Getting Some Perspective on My Perspective

Having taken the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) that I mentioned in my last post, I now know that I teach from a "Developmental" and a "Nurturing" perspective.  I certainly agree with this assessment, although I'm surprised that some other perspectives didn't show up strongly in my profile as well. Evaluating the validity of the TPI is a post for a different day however! In today's post, I will speculate on what each of these perspectives might possibly mean for me as I explore teaching-related technology.

According to the summaries of each perspective, a Developmental perspective means that teaching is planned and conducted "from the learner's point of view". I'm trying to think about how this might relate to the technology that I use with my students in my current and future classes; I'm imagining that a survey might be in order to find out what and how my students think. But then again, if "the goal is to help learners develop increasingly complex and sophisticated cognitive structures", they might not really know what they don't know. This perspective seems to require quite a lot from the teacher in terms of presenting probing questions and parsimonious examples. Although this perspective does not explicitly require that a teacher is an expert at his or her content like the Transmission perspective does, it seems to me that a teacher DOES have to at least be an expert with their techniques, methods, activities, and TECHNOLOGY in order to make them work for these complex learning goals. I'm interested in thinking more about what insights this Teaching Perspective might have to offer me in terms of technology.

My secondary Teaching Perspective, Nurturing, indicates that students' deepest learning happens when they feel efficacious and supported in their efforts. Although on the surface this perspective might seem to represent a "touchy-feely" classroom where everyone gets an A for effort, the equation for assessment takes into consideration each individual's growth and progress toward clearly-set expectations. One rudimentary technology I already use in my Introductory Educational Psychology class are online journals students write on the topic of their choice, 6 times during the semester. For this assignment, technology serves to make the assignment flexible because it can be submitted any time until midnight the night before a topic is covered in class and private, in the sense that classmates won't ever see me hand back a journal with comments or grades. Are there potential benefits from technology that I'm not capitalizing on here though?

One interesting part of the TPI, which I didn't even pay attention to when I took it for the first time nearly 6 months ago, is that for each perspective you are giving a score for your Beliefs, Intentions, and Actions. My scores for each were all in roughly the same range except for the Transmission perspective. For this one, my Beliefs and Intentions were quite low, but my Actions were several points higher. Coming from a very Constructivist graduate Education program, I certainly don't intend to present myself as an expert, as I don't believe that that's the best way for students to learn. However, because that's the traditional model of education, and the one I was exposed to the most growing up, my actions show that habits run deep! Interestingly, the way I use my course management system, eLC, is predominantly to TRANSMIT information to the students---PowerPoints, syllabus, and grades, with no emphasis on student feedback, creating community, or presenting challenging questions to further their development. Whoops! Guess we don't always do what we mean to do!