A Jeanne Site
A Jeanne Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: January 12, 1998
University Disclaimer
Faculty on the Site.
Introductory Thoughts from Jeanne
Questions for Survey on Narrative Learning
Developing a Schedule of Questions for Interviews
Interactive Teaching and Narrative Identity The narrative teaching and learning study has grown from our teaching experience this semester with Dear Habermas. We find that we are developing a "part virtual/part real" academic community. For reasons that we have not fully thought upon yet, the community seems to revolve around our KIDS' Page. That is one of the issues we would like to investigate in this study.
The community has defined itself, as near as we can tell from living with it, as including face to face interaction for those of us who can manage to be in shared social space. When Jasmine's poetry led us to recognize that we needed art as well as the traditional forum, I e-mailed that message to Susan Takata. Before we could get Jasmine's work up, Susan was e-mailing back "Where is it?" We're not a very patient group. But notice, please, as committed sociological researchers, that work that came from a student was awaited and demanded as eagerly as that which came from faculty. We seem to be finding our way around "hierarchy that excludes."
Some students have already identified themselves as leaders who will begin to share the responsibility of producing Dear Habermas. And they have not all self-identified in similar ways. Some of been very impatient and fussed a lot at me, in class, hardly talked or communicated outside of class. Until creativity inspired them. Then I found them in my office at the only computer equipped with the software to upload to the Net. Others practically live in my office.
Let me remind you of some very old research in education, Ryan's, I believe, that showed that teachers are not very good judges of the patterns of learning and interaction in their classrooms. The classroom is an artificial environment, supported and favored by the hierarchical authority approach. I suspect that may be why we have such trouble seeing through some patterns. We are trying consciously to keep access open to all and not let prescribed hierarchical behavior place barriers to forum access.
This effort has made us aware of the extent to which we are interdependently writing the stories of our learning. My quickness to fall back on my 63-year-old professorial image of "good students" studying fervently, refusing to be distracted by anything, affects the way I read my students' learning, especially when they are not present when I am looking for them, when they disappoint me by sleeping instead of reading one more article that just went up on Virtual Faculty. Now wait a minute, I haven't got around to reading it either. But I have a good excuse.
Listen to the stories write themselves, day by day, class after class. Listen to the excitement outside my office as we all slowly grasp that Jasmine is putting her poem up in the shape of a chalice! And she's doing it directly in HTML! Listen, as Jennifer, who is computer-sophisticated, says "Wow, that's a neat program. Look at what's happening."
We no longer have a climate of learning that we can isolate from the "real" world, for infrastructures have changed. Now a student meets a principle and assures him that his teachers can share our KIDS' Page, e-mails me, I call him, and sure enough, he's coming to see us, and sending some of our teachers. That's not about a grade. That's about our understanding that real learning has to be shared, with the community. And notice that even this exchange included face-to-face meetings and exchanges. But it's all about a virtual community.
As I read this, I see some questions we can ask to measure some of the aspects of our new academic community. But you will see others. Come to my office, catch me in the halls, catch me in class, e-mail me. Any way we can mange to communicate will do. But share your ideas, so that your story can become part of the interdependent learning narrative we are creating.
In a recent New York Review of Books, Vol. XLV, Number 20, December 17, 1998, Keith Thomas reviewed David Noble's The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit ofo Invention. Thomas ends this review with the following paragraph: "Yet, even though Noble's argument lacks both clarity and persusaiveness, he has drawn attention to a disturbing and insufficiently studies aspect of our time: the immense power that sometimes rests in the hands of persons who combine highly sophisticated technological skills with extrememly unsophisticated moral and religious assumptions. Many recent scientific developments, whether in artificial intelligence or in reproductive technology or in the accumulation of human genetic informatin, are truly frightening in their implications and pose ethical issues of the greatest complexity. We do not have to believe that all technologists are religious fanatics to agree that the discussion of such issues cannot be confined to scientific circles. What Noble has shown beyond dispute is that technology is far too important to be left to the technologists." (at p. 80 in NY Review of Books)
In this study we mean to suggest that learning may be too important to leave to the institutional settings traditionally charged with its growth and dissemination.
If yes, what was your story?
What was the story you think the teacher heard?
Are there different meanings you could identify with stories?
Are there different meanings you could identify with stories?
If yes, what should be included?
How could we measure the variables we are asking about here?
How much could we measure, and with what kind of limitations, on a survey, by asking?
What other kind of data and analysis would we want?