Empowering Professional Teaching in Engineering - John Heywood Synthesis Lectures on Engineering

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the response of the class to the lesson, their results indicate that it was their best performance so far (continues….)

      Although the groups were small, anything from a 12 to 30 pupils, it is nevertheless useful for trainees to do some basic statistics such as the mean and standard deviation of the test results, if only to make them think about what is happening in the class. It is a second evaluation, but of a very different kind. Since, it is undertaken a week or so after the lesson it gives the student an opportunity to re-consider what happened, and what they have learned that will inform their future teaching. This activity was always called the third evaluation, but some students used the term “reflection,” and for many it went beyond evaluation to reflection.

      Sometimes the second evaluation (Exhibit 3.5) ran into the third (Exhibit 3.6). In this case, the teacher had designed two classes to evaluate the relative merits of expository and discovery teaching. It was a science class on materials. He had found that the guided discovery class were highly motivated, but that it did not seem to be, “enough to promote understanding as demonstrated by the results.” He also found that brighter and middle range students responded better to the inquiry approach whereas the weaker students seemed to benefit more from the expository approach; “to a large extent I feel that the teacher has the ability to motivate and create interest in a class with even the most tedious topics.” This extract from his report is intended to illustrate that in doing this kind of action research the teacher who is both observer and participant should be aware of the assumptions that have to be made, and to understand the limitations on the illumination that the exercise might provide.

      As indicated in Journey 2 in order to help students develop skills for the final evaluation, with some exercises I gave the students a reference, and asked them to take it into account when considering what they would do differently if they had the opportunity to repeat the exercise again. The first exercise always asked the students to replicate one of the experiments on the role of examples and non-examples in the teaching of concepts. Exhibit 3.7 is part of an evaluation of the teaching of two classes the same concept of animal cells, but using different approaches to the sequencing of the examples. As indicated in Journey 2 the students were asked to read a text by R. W. Howard on concept learning [5]. Exhibit 3.7 shows how a teacher’s position changed after reading Howard. Of some interest is the recognition that the classroom was a laboratory for research. In my classification this evaluation belongs to the class of technical evaluation and not reflection.

      These activities are little different to design and make projects. Describing the key skill of technical coordination in project management Trevelyan wrote, “First the engineer describes what needs to be done and when, and negotiates a mutually agreeable arrangement with other people who will be contributing their skills and expertise. Next, while the work is being performed, the engineer keeps in contact with the people doing the work to review progress and spot misunderstandings or differences of interpretation. The engineer will also join in discussion of unexpected issues that arise, and may need to compromise on original requirements. Third, when the work has been completed, the engineer will carefully review the results and check that no further work or rectification is needed.”

      While this may be seen as project management work, “technical coordination is an undocumented informal process that relies on personal influence, rather than lines of formal authority. This corresponds closely with pedagogy: first setting the task for students, secondly monitoring the students as they perform the task, offering help and guidance when needed, elaborating on the requirements of the exercise when the students misunderstand, and finally checking the student’s work and assessing it against criteria that define relative levels of performance” [6]. It is within the process that the teacher negotiates his/her way through the lesson, making key decisions on whom and what to give time to, and the important decision as to whether to achieve the goals that were set in the lesson plan. Trevelyan’s point is that much engineering requires social interaction, explanation and negotiation. Teaching, he argues involves all three, therefore engineering students should be given the opportunity to teach during their experience of college. “Teaching relies on accurate listening to understand the learner’s needs, gaining the willing cooperation of the learner, planning expectations and assessment, presenting carefully planned explanations, and observations of human behavior and responses. These are the same social interaction skills that form the foundations of most professional skills we have observed engineers using” [7]. For this reason I believe that faculty have much to learn from beginning teachers but for all that, they should not expect students to undertake what they themselves are not prepared to undertake.

      […]

      In reaching this rather tentative conclusion I have had to make several assumptions which have to be seriously considered before these results could be considered valid.

      1. That the questions in the exam tested the two methods. I do feel that this was a good exam and that it encouraged the students to explain what they understood by the topic. However, one is assuming firstly that a child can accurately put into words something that has been understood, and all pupils’ language skills are equal. Also it is still hard to tell whether answers had been remembered but not understood. The students are very eager in general and have had several surprise tests to date. The combination of these two facts means that work is constantly covered at home by more eager students in the event of an exam. Hence, even in the questions designed to test understanding, pure recall may be being used. It is very difficult to tell.

      2. It is also assumed that the students in class IY did not know about the test. Their science class is always one day after the IX class and hence it would not have taken much for the class to guess that they might have a test. Again, it is possible that some of the more eager students revised for this exam. Also some of the results actually increased from test one to test two in both IX and IY indicating, I feel more revision on the part of the class in the interim period which again means that long-term recall was not tested.

      3. That there was no overlap in the two methods. This, for me at least, is a very grey area. How much guidance does one use in guided discovery? When does it stop being guidance and start being exposition? Until more exact definitions exist for these methods it will be very difficult to know exactly what one is testing for.

      4. That the novelty factor, as previously discussed, is not what is driving the motivation rather than a heart-felt desire for knowledge and truth.

      5. Finally, one is assuming that the statistics are valid. This itself is quite large assumption. In order to make any valid conclusion, setting aside the inherent problems in the method discussed already, one would have to repeat the exercise many times in order to get a significant sample. It would be wise to repeat it, using different topics with the same classes and then with different classes. It would have to be investigated to see whether this is age specific, gender-specific, race-specific and so on. To hazard a guess at this I would feel that perhaps boys would benefit more from guided discovery in science, based on experience of teaching boys I found them prone to throwing themselves into laboratory work and to wanting to do things themselves. It was nearly a sign of weakness to ask a teacher for help. I am not entirely sure that age would have an effect once the subject matter was suitable for that age group. (continues in exhibit 3.6)

      (continued from exhibit 3.5.)

      As I result of this exercise I have, firstly, gotten to know my first year classes better which cannot have been a bad result. Secondly,

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