Strategies to Approach Situations with WASs in the Knowledge Society

Higher Education, Reflective Teaching, WAS 0 comments

Strategies to Approach Situations with WASs in the Knowledge Society

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Post 308

We are currently living in what it has been labeled as Knowledge Societies. This new vision of our current societies’ living has permeated into every single aspect of the lives we live today, especially in the area of education where it is more than evident when one considers the amount of working adult students (WASs) we get to see in our brick-walled classrooms or virtual learning environments.

But what are those Knowledge Societies we are now living in? A Knowledge Society like ours and yours is “a new society formed as a result of the contemporary societal change pushed by technological innovation and institutional transformation, which is not only about technological innovations, but also about human beings, their personal growth and their individual creativity, experience and participation in the generation of knowledge” (Knowledge-Based Urban Development, 2015) and the way they are being taught and trained nowadays through F2F sessions or through virtual classrooms to develop competencies. “The primary role of cities in a knowledge society is to ensure that their knowledge sources are passed on and advanced by each generation” (Knowledge-Based Urban Development, 2015), and that this knowledge is used to instruct the new members of these cities to guarantee success in their working spaces and economy. The panorama in which we are now teaching is particularly different to the times in which we were the learners in the classrooms.

In the development of competencies among WASs and any other traditional student, we are faced with many situations. The situation below is quite normal now in many of my courses at the university where I currently work. Though my courses are meant to be F2F, somehow I have managed to change them to a hybrid model where most of the information concerning learning tasks is available for students since day 1 onwards. So basically, the situation presented in my courses pretty much looks like follows:

You are teaching a course with a mixed format; that is, a traditional course with virtual support for some activities. Attendance monitoring shows you that there has been a decrease in attendance, but logging on to the virtual classroom has remained stable.

Trying to make sense of this situation, the following variables need to be considered: a) time and learning pace control, b) geographical dispersion, and c) competition vs. collaboration. Each one will be analyzed separately though the fact is they possibly intertwine with one another or just overlap.

Variable	Hypothesis	Strategy
Variable 1: Time and learning pace control	Learners are missing class not because content discussed in class is not important, but since several learners need to work to pay their tuition, they can make decisions whether they want to attend class or not and still catch up on course content and assignments by logging in on our Moodle LMS.	The suggested strategy to cope with this behavior is to prepare “executive reports” of the main contents covered in class to have them posted and available to be downloaded from the course virtual classroom. Another possibility is the chance for learners to write to me via the Moodle system to catch up on content they missed due to its absence. This helps them feel in control of their time and learning pace, and that they can continue with their development any time, anywhere.
Variable 2: Geographical dispersion	This variable intertwines with the one described above; for many of my WASs, and due to the obscene traffic jams our capital city has, it is much easier for these students to go back home than to come to the university after an 8-hr shift at work. This is indeed part of their attitudes when it comes to discuss WASs’ needs. And since they believe it is not strictly necessary to be in class at all times, they prefer to get home, log on the platform and work on course content on their own (learner autonomy).	There are two basic channels of communication that need to be opened and ready for WASs. Bearing in mind the service leadership in mind, one can foster learning in a hybrid context by having some sort of virtual student hours for learners to ask questions regarding content being covered along the course in case they get absent. On the other hand, another channel of communication with WASs is to make good use of platform forums where one can have a section such as “Ask the Instructor” for other students to benefit from this information as well.
Variable 3: Competition versus collaboration	Understanding the idiosyncransy of my learners, one tends to hypothesize that competition is by all means something they have as part of their “high school training.” Students are mostly taught to be very individualistic, and as it can be seen, collaboration is not yet part of their 21^st Century skills. This soft skills needs to be develop in them as part of the Knowledge Societies.	In order to have learners really profit from collaboration and comprehend that this is a highly desirable skill at work, learners can be asked to collaborate in the creation of a class wiki where content can be shared, edited, and enhanced so everyone can use it for their understanding. There might be different kinds of wikis that can be perfectly used with WASs and traditional learners for them to collaborate in the building of their knowledge and skills.

