On kidding ourselves

I'm really not sure what to make of this fascinating presentation. How does this relate to cognitive dissonance? What does it say about student choice?

On essential reading

The link is to the Learning and Skills Network site where you can download Frank Coffield's excellent new polemical pamphlet; Coffield F (2008) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority London; Learning and Skills Network.

It's free, it's only 75 pages, it is well argued and meticulously referenced and even sometimes very funny. There is no excuse not to read it. Moreover, it is addressed principally to college management teams, so there is no excuse for them not to read it, either.

Post-compulsory education is stricken with the ideological hegemony of a crude instrumentalist approach to training and skills. All that means is that much of its practice goes unquestioned, and indeed that people are so immersed in current practices and assumptions that to question them would seem silly, rather like asking whether good health is a good thing.

Coffield above all shows that such questioning is very far from silly; as such this pamphlet could become the curriculum spine of a whole DTLLS course, and as such it would make much more sense than the dog's breakfast LLUK has produced.

He is well-known for co-authoring a report on Learning Styles in 2004. He notes that despite that report, even in 2006 support materials published by LSN (the same body which publishes this pamphlet);

...still blithely maintain[s] in the face of the evidence we presented that 'this does not mean that it is no longer relevant to consider learning styles' (Jones, 2007:).

How more explicit could we have been? Let me try harder this time. There is no scientific justification for teaching or learning strategies based on VAKT and tutors should stop using learning style instruments based on them. There is no theory of VAKT from which to draw any implications for practice. It should be a dead parrot. It should have ceased to function.

(Coffield 2008: 32. Emphases in original.)

However, if you really must use a learning styles questionnaire, he has devised a new one on page 65; Coffield's Learning or Teaching Styles questionnaire (CLOTS)

On "Can't read, Can't Write"

This fascinating but in some respects quite misleading series is bound to be much used for teaching purposes in the coming year, particularly on DTLLS and similar courses.

Here are some more detailed notes which might help tutors to find useful (and less useful) sections for discussion.

On evaluation, a US perspective

This is about "assessing" teaching, which means evaluating it in UK terms. I've linked to it because it raises a number of questions about the similarities and differences in approach between educational cultures in the US and the UK. They are much freer from external regulation; indeed from our perspective it not always clear just what guarantees consistency of standards between and within institutions. (But they seem to do all right without it...)

But to cite Socrates and eros as the alternative model? Not even Coffield's latest pamphlet (of which more later) would adopt that rhetoric.

On Threshold Concepts "in the wild"

The link is to a paper Renee Meyers and I presented at the Threshold Concepts; from theory to practice conference in Kingston Ontario, in June. Peter Hadfield contributed to the research and writing but was not able to attend to present, unfortunately. It's fairly self-explanatory (it also explains why this blog has been quiet for a few weeks!) but comments will be welcome.