Hillocks Response

IMPORTANT!! Anyone familiar w/blogger: do you know how to set up page-jumps ? I looked them up in the FAQ but it seemed way more complicated than necessary. I think that page-jumps would make this blog more bloggy and, more importantly, more readable.

For instance, I could start this post out with a brief intro/abstract, then direct anyone interested in what I have to say to the "Read More!" link.

I'm just trying to avoid the TL;DR attitude which I'm currently fighting. Anyone sympathetic? Agree/Disagree? Further suggestions?

Anywho... The George Hillocks reading... I was initially excited about the brevity, but now, in formulating my response, I'm disgruntled: Not only was this reading short, it was also pretty shallow. Agreeable but very little to actually think about/mull over. Thus I'm scrambling to produce a worthwhile post :/

I understand the point that theor(y)(ies) underlie(s) all aspects of teaching and that it is therefore very important to investigate how and why we conduct a class session in a particular manner. The initial teaching example he explains struck me as all-too familiar. Would such a professor be open to critique? Furthermore, how much effort would such a professor have to put into self-critique, into unpacking all of his harmful, unproductive assumptions? The lesson appears to be hypervigilant self-awareness.

All of the steps involved in what is termed "reflective practice" are tantamount to the scientific method. Related most explicity are the "6 dimensions" of the "frame experiment," which I suppose makes sense in that the term "experiment" is used to describe the process. Here is where I find difficulty in delving into the text further: This seems pretty self-evident to me. The most challenging step here is the first. As identified by Hillocks this is "analyzing current student progress in relation to general course goals" (33). Or, in terms of the scientific method, this is simply identifying the problem. If one is engaged in teaching according to an interlocking, self-assured set of theories as is the first professor profiled, then step one takes a lot of effort. After identifying a problem, though, the problem-solving process seems to evolve without much coaxing... Or does it?

The last three paragraphs of this reading were most interesting to me. Here Hillocks very briefly touches on the impact of life experience ("values, attitudes, beliefs" (37)) with regard to teaching. This is an anxiety of mine, and I wish to exhaustively evaluate how my life experience unconsciously bleeds into, among other aspects of my life, teaching. Perhaps from a more pragmatic perspective, I wish to explore ways in which I may employ a handicap (in the golf-sense) (I may or may not be using that term correctly) so as to avoid such a hemmorhage. I like the idea of having students put their names on the back of handed-in papers, but this is the only helpful strategy I've considered so far.