture?
8. Should the syllabus build from The Students’ Situation?
9. Other?
SOME ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:
+ knowledge about the target culture
+ awareness of its characteristics and differences between the target culture and the learner’s own country
+ a research-minded outlook
+ an emphasis on understanding socio-cultural implications of language and language use
+ affective goals--interest, intellectual curiosity, and empathy
‘Why should students learn about this?’ needs to be asked about each suggested component of the syllabus.
‘A language is part of a culture and culture is part of language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture’. But how do you strip away the surplus culture and find those aspects which have a direct and obvious link to language?
CONCLUSION: Do we have a new course description? what should the syllabus contain? would you suggest a new title for the course?
---
END-OF-TERM ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS AND KEY
RECALL what you wrote on the assessment, and then look below to see suggested and correct answers. Some answers are and have been on the Web site, so you may have to look at the links again to refresh your memory.
IF you wish to go over your assessment in person, please come by the office. Discussion can clarify or enrich your feedback beyond what can be done here.
1. Give three reasons for studying Native Alaskans in a course on English-speaking peoples?
Three possible reasons include the fact that these Alaskans influence the English of Alaska and elsewhere (e.g., Inuit words such as mukluk); knowing another culture through English helps us understand that plus our own; specialist words, such as medical or sociological terms, can be learned.
2. We have highlighted some points of view or perspectives to study English-speaking peoples. Although your education may not equip you to use these as an expert, we can ask different kinds of questions. Match the questions with the study approach.
[course Web site has more info]
3. Orienting generalizations can help us remember how we are the same and how we are different across cultures. They can also guide us in making statements about what we know and what we don't about the other. What would be a good orienting generalization for a course where students from the Czech Republic study the "Life and Institutions of English-speaking Countries"?
[course Web site has more info]
4. Comparison is one way to study a foreign country or culture. What is an example of things to compare?
You need to pick something from one culture (your own, or one you know perfectly) and one from the target culture. For example, murder and violent crime rates--in both cultures. Only by comparison do we get an insight into a phenomenon. "Without a no there is no yes."
5. "It is beer experts who best can tell us which beer is the best." How is this statement a guide in understanding a different culture?
This is the third of the three principles for how you know what you know. Thus, it is people who study countries and cultures that can confirm or deny our tentative conclusions.
[course Web site has more info]
6. Before you make evaluative statements, or statements of agreement or disagreement about a people or what they do, what must happen for you and how can it happen?
You need to understand at beyond a surface level. One way is to use informants. (See the culture penetration model.) Another is to use a method, like feminism to study phenomena.
[course Web site has more info]
7. Two requirements for studying an authentic cultural phenomenon are to, 1) hold it at arm's length, and 2) try to see it from one or more points of view. We call this attitude and activity what? Describe briefly the nature of the text produced by following these principles.
Academic discourse.
The text is in the third person following the listed principles. The text does not typically indicate opinions, agreement, or whether or not the author likes something. It is more descriptive and analytical, not personal.
[course Web site has more info]
8. "Follow a method. Look at the results. Ask if experts agree." These steps describe what?
Making a knowledge claim, or how do you know what you know.
9. "Culture is the knowledge people use to generate and interpret social behavior." From your general knowledge, the study you did, or one you read for the course, give an example of cultural knowledge and the corresponding social behavior.
Example.
freedom of religion in America = many different Christian religions there (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, etc.)
10. Sylvie Vichnarová interviewed three people who had experienced English-speaking cultures. And there was a model given in class and on the Web site for penetrating a culture. Comment on Sylvie's study in terms of this model. Then say what we can conclude from her study, but not using the model.
The first question is difficult. And a number of answers are possible. One possible answer is that the problem appears to be in the depth of insights given by the visitors to the other countries. They seem to have been tourists without getting at deeper reasons why people do what they do. Although the questions to each respondent were the same, what each looked at or commented on was different.
What we can conclude from the study also provides a number of possibilities. The safest one is that the methodology used was carefully structured. Its results are three individual bytes of qualitative data which may or may not be valid if more respondents were to be asked. No safe generalization can be made across the respondents without rigorous analysis.
The study provides a rich text and rich texts for further study.
11. Here are some lyrics from a song.
I got a girl, she's long and tall,
sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall.
