Opening Up the Conversation leads practicing and preservice K-12 teachers through the process of creating more open, student-centered discourse in their classrooms. Readers are first introduced to types of teacher questions, student responses, and teacher follow-up moves that are associated with both open and closed discourse. Author John Henning then helps readers identify the most likely places for open and closed classroom discourse by examining an entire unit of instruction and by looking closely at three distinct types of discussions—framing, conceptual, and application. Readers are introduced to specific discourse moves, the patterns of discussion, the amount of preparation, and the types of accountability strategies needed to construct each of these discussions. The final chapter of the book shows readers how to videotape and analyze their classroom interactions in a teacher study group.
This book is written for all university and college teachers interested in experimenting with discussion methods in their classrooms. Discussion as a Way of Teaching is a book full of ideas, techniques, and usable suggestions on: * How to prepare students and teachers to participate in discussion * How to get discussions started * How to keep discussions going * How to ensure that teachers' and students' voices are kept in some sort of balance It considers the influence of factors of race, class and gender on discussion groups and argues that teachers need to intervene to prevent patterns of inequity present in the wider society automatically reproducing themselves inside the discussion-based classroom. It also grounds the evaluation of discussions in the multiple subjectivities of students' perceptions. An invaluable and helpful resource for university and college teachers who use, or are thinking of using, discussion approaches.
This book is an instructional guide for designing and implementing mentoring programs that support clinically-based teacher education. Veteran teacher educators John E. Henning, Dianne M. Gut, and Pam C. Beam outline a developmental approach for supporting mentees as they grow in their careers from teacher candidates to early-career teachers and teacher leaders. Mentors will learn how professional development occurs and how to create the conditions to foster and accelerate it. In Part I, chapters outline key components of the mentoring process, including strategies for engaging, coaching, co-teaching, and encouraging reflection. Part II demonstrates how those strategies can support mentees at different stages of their development. Included throughout are case studies, activities, and discussion questions to facilitate learning.
In this digital age, faculty, teachers, and teacher educators are increasingly expected to adopt and adapt pedagogical perspectives to support student learning in instructional environments featuring online or blended learning. One highly adopted element of online and blended learning involves the use of online learning discussions. Discussion-based learning offers a rich pedagogical context for creating learning opportunities as well as a great deal of flexibility for a wide variety of learning and learner contexts. As post-secondary and, increasingly, K-12 institutions cope with the rapid growth of online learning, and an increase in the cultural diversity of learners, it is critical to understand, at a detailed level, the relationship between online interaction and learning and how educationally-effective interactions might be nurtured, in an inclusive way, by instructors. The Handbook of Research on Online Discussion-Based Teaching Methods is a cutting-edge research publication that seeks to identify promising designs, pedagogical and assessment strategies, conceptual models, and theoretical frameworks that support discussion-based learning in online and blended learning environments. This book provides a better understanding of the effects and both commonalities and differences of new tools that support interaction, such as video, audio, and real-time interaction in discussion-based learning. Featuring a wide range of topics such as gamification, intercultural learning, and digital agency, this book is ideal for teachers, educational software developers, instructional designers, IT consultants, academicians, curriculum designers, researchers, and students.
Teaching in the Art Museum investigates the mission, history, theory, practice, and future prospects of museum education. In this book Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee define and articulate a new approach to gallery teaching, one that offers groups of visitors deep and meaningful experiences of interpreting art works through a process of intense, sustained looking and thoughtfully facilitated dialogue.--[book cover].
Presents a model for ensuring quality teaching that balances the necessity of research-based data with the equally vital need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual students.
2014 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice "What’s going on in this picture?" With this one question and a carefully chosen work of art, teachers can start their students down a path toward deeper learning and other skills now encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) teaching method has been successfully implemented in schools, districts, and cultural institutions nationwide, including bilingual schools in California, West Orange Public Schools in New Jersey, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It provides for open-ended yet highly structured discussions of visual art, and significantly increases students’ critical thinking, language, and literacy skills along the way. Philip Yenawine, former education director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and cocreator of the VTS curriculum, writes engagingly about his years of experience with elementary school students in the classroom. He reveals how VTS was developed and demonstrates how teachers are using art—as well as poems, primary documents, and other visual artifacts—to increase a variety of skills, including writing, listening, and speaking, across a range of subjects. The book shows how VTS can be easily and effectively integrated into elementary classroom lessons in just ten hours of a school year to create learner-centered environments where students at all levels are involved in rich, absorbing discussions.