I have no doubt that WASs can be understood and helped to learn in the structure of our Knowledge Societies nowadays. If the ultimate reason for education is to assist students to develop their learning, finding ways to help them –by means of leadership styles- can be widely beneficial for instructors and learners whether they are in a brick-walled classroom or in a virtual learning space. Not trying to help them is an act of sabotage from the faculty member who is not interested in the learning well-being of his/her learners.

Reference

Knowledge-Based Urban Development. (2015). Retrieved from IGI-Global Disseminator of Knowledge: http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/knowledge-based-urban-development/112448

Sunday, November 27, 2016

T.E.A.C.H.-ing Adolescents

Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, Reflective Teaching, Teaching, Teaching Adolescents 0 comments

Mr. Jair Felix, Senior Academic Consultant for Latin America, National Geographic Learning

T.E.A.C.H.-ing Adolescents

Can they actually be taught?

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Post 307

What A.D.O.L.E.S.C.E.N.T.S. stands for

While attending a training session with Jair Felix, National Geographic Learning Senior Academic Consultant for Latin America, we attendees were asked to “create an acronym” with the letters used to spell the word adolescents and to try to describe what a teen looks like in the eyes of the teacher. Many adjectives were used to describe ambivalent forces that adolescents seem to show at various moments of their teenage years and that prevail in their presence while being in a brick-walled classroom. Here you have only one single version of the many acronyms that were created around this “reflective” exercise, which presents the ambivalence I got to detect among co-workers and myself by just considering the connotative meaning each of these words have beyond their other possible denotations:

	Personality Characteristic	Ambivalence
A	Active	Positive personality trait
D	Deaf	Negative personality trait
O	Overwhelmed	Negative personality trait (?)*
L	Lazy	Negative personality trait
E	Energetic	Positive personality trait
S	Sensitive	Positive personality trait (?)*
C	Creative	Positive personality trait
E	Egocentric	Negative personality trait
N	Naïve	Negative personality trait (?)*
T	Technological	Positive personality trait
S	Spoiled	Negative personality trait

(?)* I am still in doubt whether this can be considered unidirectionally

Felix’s exercise was indeed an incredibly reflective task to observe teachers’ disposition, predisposition, or indisposition to work with teens within a classroom. Being metacognitively present in this “evaluative” exercise made me reconsider Dr. Rosenberg’s first component of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which –when absent- can make teachers get into a lot of moralistic judgments that can be counterproductive if one is to teach students in this age group. For Rosenberg (2005), “NVC entails the separation of observation from evaluation.” And when a teacher combines his/her observations of teen student behavior with evaluations (like the ones in the adolescents acronym one), many of us (including the teens themselves) “are apt to hear criticism” and adolescents will “resist what we are saying” to them the moment they sense they are not being respected by any teaching figure. But again, the exercise is indeed a great reflection of what teaching professionals have in their minds about working with teens, and it can be used positively to make them refocus their way of seeing adolescents and teaching them.

Mr. Jair Felix, Senior Academic Consultant for Latin America, National Geographic Learning

Defining adolescents for real

Mr. Felix brought a quite interesting definition of adolescence to his training session that resounded in many of the attendees. Based on Dr. Mary Kamberk (quoted by Felix, 2016), it is essential to comprehend that “adolescents are in search of their identity. In the process, they become increasingly detached from adults and get closer to peers. They are emotionally vulnerable, and a long-term perspective is beneficial in helping them cross the bridge of becoming adults.” If instructors do no walk into a classroom full of teens with a NVC attitude, no such as a bridge can be built between the already detached teens with their biased teachers, who hold an ambivalent idea of what an adolescent is. And as it was emphasized by Felix (2016) during his talk, “adolescents are trying to figure out who they are,” and their attention is much more focused on that discovery than to be in class paying attention to an adult who is not into trying to understand all psychological and biochemical changes they are undergoing.

Teaching adolescents is no easy task as it can be seen so far. Trying to deal with learners who are much more interested in a self-quest for self-discovery is a paramount, titanic effort for many educators. Also quoted by Felix (2016), “the search for identity is described by Erikson (1968) as life’s fifth psychological conflict: identity versus diffusion or role confusion. It is about the need that adolescents have to determine who they are are, their own identity.” Once again, it is vital to approach adolescents with an open mind that reveals our Nonviolent Communication to “help” them in the search for their identity while learning with us in our courses and in our brick-walled classrooms rather than having them simply follow us in their instruction “willingly;” something that is not going to happen with teens.

