Adults, Learning

Tonight I interviewed Gail and Randee who are program staff for two different grad programs at TESC. Below is what I learned.Who succeeds with constructivist ISD?

• People who are self-directed, and are goal-oriented related to their own learning.
• People succeed who are not content to be receptacles of knowledge.
• Students who choose the constructivist approach succeed (up to 12 credits can be earned through learning contracts, but contracts are totally optional)
• People who want to learn something outside the school’s offerings succeed because they are driven to independent projects
• People who plug into objectivist work (i.e. outside study programs or courses) as part of their learning contract

Who struggles?

• People who are coming straight from undergrad (their programs are grad programs); people whose faculty advisers are not responsive to them (thesis). To succeed in creating a learning contract students must already know a lot

What strategies help?

• Students work on independent projects and who meet weekly in a class setting with other students, to discuss their progress on projects together, to share strategies, and to learn from each other.
• Faculty respond to students in a timely manner to keep them moving forward
• Faculty offer frank, honest, constructive feedback to students on their work to help them improve

Also I emailed instructor an instructor at a constructivist college who works with undergrads with my research questions.

The Evergreen State College in Olympia expects students to take responsibility for their own learning and integrates learning contracts throughout the curriculum. Its website also happens to have a cash of institutional research about admissions and retention trends, student engagement, and other reporting that helps me answer some of my questions.

For example in a fall-to-fall comparison of student retention, it’s clear that the further up the food chain, the higher the retention rates. Grad students’ retention rates are in the upper 80s while first-year undergrads are around 70 percent. (Fall to fall retention 2009-2010). In addition to self-selection (especially at the undergrad level, where retention is stronger as students move towards graduation—- indicating (maybe) that students who are sticking with the school are the ones who are succeeding there. But also the higher retention rates of the relatively shorter-term grad programs makes me think that grad students, ostensibly more mature and more experienced with the content of their studies, have an easier time with independent, self-directed work. So that supports one of my main hypotheses (that more experience with content makes constructivist approaches easier on students).

Another study I read relates to student engagement including observations of a team of outsiders who did a site visit to the school. The report doesn’t go into much detail about who struggles versus succeeds, but it does indicate that some mixed student groupings (i.e. freshman in the same program with seniors) are problematic for faculty because freshman struggle.

The same study describes supports for all students including those who struggle:

• More support from faculty (for those who struggle)
• A nine day orientation for all first year students to help them understand TESC’s approaches
• Informal peer support — learning from other students including those more experienced at Evergreen

Tonight I chatted with Peggy Kelter, a 1978 graduate of Kirkland College in Clinton, NY. Kirkland was women’s college with a constructivist approach.

Peggy said that though she came from a traditional family background (parents educated at Amherst and Smith, e.g.), she thrived at Kirkland because she wasn’t a linear thinker. The professors at Kirkland encouraged students to see the interconnectedness of all they were learning, and she felt that her blinders were taken off when she arrived.

Her final painting project (in lieu of an undergraduate thesis; she was an art major) she designed herself. Initially she had wanted to paint spaces that represented where inside and outside meet, such as windows and doorways. But she said the paintings were just awful. In a rare act of passionate rebellion, she tore up her canvass and found that the small bits of painting were actually good, so she spent the next six months creating full size paintings modelled after the scraps of canvass.

She said that some students at Kirkland struggled. She said they were not self-directed, and some or most eventually came around through the support of the faculty. She said some dropped out because the learning approach was not for them, not structured enough.

She is also a 2003 graduate of the M.A.T. program at Lewis & Clark and now teaches kindergarten in Hood River. She says that in her classroom a constructivist design would not be possible. First, she has 30 children in her room, with no assistance. Furthermore, the children come to school without any experience in school or literacy. Their parents are well intentioned but do not give their children any foundation in reading, for example, by teaching them about the alphabet or reading with them. She says that if you put them in a truly constructivist situation, there would be complete chaos. She says that if you had only 10 of them in a room, a constructivist approach might be possible.

From this interview, I can take away the following insights from Peggy’s perspective:

Students who succeed within a constructivist approach are

• self-directed
• systems thinkers
• not “traditional”
• have some experience with the context (school) or subject matter (concepts in literacy)

Students who struggle with constructivist design need

• support from faculty (she couldn’t remember exactly what)

Environments conducive to constructivism include

• small teacher-student ratio
• faculty encourage students to see connections

Also occurs to me to survey my classmates about their own response to this assignment and see what pans out. The survey forces me to ask very pointed questions driven by hypotheses — I can finalize the questions after I get a chance to speak with some SMEs (Evergreen educators and administrators, eg) and get their download.

My working hypothesis is that students with “more” experience in a subject area are going to have an easier time of constructivism which relies so much on the student’s initiative to drive progress. Additionally, students with a higher commitment to their subject area, and who understand the rationale for constructivist approaches may do better.

Specific (hypothetical) strategies to help struggling students might include starting with group work, in which some group members are not struggling (with constructivism); encouraging struggling students to investigate the rationale for constructivism so that they gain a greater understanding of the reasons for the approach; and providing more opportunities for checking their work (replacing a structure that is typically present in objectivist assignments) such as open-door office hours with instructors, and a detailed rubric.

A conducive environment would be one in which the transition to constructivism is slow and logical, and where SMEs (professors, librarians) are willing (proactive even?) to assist students as guides and cheerleaders. In younger students (i.e. early elementary) a conducive environment would include making the work fun. In all cases my hypothesis is that early attempts should be low-pressure situations in which students are free to explore without worrying about grades.

So although my instructions are to wait till my learning contract is approved before I start my research, I am putting out feelers for interviewing my contacts at the college. Part of this is, I would like to know whether the college as a whole, or just some instructors, employ learning contracts. I also would like to to know whether learning contracts are only used in constructivist ISD (question for George?). This will help me as I draft my objectives. I hope!My former student Maggie is going to be an undergrad there next fall and is in touch with a Chinese literature professor. It’s my understanding that this fall Maggie will be helping the faculty member with a poetry course. So I have drafted these questions —

1. For Maggie

• Do you know if all coursework at the college uses learning contracts?
• And what the learning contracts look like?

3. For the professor

• Does all coursework at the college use learning contracts? And what do the learning contracts look like?
• If you do not use learning contracts in your courses, will you connect me with a professor who does?
• In your experience, are some students better at responding and succeeding in this approach than others?
• And if so, what are their characteristics?
• For students who struggle, what help is available to them? What kind of coaching or preparation is helpful?
• In your experience, what learning environments and cultures are best suited for this kind of learning?

3. And a former colleague now recruits for an environmental grad program at the college.

For the admissions recruiter/program coordinator

• Do professors in your program employ learning contracts in their courses?
• In your experience, are some students better at responding and succeeding at Evergreen than others? And if so, what are their characteristics?
• What does an admitted Evergreen student “look” like – versus folks who aren’t admitted?
• In your experience, what does Evergreen do to create a learning environments and cultures well suited for this kind of learning?

4. And my husband went to grad school for teaching at Lewis and Clark with a woman who’s an alumna of a similar college. Because of her background in the field of education she may be helpful to chat with about education and her experiences at Evergreen.

For the elementary school teacher who is an alumna of Kirkland College (from the 70s)

• Questions TBA