This groundbreaking book explores why and how to encourage physical and sensory engagement with works of art. An essential resource for museum professionals, teachers, and students, the award winning Teaching in the Art Museum (Getty Publications, 2011) set a new standard in the field of gallery education. This follow-up book blends theory and practice to help educators—from teachers and docents to curators and parents—create meaningful interpretive activities for children and adults. Written by a team of veteran museum educators, Activity-Based Teaching in the Art Museum offers diverse perspectives on embodiment, emotions, empathy, and mindfulness to inspire imaginative, spontaneous interactions that are firmly grounded in history and theory. The authors begin by surveying the emergence of activity-based teaching in the 1960s and 1970s and move on to articulate a theory of play as the cornerstone of their innovative methodology. The volume is replete with sidebars describing activities facilitated with museum visitors of all ages. Table of Contents Introduction Part I History 1 The Modern History of Presence and Meaning A philosophical shift from a language-based understanding of the world to direct, physical interaction with it. 2 A New Age in Museum Education: The 1960s and 1970s A brief history of some of the innovative museum education programs developed in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. The sudden and widespread adoption of nondiscursive gallery activities during this period, especially but not exclusively in programs designed for younger students and school groups, expressed the spirit of the times. Part II Theory 3 Starts and Stops Two attempts by American museum educators to articulate a theory for their new, nondiscursive programs: the first deriving from the early work of Project Zero, the Harvard Graduate School of Education program founded by the philosopher Nelson Goodman to study arts learning as a cognitive activity; the second stemming from the work of Viola Spolin, the acclaimed theater educator and coach whose teaching methods, embodied in a series of “theater games,” were detailed in her well-known book Improvisation for the Theater (1963). 4 A Theory of Play in the Museum A theory of play that posits activities in the museum as forms of play that take place in spaces (or “playgrounds”) temporarily designated as such by educators and their adult visitors or students. Play is defined essentially as movement—both physical and imaginary (metaphorical)—toward and away from, around, and inside and outside the works of art that are foregrounded within those spaces. Gallery activities conceived in this way respond to the possibilities that the objects themselves offer for the visitor to explore and engage with them. The particular movements characterizing an activity are crucially conditioned by the object in question; they constitute a process of discovery and learning conceptually distinct from, but supportive of, traditional dialogue-based modes of museum education, which they supplement rather than supplant. Part III Aspects of Play 5 Embodiment, Affordances The idea of embodiment adopted here recognizes that both mind and body are joined in their interactions with things. Investigating works of art thus involves apprehending them physically as well as intellectually—in the sense of responding to the ways in which a particular work allows and even solicits the viewer’s physical grasp of it. 6 Skills Ways in which objects present themselves to us, as viewers, and what we might do in response as they fit with the bodily skills we have developed over the course of our lives. Such skills might be as simple as getting dressed, washing, or eating; or as specialized as doing one’s hair, dancing, playing an instrument, or acting—all of which may allow us to “grasp” and even feel that we inhabit particular works of art. 7 Movement Embodied looking is always looking from somewhere. We apprehend objects as we physically move around and in front of them; they reveal themselves differently as we approach them from different viewpoints. Viewers orient themselves spatially to both the surfaces of objects and to the things and spaces depicte4d in or suggested by representational works of art. Activity-based teaching gets visitors and students to move among the objects—away from them, close to them, and even into them. 8 The Senses Both adult visitors and younger students come to the museum expecting to use their eyes, yet “visual” art appeals to several of the senses at once, though rarely to the same degree. Sculpture, for example, almost always appeals to touch (whether or not that is actually possible or allowed) as well as sight. A painting depicting a scene in which people appear to be talking may induce viewers to not only look but also “listen” to what the figures might be saying. 9 Drawing in the Museum Looking at art with a pencil in hand amplifies viewers’ ability to imaginatively touch and feel their way across and around an artwork. Contour drawing by its nature requires participants to imagine that they are touching the contours of an object beneath the tips of their pencils. Other types of drawing allow viewers to feel their way around objects through observation and movement. 10 Emotion Visitors’ emotional responses to art represent a complex process with many components, from physiological to cognitive, and a particular work of art may elicit a wide range of emotional reactions. This chapter describes specific ways in which museum educators can go well beyond merely asking visitors how a work of art makes them feel. 11 Empathy and Intersubjectivity One aspect of viewers’ emotional responses to art that is often taken for granted, if not neglected altogether: the empathetic connections that human beings make to images of other people. This chapter advocates an approach that prompts viewers to physically engage with the representations of people they see. 12 Mindful Looking Mindfulness involves awareness and attention, both as a conscious practice and as an attitude that gallery teachers can encourage in museum visitors. This is not solely a matter of cultivating the mind, however; it is also a matter of cultivating the body, since mindfulness is only possible when mind and body are in a state of harmonious, relaxed attentiveness. Mindfulness practice in the art museum actively directs the viewer’s focus on the object itself and insists on returning to it over and over; yet it also balances activity with conscious stillness. Afterword Acknowledgments
Even on good days, teaching is a challenging profession. One way to make the job of college instructors easier, however, is to know more about the ways students learn. How Humans Learn aims to do just that by peering behind the curtain and surveying research in fields as diverse as developmental psychology, anthropology, and cognitive neuroscience for insight into the science behind learning. The result is a story that ranges from investigations of the evolutionary record to studies of infants discovering the world for the first time, and from a look into how our brains respond to fear to a reckoning with the importance of gestures and language. Joshua R. Eyler identifies five broad themes running through recent scientific inquiry--curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure--devoting a chapter to each and providing practical takeaways for busy teachers. He also interviews and observes college instructors across the country, placing theoretical insight in dialogue with classroom experience.