Jair Felix’s Insights into Teaching

Mr. Felix sounded like a good partner of mine at the private university I work for, José Sánchez, a university partner, when he talks about teaching this age group of learners. In the search for a nonviolent way of teaching adolescents, “teachers need to understand all the physical-psychologocal changes teens undergo before the fact of teaching them” (Felix, 2016). Failing to comprehend these processes, as it is commonly pointed out by Sánchez in his course at Universidad Latina, the instructors are bound to face lots of classroom management problems that are a side-effect of teenage turmoil already described by Dr. Kamberk, Dr. Erikson, Felix, and Sánchez. “The never-stopping question in the mind of a teen is “who am I?” (Felix, 2016), and if this question is not answered, the adolescent’s attention is going to be shifted to anything or anyone who can give them a single, simple clue.

“Use this search for identity as the basis for teaching teens” (Felix, 2016). For Felix this psychological, hormonal, and biochemical turmoil experienced by adolescents must be the fuel for student teaching. And what is the role of the instructor? Based on Felix’s statement, the teacher is a means for teens to try to find the answer to their never-stopping question, “who am I?” “What really matters to them is who they are” (Felix, 2016); forcing teenagers to do some other things that become meaningless to them is simply forcing them to go against what is “tormenting” them deep inside, the search for their identity.

Avoiding Getting into Faulty Teaching

Now that it is clear to our five senses what is in the mind of adolescents in our classrooms, Nonviolent Communication needs to be used with teenagers to make them feel at ease with us teachers in spite of their detachment with us adults. To avoid getting into faulty teaching, the following chart, emulating Dr. Rosenberg’s NVC is provided to the reader to evaluate his/her own teaching, to avoid getting into moralistic judgments, and to observe teen behavior without being judgmental.

Communication	Example of observation with evaluation mixed in	Example of observation separate from evaluation
1. Use of the verb to be without indication that the evaluator responsibility for evaluation	Teens are too lazy.	When I see my teen students do nothing in class, I think they are rather laid-back
2. Use of verbs with evaluative connotation	Teen boys procrastinate more than teen girls.	Teen boys usually complete their learning tasks the night before they have to be submitted.
3. Implication that one’s inferences about another person’s thoughts, feelings, intentions, or desires are the only ones possible	My teen students won’t get their homework in the next class.	Based on the repeated behavior towards homework, I doubt that my teen students will have their homework ready.
4. Confusion of prediction with certainty	If your son doesn’t submit his assignments, he’ll fail the term/year/course.	I fear that your son will fail because he’s getting no credit for learning tasks in this course.
5. Failure to be specific about referents	Teenagers are not interested in their school studies.	I have not seen any of my teen students at JFK High do their homework in the library.
6. Use of words denoting ability without indicating that an evaluation is being made	Carlos Calderon, the school bully, is the poorest student I have ever had.	Carlos Calderon has not submitted any homework and paid others to do them for him.
7. Use of adverb and adjectives in ways that do not signify an evaluation has been made	Carlos Calderon is a sloth.	Carlos Calderon’s way of taking care of school work does not appeal to me and to any school standard.

Adapted from Dr. Rosenberg’s (2005) “Distinguishing Observations from Evaluations” by Prof. Jonathan Acuña

As pointed out by Felix (2016), instructors of adolescents should concentrate on teaching them to discover who they are. However, as posited by Rosenberg (2005) in terms of NVC, to teach teens they also have to be approached nonviolently without moralistic judgments as the ones included in the adpated chart.

