From SET to STELT: Empowering Learning in Curriculum Innovation

Abstract

Ora Kwo also acknowledged the importance of understanding the 'fine-grained detail' of a learner-based pedagogical practice and addressed the important issue of student evaluations and the question of their effectiveness following this paradigm shift. Kwo spoke of her own experiences and efforts to shift her teaching to a more learner-centered approach. She gained confidence to be more innovative in integrating her concept and practice after receiving a teaching award in 1997. She began to note the difficulty, however, of linking research and practice, particularly while attempting to balance public accountability in both areas. Kwo's work on the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications attempted to address the question of how to turn a 'teaching profession' into a 'learning profession', and how to prepare teachers for this shift. Kwo attempted to design a seminar in which student-teachers could increase their knowledge for/in/of practice, which entails balancing their own knowledge and research concerns with the transmission of this knowledge to students, while remaining aware of how this process occurs. As part of the curriculum student-teachers were required to do peer-evaluations and analyze their own and their classmates' depth of knowledge, quality of thinking, and how much had been learned from each other. This kind of evaluation is an example of the dynamic process of Student and Teachers in Evaluation of Learning and Teaching (STELT), rather than a traditional Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET). Kwo's experience led her to believe that, although students were experiencing much more involvement in learning and collaborating with Kwo and their fellow students in their construction of knowledge, the SETs seemed incapable of documenting these gains. This failure to reflect the gains of a learner-centered pedagogy is both damaging to the professor's confidence and to his or her reputation in a system that demands a product of learning and measures it through traditional evaluative practices. The fact that students are relying less on the teacher for knowledge and more on themselves and their interactions with classmates requires that there be an alternative way to ask questions about what kind of learning experience is taking place in a course. STELTs could offer students a chance to ask the important questions regarding their learning rather than relying on a stale analysis of the good and bad points of the course. A more nuanced evaluation could provide a better representation of the outcomes of a system that is consistently shifting away from traditional, instructor-based practices. Kwo continues to research a method of STELT that will help to match evaluations with a learner-centered practice. Key points from this session: • Assuming the shift to a learner-centered paradigm, more attention needs to be paid specifically to 'learner-sighted' practices and ways to explicitly enable instructors to gain awareness of student perspective • Learning and teaching is a transaction that requires teachers to have knowledge of both their subject and the individual students that they teach in order for it to take place effectively. • In the learner-centered paradigm traditional student-teacher evaluations are no longer effective, so there should be a move to a more collaborative and nuanced system of the evaluation of what learning is taking place. Recommended resources from this session: • McCombs and Whisler. The Learning Centered Classroom and School: Strategies for Increasing Student Motivation and Achievement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1997 • Nathan, R. My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2000