I remember working with a faculty member to teach a Freshman level course on critical thinking.  Some of the students picked up the skills we taught very quickly while others found it very difficult.  Students who struggled wanted step-by-step instructions for completing their assignments.  With the purpose of developing critical thinking skills, most of the assignments had few if any specific steps involved that would guarantee a ‘correct’ answer.  The ambiguity was something they hadn’t dealt with before and struggled to comprehend and overcome.

The faculty member I was working with had been teaching the class for several years.  We discussed the students who had trouble grasping the concepts we taught in the class. She was very insightful in realizing that most of the students with problems came from rural high schools with fewer resources, classes, technology, etc.  Knowing these students came into the class at a disadvantage she worked hard to provide personalized feedback to each student and to guide each of them through learning critical thinking skills.

It is easy to assume that students are equal and far easier to teach if it was true.  However, for a variety of factors including race, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, etc., student’s come to the classroom with varying capabilities.  It is important that as an instructor, one recognizes this and teaches to it.

I don’t think I have undergone a great deal of transformative learning in my lifetime.  One example that stands out is my decision to leave the Catholic church.  Both of my parents were raised Catholic and they raised me as a Catholic.  I went to a Catholic school until I was in the seventh grade and throughout high school I participated in our church’s youth group and even went to Rome for World Youth Day 2000.  Although I sometimes didn’t understand or agree with what I did, learned or heard at church, I really never considered leaving the church before I left for college.  During most of my first year at school I continued to attend church every Sunday.  In my second semester I took a philosophy class and also became friends with someone who also grew up in a Catholic family but was currently exploring the Morman religion (that’s a whole other story).  The class brought out many questions I think I already had but hadn’t really formalized previously.  Discussing religion with my friend also caused me to reflect upon why Catholic’s believe what they believe and if I actually believed it myself.  Near the end of my first year at school I found out that the priest at my parent’s church who I really liked had been ‘kicked-out’ because his schizophrenic niece had accused him of molesting her as a child (Also a whole separate story).   I was very disappointed with the Church by this time and, for me, this was the last straw.

My transformative learning occurred slowly, over time.  It involved several different experiences, including, classroom discussion and learning, discussion with friends, and other events.  My view of present and past experiences changed as I transformed my viewpoint.  The Catholic beliefs I had once found comforting and influential became hypocritical and naive.

My results indicated  that I tended most strongly towards apprenticeship, followed closely by developmental teaching perspectives.  After reading and discussing the perspectives I would have guessed that the developmental perspective would have topped my list instead of apprenticeship. When I took the inventory I tried to focus on how I currently teach.  As a librarian most of the classes I teach are single sessions and the content is based on what the classes instructor requests.  The sessions are usually short and so it is difficult to do much more than just lecture.  From experience I know that lecturing may reach a few students but not many.  Plus without making the content meaningful for the students or giving them a chance to try it themselves it is unlikely that they will care or learn anything.  Thus I try to illustrate the relevance of the content for them and connect it to what they already know in hopes that they will retain some of it or  at least realize that the skills I am teaching are important for their work.

If I taught in a different setting I wonder how this would change.  It seems that if I taught a semester long course and had repeated interactions with students I would likely use more nurturing or even social reform styles of teaching.  To me it seems that these require more time than simple lecturing or even apprenticeship and developmental.

As I filled out the inventory I couldn’t help thinking the same thing I think when I fill out personality tests like the Myers-Briggs survey. I always wonder how well I actually know myself.  Do I answer truthfully or how I hope or think I should answer? I think as I took the inventory I tended to rank abstract conceptualization and reflective observation higher because my biology training influenced me to think these are somehow better or more appropriate.  It asked us to think of a particular example but I had a difficult time thinking of a specific learning experience.  Each time I thought of one example I would think of another example in which I treated the situation differently and would have ranked my selections differently.  As I took the inventory I wondered if I treated all learning the same. As we discussed in class, I think that though we may tend to rely on a particular style we will use them all for different learning experiences or needs.  For example if I am trying to learn how to play tennis I  would focus on actually doing the activity and less on putting it in context.  Whereas even if I would prefer to do an activity, for some things it would be too difficult or not appropriate to do so. I tried to think about overall what I tend to do most but often I could see myself doing more than one and found it difficult to choose.

So if anything it seems that one would need to think back (reflect) on many learning experiences and one’s  general tendencies without bias towards one way or another.  Since the inventory did not ask us to do this, rather it asked us to think of one particular experience, does it somehow take into account that the experience we think of could be very different than most of our learning?  Or that we might view ourselves with ‘rose-colored’ glasses and answer how we think we should answer?

Impacts of demographics, globalization, and technology on learning at my work setting.

First I would say that demographics, globalization and technology factors  increasingly blend together.  The medical library is highly impacted by these factors both within our personnel as well as those we serve and the resources and materials we work with.

Demographics:

• Nationality of our students and hospital patients. As more foreign students join the programs here at VCU and the nationalities of the patients seen by our users changes we need to use resources available in various languages.  Databases contain articles written in many languages and we need to ensure that we point this out when we teach doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.  Consumer health resources, or materials for patients, are not useful if patients don’t speak or read English.  Thus it is important for us to teach our users how to find patient materials in multiple languages.
• The age of our students is changing.  As the number of older students who are returning to education increases we need to adjust our teaching techniques to meet their needs.

Globalization

• Information is global. Our purpose is to provide information to answer our users questions.  The more inter-connected we become the more resources we have available in many formats and many languages.  The vast amount of information available requires our staff to constantly be learning new resources.
• Communication is 24/7. Our users expect us to be available all day everyday and while any of our resources online are available to them whenever they need them our physical building and people are not available all the time to help them.  (Though sometimes it feels like we are!)
• Increase in Distance Education. We provide as much of the same services as possible to our faculty and students who are located around the world as to those here in Richmond.  We provide blackboard courses, online workshops, phone consultations and more to help them learn how to use our resources.  This also requires our staff to learn new tools and strategies for providing these services.
• Informal learning tools. We create, maintain, and contribute to many informal learning spaces like wikis, twitter, facebook, etc. Anyone in the world can learn from the content we provide in these spaces.

Technology

• Information is online. A great deal of the resources we purchase at the library are now available online which means our staff need to learn how to use them and then teach our users how to do so as well.  It also means that we need to develop ways to help users find these materials as easily as possible.
• See above. I think much of how technology affects our library is illustrated in points I’ve made above.  We use technology to communicate, provide resources and education.  We need to continuously maintain our knowledge of the many technologies we use and develop ways to teach them to our users.