Hot tamales and they're red hot, yes she got 'em for sale.
Yes she got 'em for sale. Hot tamales and they're red hot, yes she got 'em for sale.
She got two for a nickel, four for a dime,
Would sell you more, but they ain't none of mine.
According to Šimon Oldrich's study, what would make this song fit into the category of blues music?
It is both happy and possibly sad--because the speaker has none. Sadness or a kind of depression is the blues; but happiness is also possible in this music genre.
12. What can a pop culture topic like MTV and its influence teach us about the English language?
The show, often mostly in English around the world, spreads the language, perhaps especially to a certain segment of the population. And because the show is pop and oriented to music and lifestyles, English is the key or ticket to understanding and appreciation. English is easily learned if delivered via this medium.
COURSE CONTENT RESOURCE 1
Orienting generalizations can help us remember how we are the same and how we are different across cultures. They can also guide us in making statements about what we know and what we don't about the other.
1. We seek truth, beauty, and goodness--what can be observed or demonstrated as true (science), what attracts me and I find pleasing (art), and what we together feel or value (culture).
2. We can start from what we think culture is. "Everything characteristic of or produced by a group of people" is one definition.
What I find characteristic may be the same or different from my own culture. Intercultural understanding starts at home.
3. We need all knowledge perspectives--single, plural, inside, outside, the I , the We, the It, and the Its (things plural)--to understand culture.
No one (perspective) has all the answers.
4. The knowledge we claim to have about a culture is determined by following a method for a given perspective, looking at the results the method produces, and confirming if others agree.
It is beer experts who best can tell us which beer is the best . . . after, of course, extensive tasting, I mean testing.
Final example. Eat what an American says is a "good hamburger." Then ask: Do I like it? This is the personal test. Do people who know hamburgers like it? The We test. Is it made of the right ingredients? The It test--for a true hamburger. Does it serve the nutritional or economic or other needs of the people who eat them? The Its test.
Knowledge claim. Different and not always compatible answers to the questions are the rule. You might not like the good hamburger, but it might serve key interests (e.g., economic, social) of the culture or country.
---
COURSE CONTENT RESOURCE 2
Questions, questions, questions
In addition to questions you have of your study or topic, there are always more. Here are some possibilities categorized according to perspective.
Formalist (structural)
How do various elements of the object of study reinforce meanings?
How are the elements related to the whole? What is the major organizing principle?
What issues does the subject raise? How does the structure resolve these issues?
Biographical
Are there facts about people's lives relevant to your understanding of the object of study?
Are people and events seen as bound to their lives and experiences? Are these factual?
How are people's lives reflected in the object of study?
Psychological
How does the object of study reflect personal psychology(ies)?
What do people's emotions and behavior show about their psychological states?
Are psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire shown consciously or unconsciously?
Historical
How does the object of study reflect its period?
What influences helped to shape the form and content of the object of study?
How important is the historical context to understanding?
Marxist
How are class differences presented in the object of study?
Are people aware of the economic and social forces that affect them?
What ideological values are explicit or implicit? Does these challenge or affirm the social order?
Feminist (gender)
Is the form or content of the object of study influenced by gender? your gender?
What are the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict?
Does the object of study challenge or affirm traditional ideas about women? and men?
Mythological
How does the object of study resemble other stories, settings, symbols, etc.?
Are archetypes present, such as quests, initiations, scapegoats, withdrawals and returns?
Do people undergo transformations, such as from innocence to experience?
Reader-Response
How do your own experiences and expectations affect your understanding?
What is object of study's original or intended audience or participant?
To what extent are you similar to or different from that audience or participant?
Deconstruction
How are contradictory and opposing meanings expressed in the object of study?
How does meaning break down in the language of the object of study?
Would you say that definitive meanings are impossible to determine?
How are implicit ideological values revealed in the object of study?
---
GUIDE TO COMPLETING THE SEMESTER ASSIGNMENT
Ways of approaching your project, or study.
One has to understand what one is looking at before making evaluative statements, or statements of agreement or disagreement. Makes sense, no?
Two requirements for being able to understand an authentic cultural (or literary, historic, etc.) phenomenon are to
1. Hold it at arm's length (impersonally look at it), and
2. Try to see it from one or more points of view.
One or more people can do this together. A common description for this interpretive activity is academic discourse.
