3 Learning Through Experience:  Identifying Aims and Creating Conceptual Workshops

This Workshop provides an opportunity for you to reflect on your pedagogical aims and to create your own Conceptual Workshop. You may complete this workshop independently.  If you can work with a few colleagues, even better. This workshop is designed for about two hours if done independently plus an additional half hour or so if completed with a small group. (Note that completing your Conceptual Workshop will probably take a bit longer than the initial workshop time.) Take notes and keep track of the time.  If you are working with a group, please select one volunteer to be the time keeper.  The time keeper will watch the clock and keep the group focused.

Part One: Bringing Your Whole Self (15 – 30 minutes)

In Teaching to Transgress, feminist scholar bell hooks shows that not only do students learn better when they connect their lived experiences with their educational (in-school) experiences, but educators also teach better when we bring our whole selves; If we protect ourselves, we cannot fairly ask our students to be vulnerable (1994, 13-22).  In Part One of this workshop, you are asked to reflect on your experience as a learner in order to consider how you might bring more of yourself to your teaching.

A. Please begin by working independently, and in writing, for 5 – 10 minutes to answer the following questions.  You will return to your answers at the end of the workshop.

1. 1.  When have you had an educational experience that was radically transformative?  Describe a memorable learning experience of your own and how it transformed you.
   2. What were the conditions that scaffolded this experience? (Were you in school?  Did someone “transform” you or intervene in your life in some way that encouraged or supported your experience?
   3. How did this experience affect your “whole self”?

B. Next, if you are working with a group, please reconvene.  Briefly describe and discuss your experiences, their conditions, how they transformed you, and why it matters that these experiences affected your whole selves.

Part Two: To What End? (25 – 40 minutes)

John Dewey distinguishes between ends and aims in education (1929, 100-104).  In Dewey’s model, ends are met sequentially, as one works toward an aim.  Aims “must be an outgrowth of existing conditions,” flexible, rather than rigid, and extend beyond the end, toward a “freeing of activity” (1929, 104-105).  For Dewey, an aim directs learning beyond the current end, toward a further point on the horizon that one might never reach.  Such an aim harnesses the interest of the student and infuses each end with meaning, creating educational experiences relevant to students’ (and teachers’) lives.  Ends and aims stand in contrast to goals, which Dewey understands as something one might hit and then set aside.  Unlike ends and aims, goals may not be meaningfully integrated into a larger context or lived experiences of the learning community.

A.  Compare and contrast the concept of a goal with the conceptual dyad end and aim, as you understand these concepts from the brief introduction above.  Try to articulate the difference as clearly as possible, in your own words.  Answer: How do you understand the relationship between an end and an aim?  (5 min.)

B. Next, working independently for 5 – 10 minutes, try to  recall a course you’ve taught that you feel was particularly successful. If you had to name one all-time favorite course, what would it be? With this class in mind, please answer:

1. 1. What was your central aim for this course?
   2. Did your students meet sequential ends as they worked toward this aim?
   3. Was the aim in any way intrinsic to the students themselves?
   4. Were your ends and aims inherent to the materials or did they extend beyond them?

C. If working with a partner or small group, discuss your responses to questions (1) and (2) above.  (5 min.)

D. For Dewey, the ultimate aim of education is “to enable individuals to continue their education” so that “the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth” (1929, 100).  For bell hooks, education should aim to be holistic: to support transformation of “whole selves.”  Either work independently or in discussion with your group to (a) identify and describe your central aims as an educator and (b) consider how teaching with Conceptual Workshops might support you toward those aims.   (5 min.)

E. When you consider orienting your teaching toward larger aims, how do you feel your “whole self” coming online?  That is to say: do your central aims include anything of the transformative quality of the experience you described in Part One of the Workshop today? (5 min.)

Part Three: Creating a Conceptual Workshop (30 minutes and up)

Please complete this part of the Workshop independently.