The Role of the Teacher Then

At this point you may be wondering then what the role of the teacher is. The fact is, as clearly stated by Felix (2016), the educators’ role is divided into five different components. To start with, (1) “teachers should be empathetic” (Felix, 2016). For Felix (2016) “empathy is the key to teaching teens.” Empathy implies the instructors’ willingness to be more understanding with their students who are going through all these psychological and physical changes. In their search for their identity a helping hand is always well-received by any individual, even a teenager who tends to defy authority. (2) “Teachers should also inspire trust and respect” (Felix, 2016). Though we cannot expect to befriend our students due to our age differences, all individuals look for trust and respect in others, and teachers are not the exception to this. And since peers are important to adolescents, we cannot expect to befriend them but to respect their decisions in the kind of comradeship they have with their partners in the classrooms.

The role of the teacher is not just linked to empathy, trust and respect; (3) it also implies openness to dialogue and exchange of ideas (Felix 2016). Dialogue must be directed towards exercising our leadership with Nonviolent Communication, where no moralistic judgments, disposition, indisposition, or predisposition. An atmosphere of trust and respect is then created based on NVC where all participants can have open dialogues in search for understanding and where speakers can exchange ideas without any judgmental attitude of the adults. (4) “Teachers should set firm limits and apply them” (Felix, 2016). As Felix (2016) posited in his training session, instructors need to negotiate rules and limits from day one onwards so that learners understand their role in the respect they look for, in the dialogue they are in search for, and in the exchange of ideas that is needed in human relationships; leadership has to be exercised nonviolently. And most importantly, (5) “teachers should be willing to compromise” (Felix, 2016). Instructors who are uninterested in their learners are and will not be part of the circle of people who is respected and trusted by teens. In their state of emotional vulnerability, adolescents need to find educators they can trust and who can give them a helping hand to learn. Instructors who are really willing to T.E.A.C.H. them NVC-ishly.

T	For Thought
E	For Empathy
A	For Activity
C	For Choice
H	For Harmony

Some Inconclusive Concluding Remarks

Many things were cleverly explained by Jair Felix in his training session for teachers who are getting ready to start teaching adolescents in an innovative course in Costa Rica. Among the most striking thoughts shared by Felix was the fact that there is no way of defining an adolescent. From my very particular perspective, as I shared my thoughts with Mr. Felix, I do not believe in any definition for what an adolescent is based on the goodness and badness of the connotation (and even the denotation) of adjectives used to describe teens.

What I am certain now is that an adolescent is a human being in search of an identity who also needs from those authority figures s/he defies. The success in their education is connected to finding meaning, reliance and purpose in the activities that are designed for them, tasks that can help them continue discovering the individual who they are inside beneath all those hormonal, psychological, and emotional layers in their “hectic” personalities.

References

Felix, J. (2016, November 3). Can you TEACH Adolescents? In-Service Training for CCCN Teachers. San José, Costa Rica: Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano.

Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

In What Type of Classroom do you Feel More Comfortable During Your Professional Practice?

Andragogy, Higher Education, Leadership, Nonviolent Communication, Reflective Teaching, Teaching Practices 0 comments

In What Type of Classroom do you Feel More Comfortable During Your Professional Practice?

What my feline eye is telling me about my teaching

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Post 306

When I was asked this question regarding my preference for a type of classroom where I feel more comfortable and do my teaching, I immediately tried to detach myself from the regular, common sense of evaluation that we get trapped in. As once stated by Dr. Rosenberg (2005), “when we combine observation with evaluation, others are apt to hear criticism and resist what we are saying;” being misunderstood while expressing an opinion is not my idea to tell my readers what my preference in teaching is. For this reason, and following Rosenberg’s (2005) recommendation, “observations are to be made specific to time and context,” instead of simply using adjectives to describe current experiences that merely represent forms of evaluation.

In regards to the type of classroom I feel more comfortable during my current professional practice, I must say that it all depends on what I have to teach. As a faculty member at Universidad Latina in Costa Rica, I feel quite comfortable with my F2F courses, the ones I have successfully modified to follow a hybrid learning orientation due to its Web-enhanced content and learning activities. From an instructional design point of view, and with my curriculum design training, teaching this F2F courses has helped me to incorporate technology use in the courses I teach and has helped learners transition to a more blended learning orientation in their higher education. And my adaptations have benefited a very important population that is sitting in my classrooms, the WASs, people who have found my course structure suitable for their needs and “lack” of time to study and develop their learning tasks. And in dealing with working adult students (WASs), I feel quite comfortable in seeing them gaining confidence and mastering new content and concepts. And as a leader for my learners in F2F settings, I try to increase “the likelihood that [students] will hear [my] intended message” (Rosenberg, 2005) rather than criticism and will not resist my teaching.

