Reflections
A few months ago I wrote an essay called The Last Class. In that piece I reflected on how I was feeling about finishing what I believed was my last class and the experiences I had over the years.
As I continued to think about my career, I realized there were four principles that I tried to implement over the course of my vocation. These four concepts were integral to most of my courses. In other words, no matter what the subject matter was, be it history, literature or political science I would design activities that could reinforce one or more of these four basic principles. At first, these concepts were not intentionally included; rather they were intuitively included. As I realized later what I was doing, I began to design activities that would enhance these concepts. These principles are:
1. Learning styles. Everyone learns and communicates differently. Based on the work of David Kolb and Bernice McCarthy, I became certified in what I called four-quadrant learning using right and left brain modes. Students usually fall into one -– sometimes even more than one quadrant. These concepts became an important part of my approach to learning and instructing. When I designed courses, I wrote them using the principals of four-quadrant learning. For more information on learning styles, please see: https://aboutlearning.com.
2. The Prisoners Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons. I pointed out in my courses how this concept forms a major part of our world-wide behaviors. Individuals practice the Prisoners Dilemma; organizations practice the Prisoners Dilemma; and, governments and nations do as well. When one becomes familiar with the Prisoners Dilemma, one sees it everywhere. It is in the stock market, in the arm’s race, and even in the behavior of co-workers dividing up the bill for lunch. We also learned that the only way to escape the Prisoners Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons was to not play the game. Hopefully, some will refuse to play this self-destructive game.
3. The Heroes Journey. I also discussed in many of my classes the beliefs of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung that each one of us is a hero as we go through life. We are all on our own journey and each journey is unique. We explored the concepts of the journey especially in lit classes. I tried to give my students a sense of their own greatness. Who knows? Maybe one of these people will change the world.
4. Critical Thinking. Based on the work of Steven Brookfield and Joel Barker, I wrote and implemented Critical Thinking courses that I presented to state and business organizations and classes. Often in my other academic courses I would include critical thinking exercises that I hoped would develop the ability to think critically and for one’s self.
These four concepts were basic to my approach to teaching and learning. For example, if the topic of the class was understanding how and why the colonists hated England in pre-revolutionary America I might use a critical thinking exercise I call Forty Birds. For more information about my critical thinking courses, please see https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mel-Hathorn
Or if I I just wanted to explore how our expectations shape what we see and experience, I might use an activity I call “a true or false quandary.” For this activity, I would give the class a surprise ten question true or false test on the material where all the correct answers were true . It was so much fun watching them keep going over and over the questions. Surely, there must be some false answers. The puzzled looks as they kept going over the answers was priceless.
In the follow up discussion we covered many points about how their assumptions colored their experiences and maybe even caused some of them to get wrong answers. Points like where is it written that a “true /false quiz has to have a mixture of answers? Why can’t such a quiz have all true answers? How would your experience be different if I had called this a “true test?” This is an exercise I call a critical thinking exercise and it is designed to have the class check their assumptions.
I hope this information will be helpful to those currently teaching or instructing students. What I did intuitively, perhaps can be done intentionally by others in the field of instruction. To these persons, I wish the best as they follow a career that can offer joy and wonder.
I like that you tried to instill "critical thinking" in your students. So many college professors teach process, language and protocol, as though their disciplines were inflexible and incapable of improvement through critical analysis. There is more to a higher education than credentials. One must gain a higher level of thinking.
Ron