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Culture, Context, & Community: Reflections on Theory in Practice
 

Reflecting on my practice and personal journey as an educator allows me to discover the core values that drive my teaching, values that are not disconnected from my own experiences as a learner. If I could paint my learning and teaching experiences to highlight a few common themes or guiding principles, the images that surface would illustrate the role of honoring personal culture, of embracing learning as a process, and of accessing social interaction as a vital key in that process. These impressions, in retrospect, are heavily informed by elements of constructivist, cognitive, and social learning theories.  

Learning Is
Culture

I have discovered that I am very much a constructionist at heart. Probably the most fundamental and guiding principle of my teaching is to create learning experiences that encourage learners to access their own experiences to think critically and create knowledge. Constructivism, as Etmer and Newby notes, concerns itself with “how an individual creates meaning from his or her own experiences” (55). It seems natural to me that we only know what we are exposed to, our varied experiences and our perception of them. How do we make sense of these experiences and how do these experiences condition how we make sense of future experiences? And how is our understanding of these experiences conditioned by the culture in which we live? These questions loom behind much of the curriculum I create as a teacher and the work I do as a learner. One example from my entry-level college composition curriculum that closely expresses this constructionist sentiment in my teaching is an initial focus on reader-response theory. By understanding this theory, students are encouraged to read through the lens of their own experiences, explore how their experiences shape their understanding of a text, and develop an awareness of their own reading process. In so doing, students are steered away from prescriptive interpretations and the false notion that there is any one “correct” interpretation, and are guided to think, read, and write in their own voice. This type of activity not only helps to build student confidence in their own critical thinking and writing but more precisely angles their education to contribute to the process of discovering/creating/developing their personal identity, and in particular respect to who they are as a reader, writer, and scholar. Engagement in this process of personal identity development is noted by Knud Illeris as “an absolute necessity to be able to navigate in the late-modern, globalized market society” (12). The challenges of this teaching style or teaching focus within the context of the English composition classroom is to let go off some of the traditional preoccupations of assessing student work. Such concerns as proofreading and organization seem trivial to factor into essay scoring when they are overshadowed by authenticity and idea development. Though this impulse, this engrained method of assessing student work, is something I work to shed as a means to honor and reward learner authenticity and individual expression, regardless of where students are in their process of developing formal writing skills. Honoring imperfection can sometimes relieve student anxiety enough to work past mental barriers and more fully engage in their own learning process.  

Learning Is
A
Social
Process

Focusing on process over product (so to speak) is another driving element that guides the design of my courses, with the social element of the learning process markedly emphasized throughout. In this respect, social and cognitive theories factor significantly into who I am as a teacher. I sequence my lessons for students to follow the steps in the reading, research, and writing process, and I make a distinct effort to create learning environments that highlight the role of social interaction as an effective strategy within this process. I do this in several ways: collaborative reading and annotation assignments, collaborative discussion board assignments that allow students to unpack readings and generate ideas for their essays, and peer review activities that allow students to review and offer constructive feedback on their essay outlines and drafts. In addition, metacognitive reflection assignments allow students to explore the strengths and obstacles in their learning process in a particular context (such as when crafting an essay and/or research project). In this way, the learning process for students becomes a recursive negotiation between social interaction with personal reflection. In the words of Etienne Wegner, they become “active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities” (220). While the classroom itself, whether physical or virtual, functions as a community of practice, student interaction with communities in the other contexts of their lives along with those evoked through the course material and subject matter of their personal projects contribute significantly to their growth as a learner and the complexity of their critical thought and self-expression, much of which is not visible or accessible to the teacher. I have come to embrace this reality as rich with learning opportunities, and this awareness that the classroom is only one context and space of time in students’ learning process compels me to encourage students to access other contexts of their lives to enrich their work for the class and their contributions to the classroom environment. These types of external contributions to the environment can be fostered through social collaboration but also evoked through the selection of reading material. I have had encouraging success through the years with the by assigning course materials that allow students to explore global themes and issues and which present complex problems. To return to my explication on the process-based approach to learning, I can also express some doubts about how effective it can or can’t be. I do find myself questioning just how many steps in the learning process should I guide students through, and I come back to this doubt semester to semester. There are many steps in the reading and writing process as students work towards crafting a major essay, and while some students benefit from a detailed breakdown of activities step-by-step (i.e. submitting several process assignments), others may not benefit from nor need that much support. Designing and sequencing process-based assignments to be effective for the various skill levels and learning styles in the class is a complex and continuing practice, one that requires flexible and forward-thinking design ideas.  

References
 

Ertmer, Peggy A. and Timothy J. Newby (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26 (2), 43-71.

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Illeris, Knud (2018). A comprehensive understanding of human learning. Contemporary Theories of Learning, second edition, edited by Knud Illeris, Routledge,1-14.

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Wenger, Etienne (2018). A social theory of learning. Contemporary Theories of Learning, second edition, edited by Knud Illeris, Routledge, 219-228.

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Theoretical Foundations in LDT

©2022 by Angelo Bummer

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