Academic discourse is grounded in dialectics (logic and reasoning), and questioning. Ask as many questions as you can about your object of study before and as the discourse proceeds, and you are well on your way to grasping what it is, what it means, what its context is.
As a proof of competence in understanding, you make observations and statements and insights, and you do this in different ways--online and in the classroom.
By writing it all out, others can look at what you say, discuss that, and come to an understanding. The My Study space is reserved for this particular way of learning that connects you and your work with others and theirs.
To say you understand is to make a knowledge claim. How are these made?
* Follow a method (particular to your point of view).
* Look at the results (do the data show something).
* Ask if experts agree (cite references).
We have highlighted some points of view or perspectives thus far that we can use. Although it was rightly pointed out that perhaps your education does not equip you to use any of these as perhaps an expert would, there is enough awareness and knowledge to make use of selected ones to make tentative understanding/knowledge claims.
---
CLASSROOM HANDOUT
KEY QUESTION: What in your view should be the main aims of a ‘cultural syllabus’ in EFL/ESL programs and how might these be best achieved?
OUR COURSE DESCRIPTION: The aim of the course is to deal with a variety of topics concerning English-speaking countries and to revise and extend essential background information in history, literature, social and cultural life, and basic institutions. The actual program will be adjusted to individual student needs and interests.
SUB QUESTIONS
1. Why study culture at all?
2. What are some of the problems in deciding on a cultural syllabus?
3. Should the syllabus include Places?
4. Should the syllabus include History?
5. Should the syllabus include Institutions?
6. Should the syllabus include Art, Music and Literature?
7. Should the syllabus include Artifacts and Popular Culture?
8. Should the syllabus build from The Students’ Situation?
9. Other?
SOME ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:
+ knowledge about the target culture
+ awareness of its characteristics and differences between the target culture and the learner’s own country
+ a research-minded outlook
+ an emphasis on understanding socio-cultural implications of language and language use
+ affective goals--interest, intellectual curiosity, and empathy
‘Why should students learn about this?’ needs to be asked about each suggested component of the syllabus.
‘A language is part of a culture and culture is part of language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture’. But how do you strip away the surplus culture and find those aspects which have a direct and obvious link to language?
CONCLUSION: Do we have a new course description? what should the syllabus contain? would you suggest a new title for the course?
---
END-OF-TERM ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS AND KEY
RECALL what you wrote on the assessment, and then look below to see suggested and correct answers. Some answers are and have been on the Web site, so you may have to look at the links again to refresh your memory.
IF you wish to go over your assessment in person, please come by the office. Discussion can clarify or enrich your feedback beyond what can be done here.
1. Give three reasons for studying Native Alaskans in a course on English-speaking peoples?
Three possible reasons include the fact that these Alaskans influence the English of Alaska and elsewhere (e.g., Inuit words such as mukluk); knowing another culture through English helps us understand that plus our own; specialist words, such as medical or sociological terms, can be learned.
2. We have highlighted some points of view or perspectives to study English-speaking peoples. Although your education may not equip you to use these as an expert, we can ask different kinds of questions. Match the questions with the study approach.
[course Web site has more info]
3. Orienting generalizations can help us remember how we are the same and how we are different across cultures. They can also guide us in making statements about what we know and what we don't about the other. What would be a good orienting generalization for a course where students from the Czech Republic study the "Life and Institutions of English-speaking Countries"?
[course Web site has more info]
4. Comparison is one way to study a foreign country or culture. What is an example of things to compare?
You need to pick something from one culture (your own, or one you know perfectly) and one from the target culture. For example, murder and violent crime rates--in both cultures. Only by comparison do we get an insight into a phenomenon. "Without a no there is no yes."
5. "It is beer experts who best can tell us which beer is the best." How is this statement a guide in understanding a different culture?
This is the third of the three principles for how you know what you know. Thus, it is people who study countries and cultures that can confirm or deny our tentative conclusions.
[course Web site has more info]
6. Before you make evaluative statements, or statements of agreement or disagreement about a people or what they do, what must happen for you and how can it happen?
You need to understand at beyond a surface level. One way is to use informants. (See the culture penetration model.) Another is to use a method, like feminism to study phenomena.