Though I feel comfortable teaching in a physical classroom, I have developed –in the last two years- a fascination for VLEs (virtual learning environments). As an online instructor for Laureate Faculty Development, I have been online with them to quench my curiosity and desire to teach in this other learning context. Dealing with faculty members of all possible Laureate Universities, which means that I have only WASs or WFASs (Working Faculty Adult Students), one gets to witness the importance of understanding the working learners’ behavior, needs, and the like beyond the state of evaluation. As our students in a F2F classroom need our social, teaching, and cognitive presence to feel they are part of a learning community, the same applies to a VLE. And working adult learners are not the exception to this rule either; they also need another approach to their learning that includes our social, teaching, and cognitive presence without moralistic evaluations.

As a college professor and as an online instructor, I base myself on observations and analysis of data rather than jumping into a direct evaluation of my students. By working on any of the two contexts, I feel quite comfortable and ready to help my learners develop new skills for their jobs. As pointed out by Dr. Rosenberg (2005) while explaining observations in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), “observations are an important element in NVC, where we wish to clearly and honestly express how we are” to our students (WASs or traditional learners). And though “NVC does not mandate that we remain completely objective and refrain from evaluating” (Rosenberg, 2005), it helps us focus on assisting learners to work on their construction of knowledge; judging learners because they are away from a virtual classroom or the LMS or because they are not complying with coursework without inquiring on what situation they are undergoing or what is preventing them from participating actively is irresponsible. The fun of teaching is to see students becoming independent and ready to learn on their own.

Based on these two trends in my teaching nowadays, leadership in a VLE or in a F2F classroom is essential for learning and student motivation. As a F2F or VLE instructor, I can say that my leadership style is combination of feature, contingent, and transformational with lots of NVC (Nonviolent Communication). I do not think a leader teacher or Andragogical educator can solely follow a single leadership style, but s/he is a combination of them. Additionally, an instructor cannot exercise his/her leadership if s/he depends solely on evaluations and not on observations. As a feature leader I intend to instill high energy levels in my university learners. Moreover, I feel I can help my students cope with stress, make use of their maturity levels, self-confidence, and integrity. However, I have to improve my feature leadership to fully incorporate traditional learners who have no work experience.

As an Andragogical contingent and transformational leader teacher, WASs and traditional learners need to be aided to achieve success by seasoning with lots of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). As a contingent leader, my teaching orientation is needed to get better results from my learners by observing their behavior and provide them with criticism that is specific to time and context. My teacher/student relationship can yield positive results with a tinge of encouragement where all of us work on moving away from evaluations because as “the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked,” “observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence” (Rosenberg, 2005). For this reason, I must make sure that learning tasks and explanation account for various learning styles to benefit both types of learner in my classrooms with lots of NVC. As a transformational leadership instructor, I must prepare learners to adapt themselves to the new learning circumstances, especially when coming back to college after several years (WASs) or when they are facing college life for the first time in life. Through this I -the instructor- can provide my learners self-assurance and tolerance when facing uncertainty with lots of respect. But I must learn how to discern from uncertainty when it comes to compare both types of learners in a classroom: traditional vs. WASs. Do both of them need the same kind of transformational leadership? No doubt, education is a complex and fascinating science that helps us see how the human being learns when being part of a community of learning.

No matter what kind of teaching context I feel more comfortable in, it is imperative that teaching is focused on the learner not on what it is convenient for me. Teaching needs to be addressed with a combination of leadership styles to cater for all differences in the classroom in terms of the ways students learn. And it is way too important to avoid any kind of moralistic judgment or evaluation unless one is prepared to do so with the correct context, circumstances, and time frame.

Reference

Rosenberg, M. (2005). Nonviolent Communication A Language of Life. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press.

Thursday, November 10, 2016