By following these steps to transform a lecture into a conceptual workshop, you may experience a renewed understanding and appreciation of the material, in addition to giving students a way to engage in active, relational learning.  If you have time to read Chapter 6: Experiences That Teach from Don Finkel’s Teaching With Your Mouth Shut, which is included in the previous chapter of this Pressbook, prior to completing this exercise, please do.  If not, feel free to jump in right here.

For this exercise, you are invited to work with a lecture that you are slated to deliver soon.  While this may be your first attempt at creating a Conceptual Workshop, part of the beauty of this format is that the workshop does not need to be perfect in order to be effective and by working with content you would like to present — or organize a discussion around — for an upcoming class, you may well find yourself with a preliminary workshop that you can experiment with right away.

1. Select an upcoming lecture, lesson, discussion, or presentation that you are planning to teach soon.  It will be helpful if you can pause for a moment to gather your notes and materials.  If you do not have an upcoming lecture or presentation in mind, you may practice on one that you have recently given.

2. Begin by trying to clearly articulate (in writing) the aim of this workshop.

3. Next, answer:  How might I re-conceptualize this lesson as a problem-to-be-solved?   Write out the problem.  Whether you choose to lead with the central problem at the outset of your Workshop (by stating it up-front), bring it to the fore in the middle of the workshop, or pose it at the conclusion; — you will benefit from beginning with a cogent picture of the problem yourself.

4. Next, list or diagram the the progressive steps that students should take as they work to solve the primary problem posed in the Workshop.  Perhaps there are key concepts that must be understood.  (You may provide definitions and encourage discussion of those, or invite students to find definitions in their readings.)  Next, you might move into a close-reading of passages from a text.  (Ask yourself: how can I pose as a question something that I would normally present as a statement?  How might I integrate discussion questions that I’ve already developed into this sequential model?)

5. Once you are mostly satisfied that you’ve identified the necessary steps, review and reorganize (if necessary) to ensure that the Workshop progresses sequentially.  Pay attention to whether the problem-solving steps also serve as ends toward an aim.  If possible, consider how to direct students not only toward solving the problem at hand but also toward your larger aims.

6. Take a step back and examine the arc of your Workshop.  Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end?  It is important to ensure that there is a meaningful conclusion to the Workshop, but I also like to offer closing “unanswerable” questions.  Leaving untied threads can encourage students to continue contemplating (and discussing!) The material subsequently.  For me, this is part of working toward Dewey’s ultimate aim of continued learning.

7. Add instructions.  For example, these are the instructions from the first workshop in my Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Rome seminar (fall 2020):

General Instructions:

For this workshop, you’ll be organized in a Zoom Breakout Room with a group of approximately four students.Select a person to be the timekeeper.This person should keep the group moving along according to the time allotments on the worksheet.This job is crucial, since without it, the group will not complete the experience which the worksheet is designed to bring about.

This workshop has four parts and is designed for 1 hour and 45 minutes.There is a 15-minute break and a 15-minute moveable part, which will allow time for the faculty to pop in for a chat.Please note your start time and end time before beginning.

Although we must use the internet in order to meet, please refrain from using a search engine (e.g. Google) to look up answers to questions.If a question arises during discussion that you cannot answer without external research, please bring your question back to the seminar for discussion and/or use it as a writing prompt and do your research outside of class.

You will need paper and something to write with for at least one part of this workshop; I recommend making notes — either on a printed copy of this workshop or on your own paper — throughout.

8.  Edit and Revise.

9. Distribute to each student.  If you can do so in a format amenable to annotation via hypothes.is, that opens up the possibility of using that tool, e.g. here on Pressbook but also in Sakai, on WordPress, or in Google Docs.  When we are in-person, I normally print the workshops and distribute them in hard copy.

10.  Visit the Workshop Groups or Zoom Breakout Rooms to listen and answer questions.

11.  Reconvene and lead a report out  and discussion of Workshop results and students’ experiences.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. 1929. Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan Co.

Finkel, Donald L. 2000. Teaching with Your Mouth Shut. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.