[course Web site has more info]
7. Two requirements for studying an authentic cultural phenomenon are to, 1) hold it at arm's length, and 2) try to see it from one or more points of view. We call this attitude and activity what? Describe briefly the nature of the text produced by following these principles.
Academic discourse.
The text is in the third person following the listed principles. The text does not typically indicate opinions, agreement, or whether or not the author likes something. It is more descriptive and analytical, not personal.
[course Web site has more info]
8. "Follow a method. Look at the results. Ask if experts agree." These steps describe what?
Making a knowledge claim, or how do you know what you know.
9. "Culture is the knowledge people use to generate and interpret social behavior." From your general knowledge, the study you did, or one you read for the course, give an example of cultural knowledge and the corresponding social behavior.
Example.
freedom of religion in America = many different Christian religions there (Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, etc.)
10. Sylvie Vichnarová interviewed three people who had experienced English-speaking cultures. And there was a model given in class and on the Web site for penetrating a culture. Comment on Sylvie's study in terms of this model. Then say what we can conclude from her study, but not using the model.
The first question is difficult. And a number of answers are possible. One possible answer is that the problem appears to be in the depth of insights given by the visitors to the other countries. They seem to have been tourists without getting at deeper reasons why people do what they do. Although the questions to each respondent were the same, what each looked at or commented on was different.
What we can conclude from the study also provides a number of possibilities. The safest one is that the methodology used was carefully structured. Its results are three individual bytes of qualitative data which may or may not be valid if more respondents were to be asked. No safe generalization can be made across the respondents without rigorous analysis.
The study provides a rich text and rich texts for further study.
11. Here are some lyrics from a song.
I got a girl, she's long and tall,
sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall.
Hot tamales and they're red hot, yes she got 'em for sale.
Yes she got 'em for sale. Hot tamales and they're red hot, yes she got 'em for sale.
She got two for a nickel, four for a dime,
Would sell you more, but they ain't none of mine.
According to Šimon Oldrich's study, what would make this song fit into the category of blues music?
It is both happy and possibly sad--because the speaker has none. Sadness or a kind of depression is the blues; but happiness is also possible in this music genre.
12. What can a pop culture topic like MTV and its influence teach us about the English language?
The show, often mostly in English around the world, spreads the language, perhaps especially to a certain segment of the population. And because the show is pop and oriented to music and lifestyles, English is the key or ticket to understanding and appreciation. English is easily learned if delivered via this medium.
June 26, 2007
Three strikes. You're out.
09.06.04
Exams are like chances to score in a game. Above are some descriptors and rules for "the game of university." In short, if you know the amount of content that is considered a passing percentage for a course from class meetings, textbooks and references, handouts, assignments, teacher recommendations and corrections, then you score and are "safe." You win the game.
"Three strikes and you're out" refers to American baseball. A batter gets three chances to hit a pitched (thrown) ball with a bat (piece of wood or metal, not be be confused with the nocturnal creature with wings). If the batter doesn't succeed, he is "out," and this is bad for his batting average (individual score). It is hard to be a winner if you strike out.
California, interestingly, has a three-strikes law. If you are arrested and convicted of three crimes, you go to prison for a long time. But this is another story . . .
In (this) university game you get three chances to pass an exam. If you don't pass, you don't go to prison, and your team is not hurt by your failure. Only you suffer(?) defeat and have to take a course again, or something, another time, plus exam, perhaps a year later. With regard to the three chances or attempts, if you miss the first scheduled sitting to take (not "write") the exam, well, then there are only two chances left to take it, and so on.
To cope with serving fair and comparable exams for three sittings, some teachers prepare three versions of an exam. Maybe they're called versions A, B, and C. If you sit for the first attempt and you get version C, well, next time it will be B or A. However, for the first sitting, versions B and A have been used with other students. (You know why.) No matter, this is how it goes in this game as it is often played.
What's wrong with this picture? One, if there are different knowledges and skills tested at any time, are the grades (scores) achieved comparable? Maybe. Maybe not. Tests and exams only test what they have on them, and test-takers do more or less well with that and only that which is on the exam. Sitting for different sets of questions results quite naturally in differences. And thus, usually students and student achievement scores cannot be compared with certainty with what different tests or exams show.
