Beyond Cognition: Affective Learning and Undergraduate Education Student Engagement in Learning

Author(s):

Margaret Zeegers

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 10B, Research on Pedagogical Approaches in Teacher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-12

14:45-16:15

Room:

A1 334

Chair:

Peter Gray

Contribution

This is a project designed to enhance student teacher engagement in learning by developing an explicit pedagogy of affective learning, traditionally ignored in teacher education as discipline-based studies have dominated the field. Strategies investigated are based on reading engaged on affective levels, intertwined with current approaches to academic reading, with metacognitive responses recorded by the students and analysed by the researcher. Reading has been structured around literature circles (affective reading component), and academic reading circles (professional reading component). The project uses strategy in relation to the identifiable stages in a teaching sequence which help students to realise a learning goal (Stewart-Dore, 2003) making corrections as necessary in the process, so that they use learning strategies and respond to teaching strategies that scaffold their learning. The reading program pushes the boundaries of their discipline-based learning, engaging what Schön refers to as ‘indeterminate zones of practice’ as giving an affective dimension, having wider implications for student engagement in discipline-based units than straight academic encounters with discipline literature allows. The reading is designed to integrate discipline-based knowledge, the implications of this for professional lives, and the affective dimensions of professional practice

Method

a program of affective reading intertwined with academic reading, monitoring and evaluating the program, with student metacognitive responses to their affective and academic reading recorded via reading logs and individual reader response sheets

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary results have indicated that student teachers have engaged the realm of metacognition, being quite systematic in the way that they have gone about their learning, working out for themselves the problems that they would have to solve, generate their own mental models of how to solve those problems, take the appropriate action in those directions, monitor their own progress, and making corrections as necessary in the process; in effect using learning strategies and responding to teaching strategies that have been designed to scaffold their learning.

References

Heathfield, M. (1999). Group-based assessments. In S. Brown & A. Glasner (Eds.), Assessment matters in higher education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dowrick, S. (2003) The Evaluation of the Knowledge and Innovation Reforms Consultation Report, A Review of the Evidence on Science, R&D and Productivity . Paper prepared for the Department of Education, Science and Training and dated 11th August regarding priority areas for development of innovation in the university sector. (http://www.dest.gov.au/schools/enterprise/submission.htm) Krause, K.-L. (2006, 22 July). Dimensions of Student Engagement: New Opportunities for Learning and Teaching: Keynote Paper at the University of Ballarat Learning and Teaching Conference. Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia National Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. (2003,September). Discussion Paper on the National Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Canberra: NILTHE Stewart-Dore, N. (2003). Strategies for practising multiliteracies. In G. Bull & M. Anstey (Eds.), The literacy lexicon (2nd ed., pp. 161-180). Frenchs Forest: Prentice-Hall Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Zeegers, M. (2000). Rhetoric, reality and the practicum: Reconstructionism, Behaviourism and teacher training in Papua New Guinea. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 28(2) 149-163 Zeegers, M. (2005). From supervising practica to mentoring professional experience: Possibilities for education students. Teaching Education, 16(4)December, 349-357 Zeegers, M. (2007). Making the familiar strange to pre-service teachers: Practicum as ethnography. In N. Kryger & B. Ravn (Eds.), Learning beyond cognition (pp. 243-256). Copenhagen: Danish University of Education Press. Zeegers, M., Russel, R., & Smith, P. (2004). From slogan to pedagogy: Teacher education and reflection at the University of Ballarat. International Journal of Learning, 10 3357-3371 Zeegers, M., Russell, R., Davis, R., & Menon, E. (2006). Towards a pedagogy of group work: Working the rhetoric of group work in an undegraduate curriculum and pedagogy unit at the University of Ballarat. International Journal of Learning, 12(10) 205-211 Zeegers, M., & Smith, P. (2004). Education programs and communities of practice: Undergraduate professional experience at the University of Ballarat: Discussion paper for Parliamentary Committee on Teacher Education. Ballarat: Hansard Zeegers, M., & Smith, P. (2005). Living on the planet of the readers: Exploring books beyond the boundaries of literacy. International Journal of the Book, 2 271-278 Zeegers, M., & Zhang, X. (2005). Chinese English teachers and ESL textbooks: Surface or deep learning approaches. International Journal of the Book, 2. 255-258)

Author Information

Margaret Zeegers

University of Ballarat

School of Education

Mt Helen,

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