Two, if little Honza, a student, takes three chances to pass, is he just as qualified as those who took the same or similar test and passed earlier? Doubtful. He has the benefits of prior test-taking experience and more time to prepare for a test he can easily get a good idea of from those who have taken that same, exact test. No, Honza, regardless of your score, you are different in kind and quality from those who passed the exam at the first sitting.
One student, I will call her Petra, had a good point related to this. She said that taking the exam three times gave you an idea of how much more you have to study to pass. I like this objection. It is like the world is a glass of beer, and it is half full rather than half empty. But I thought in this part of the world people, including students, like beer a lot? Are they satisfied with half full and the rest will appear because the barman is a good and generous Pepa? (There may be a logical fallacy here, but I will ignore thinking about it. Glasses of beer is a good metaphor if you don't think about it another half minute.)
Third problem. It is laudable (a good thing) to give people second and third chances in life. But for performance--quality--assessment, after a term or two of classes and hopefully independent effort, a singular chance should be sufficient and much, much simpler. By the end of a course plus exam preparation, it is reasonable to expect that little Jitka, also a student, can answer just over half of the questions prepared for her to test her competence (knowledge, skills, abilities) in the subject. Well done, Jitka. I guess.
Just over half? What is this? A reflection of a system which tolerates and in fact encourages mediocrity? Think about it. If you guess the answer for all questions posed on an exam, you'll probably get fifty percent correct. Try flipping (tossing) a coin (guessing), if you can't read or understand the English question. You'll still get about fifty percent as your score. This is the law of averages and chance and all of that. To get ten or fifteen percent more correct, you then probably only need a little English. Show up in class a few times, have a glance now and then at a textbook or other learning resource, do a few assignments, and chat with those who've already taken the exam--they either passed or failed it, doesn't matter. Receiving a passing score under 70 percent appears in this light no great achievement--fifty percent chance plus fifteen percent material you can learn rather passively. But perhaps this too, the matter of acceptable passing scores, is another story.
For over ten years, EFL teachers in this country who have come from abroad have questioned and tried to circumvent, or somehow cope with, the three-strikes approach to the university exams game. Frankly, it appears quite blazen to us. But, hey, we are from somewhere else with our own crazy ideas and values.
Now, you have read the above, my understanding of and questions about the game. The next issue (matter to think about) is: How does this teacher circumvent or cope with all this, and is his way defensible particularly in view of the objections raised here? And why does s/he want to circumvent (go around) or cope (somehow work with)? The answer to this last question is easy. Teachers are like the referees in the match, trying to ensure that winners are certifiable winners. That is why we even bother to circumvent or cope in the face of a system which has apparent flaws (things wrong). Now, if you are interested in responses to the first questions in this paragraph, read on.
But I will not be writing for you to read. Look for yourself into how to test and measure academic competencies, what are some different grading methods, what is valid, validity, validation . . . and try to answer this question: Do the developing values and practices, even the way of life, in your society match what is being done in university departments and classrooms? Is the university game good preparation for what it will be like upon advancing from the university level player to that required in the-world-of-work game? After all, you are in a program to prepare yourself as a future teacher. You need to know and question what you are doing, and getting yourself into.
I suggest you look at what this education business is all about, from the inside and the outside--from the perspective (view) you have as an educated member of society who will lead and guide younger people in those institutions we call schools.
That's my two cents (idea, contribution) concerning "Three strikes and you're out."
Exams are like chances to score in a game. Above are some descriptors and rules for "the game of university." In short, if you know the amount of content that is considered a passing percentage for a course from class meetings, textbooks and references, handouts, assignments, teacher recommendations and corrections, then you score and are "safe." You win the game.
"Three strikes and you're out" refers to American baseball. A batter gets three chances to hit a pitched (thrown) ball with a bat (piece of wood or metal, not be be confused with the nocturnal creature with wings). If the batter doesn't succeed, he is "out," and this is bad for his batting average (individual score). It is hard to be a winner if you strike out.
California, interestingly, has a three-strikes law. If you are arrested and convicted of three crimes, you go to prison for a long time. But this is another story . . .
In (this) university game you get three chances to pass an exam. If you don't pass, you don't go to prison, and your team is not hurt by your failure. Only you suffer(?) defeat and have to take a course again, or something, another time, plus exam, perhaps a year later. With regard to the three chances or attempts, if you miss the first scheduled sitting to take (not "write") the exam, well, then there are only two chances left to take it, and so on.
To cope with serving fair and comparable exams for three sittings, some teachers prepare three versions of an exam. Maybe they're called versions A, B, and C. If you sit for the first attempt and you get version C, well, next time it will be B or A. However, for the first sitting, versions B and A have been used with other students. (You know why.) No matter, this is how it goes in this game as it is often played.
What's wrong with this picture? One, if there are different knowledges and skills tested at any time, are the grades (scores) achieved comparable? Maybe. Maybe not. Tests and exams only test what they have on them, and test-takers do more or less well with that and only that which is on the exam. Sitting for different sets of questions results quite naturally in differences. And thus, usually students and student achievement scores cannot be compared with certainty with what different tests or exams show.
Two, if little Honza, a student, takes three chances to pass, is he just as qualified as those who took the same or similar test and passed earlier? Doubtful. He has the benefits of prior test-taking experience and more time to prepare for a test he can easily get a good idea of from those who have taken that same, exact test. No, Honza, regardless of your score, you are different in kind and quality from those who passed the exam at the first sitting.
One student, I will call her Petra, had a good point related to this. She said that taking the exam three times gave you an idea of how much more you have to study to pass. I like this objection. It is like the world is a glass of beer, and it is half full rather than half empty. But I thought in this part of the world people, including students, like beer a lot? Are they satisfied with half full and the rest will appear because the barman is a good and generous Pepa? (There may be a logical fallacy here, but I will ignore thinking about it. Glasses of beer is a good metaphor if you don't think about it another half minute.)
Third problem. It is laudable (a good thing) to give people second and third chances in life. But for performance--quality--assessment, after a term or two of classes and hopefully independent effort, a singular chance should be sufficient and much, much simpler. By the end of a course plus exam preparation, it is reasonable to expect that little Jitka, also a student, can answer just over half of the questions prepared for her to test her competence (knowledge, skills, abilities) in the subject. Well done, Jitka. I guess.
Just over half? What is this? A reflection of a system which tolerates and in fact encourages mediocrity? Think about it. If you guess the answer for all questions posed on an exam, you'll probably get fifty percent correct. Try flipping (tossing) a coin (guessing), if you can't read or understand the English question. You'll still get about fifty percent as your score. This is the law of averages and chance and all of that. To get ten or fifteen percent more correct, you then probably only need a little English. Show up in class a few times, have a glance now and then at a textbook or other learning resource, do a few assignments, and chat with those who've already taken the exam--they either passed or failed it, doesn't matter. Receiving a passing score under 70 percent appears in this light no great achievement--fifty percent chance plus fifteen percent material you can learn rather passively. But perhaps this too, the matter of acceptable passing scores, is another story.
For over ten years, EFL teachers in this country who have come from abroad have questioned and tried to circumvent, or somehow cope with, the three-strikes approach to the university exams game. Frankly, it appears quite blazen to us. But, hey, we are from somewhere else with our own crazy ideas and values.
Now, you have read the above, my understanding of and questions about the game. The next issue (matter to think about) is: How does this teacher circumvent or cope with all this, and is his way defensible particularly in view of the objections raised here? And why does s/he want to circumvent (go around) or cope (somehow work with)? The answer to this last question is easy. Teachers are like the referees in the match, trying to ensure that winners are certifiable winners. That is why we even bother to circumvent or cope in the face of a system which has apparent flaws (things wrong). Now, if you are interested in responses to the first questions in this paragraph, read on.
But I will not be writing for you to read. Look for yourself into how to test and measure academic competencies, what are some different grading methods, what is valid, validity, validation . . . and try to answer this question: Do the developing values and practices, even the way of life, in your society match what is being done in university departments and classrooms? Is the university game good preparation for what it will be like upon advancing from the university level player to that required in the-world-of-work game? After all, you are in a program to prepare yourself as a future teacher. You need to know and question what you are doing, and getting yourself into.
I suggest you look at what this education business is all about, from the inside and the outside--from the perspective (view) you have as an educated member of society who will lead and guide younger people in those institutions we call schools.
That's my two cents (idea, contribution) concerning "Three strikes and you're out."
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