Developed and maintained by Frank LaBanca, Ed.D.
Dr. LaBanca was recognized by eSchool News and Discovery as the 2006 National Outstanding Classroom Blogger for his blog, Applied Science Research
In Search of Creativity was a 2011 Edublog Awards Finalist in the "Best Teacher Blog" Category
Problem finding is the creative ability to define or identify a problem. The process involves consideration of alternative views or definitions of a problem that are generated and selected for further consideration. Problem finding requires individuals to set objectives, define purposes, decide what is interesting, and ultimately decide what they want to study.
Andragony offers an effective use of formative assessment 10/22/08
Do teachers understand? 1/31/08
An apparent paradox in idea and workload 8/29/07
The disenfranchised student, the suspect counselor, and a reflection on an Ed Tech’s perspective 6/1/07
A chat with Carol 5/2/07
Though I spend my days working with high school students, I have a deep passion for open inquiry research and am lucky to have the opportunity to work with doctoral candidates in the Ed.D. Instructional Leadership Program at Western Connecticut State University. This semester (and for the next 5,) I will be providing secondary advisement to two students and primary advisement to one.
Yesterday, one of my secondary advisees had her proposal defense. A proposal defense occurs when the student has identified and defined his or her study (problem finding). First, the student provides the advisors with a ~20-page document for review a few weeks prior. We provide feedback, the proposal is modified, and then a presentation is conducted to share the design with the committee. Yesterday was that presentation. As we listened and subsequently discussed, I couldn’t help but consider some of the important behaviors and actions the student had undertaken. My colleague, Krista Ritchie, and I are working on a paper about promoting problem finding and our recent email discussions synthesizing our research have lead us to generate a teacher and student list of strategies. Here are the student strategies, which I clearly saw on display yesterday (and part of our working list for the paper):
We are going to elaborate on each of these as well as provide a “teacher list.”
After the defense, in the adjacent lounge, the professors then gathered for one-on-one meetings with primary advisees. This was a great time for each professor (4 of us) to meet individually to discuss ideas, goals, and progress. What was more striking to me, though, was the culture. Student sitting with advisor, advisors and students sharing information both between the two and among the group. Meeting dynamics that went from one-on-one, briefly to small group, back to one-on-one. There was an underlying sensation of inquiry permeating the room. Deep, specialized learning occurring without the traditional walls, desks, or blackboards. Learning for learning’s sake, bidirectional knowledge flow, challenging ideas – wow! This is what learning is supposed to be like. As we constantly consider educational reform we really need to think of ways to make authentic inquiry the bedrock of learning. This is where growth really occurs.
I took my semi-annual trip with students to the Great Meadows Marsh in Stratford, Connecticut. It is an amazing location that really highlights the beauty and grandeur of nature while examining the human impacts of development. We were easily able to see Bridgeport, CT, Norwalk, CT, Port Jefferson, Long Island, NY, and Northport, Long Island, NY. The smog emits from the United Illuminating coal/oil-fired power plant, the planes take off from Sikorsky Airport, there is flotsam and jetsam at the wrack line, and the wind whistles gently through the Spartina grass while the snowy egrets glide gracefully through the air.
As many stories reveal themselves through the vistas and views, so do the activities we conduct. I use my model from my article Fishing for Data in Long Island Sound Salt Marshes. But there’s more to this trip than the science we conduct. I stop, as part of the trip, to highlight one of my favorite marsh/beach plants: Rosa rugosa: The beach rose. The plant has edible petals (often used as high-end wedding cake decoration when dipped in egg white and sugar) and edible rose hips. The hips are most commonly found in herbal teas, but the hip makes a very nice jam, especially when enhanced with a bit of apple. I always have on hand a jar of rose hip jam to share – I think there is something mystical when I can talk about making this jam, and then whip out a sample.
This trip I collected a bag-full-o-hips to make a new batch of jam. I also stopped at St. Rose of Lima in Newtown, where there are two apple trees and collected a few green (I think they might be Granny Smith, but not sure) apples. My rose hip jam making adventure is chronicled in the pictures below:
The apples and rose hips I collected
A close-up of the hip - ~2 cm diameter
Rose hips are boiled in water for about 45 min
The apples only need to be boiled for about 20 min - boil seeds, stems and skin to extract the pectin
I hand-process the soft apples and hips through a conical food mill to extract the pulp
The mill separates out the seeds and skins so they don't contaminate the pulp for the jam
The "by products" heading out to the compost pile
I had 8 cups of apple and hip pulp. I added 4 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of lemon juice . This gently boiled for about an hour to reduce and thicken the mixture. I prepared my mason jars by running them through the dishwasher – for sterilization, along with the spoons and tongs I was going to use. Not the perfect aseptic technique, but it works fine. The jars were filled, lidded, and banded, then loaded into my boiling water bath to process for 30 minutes.
The completed jars - a bit of fabric enhances the jar to make a nice gift
All natural, organic (although not certified – you don’t certify a beach and the church grounds . . .), relevant, and tangible to learning.
Dan Meyerrecently wrote on his blog dy/dan:
“The best learning begins with a good worksheet.” September 6th, 2010 by Dan Meyer I wrote that. In all sincerity. On June 8, 2004. In an essay for my credentialing school entitled — of all things — “How Students Learn Math.” This gobsmacked, gross-feeling moment is what I get for digitally cataloging every essay, handout, and lesson I have written since high school. I am grateful, I suppose, that it only took me six years to go from “the best learning begins with a good worksheet” to the kind of instructional design that — for whatever good it does my students — has me excited to wake up in the morning, has me constantly double-checking my front pocket for a camera, has me excited to walk around and encounter math in my daily life. I’m grateful because I’m positive there exists another timeline, equally plausible to this one, where I’m still that enthusiastic about worksheets after six years, or ten years. Or an entire career. I hear that happens.
“The best learning begins with a good worksheet.”
September 6th, 2010 by Dan Meyer
I wrote that. In all sincerity. On June 8, 2004. In an essay for my credentialing school entitled — of all things — “How Students Learn Math.”
This gobsmacked, gross-feeling moment is what I get for digitally cataloging every essay, handout, and lesson I have written since high school.
I am grateful, I suppose, that it only took me six years to go from “the best learning begins with a good worksheet” to the kind of instructional design that — for whatever good it does my students — has me excited to wake up in the morning, has me constantly double-checking my front pocket for a camera, has me excited to walk around and encounter math in my daily life. I’m grateful because I’m positive there exists another timeline, equally plausible to this one, where I’m still that enthusiastic about worksheets after six years, or ten years. Or an entire career. I hear that happens.
Although I think he doesn’t clearly articulate what is “best,” or ‘better,” I internally find that the major concept is that what is key to good instruction is generating compelling and engaging problems, and working through them in a hands-on, minds-on way.
What stands out for me is that good instruction is NOT about the stuff – the worksheets, the PowerPoint, the lab book, the Internet resources. It’s about the meaningful interactions we have with students that help them positively grow in knowledge, skills, and disposition.
Although teaching and learning has best practices that are research-based, there is no question that design and execution of meaningful, well-articulated instruction has an artistic component – one that demands we build quality relationships with students. After all, we may teach biology, chemistry, or research, but ultimately we are teachers of students.
As part of this website (labanca.net), I maintain a Moodle. Moodle is a course management system that allows me to conduct blended learningclasses – classes that have both a face-2-face and online component. I use the Moodle in both my high school Applied Science Research course, and my graduate school Materials and Methods in Science Educationcourse. These classes benefit from such environments, because there is a certain level of independence associated with them. Allowing students a virtual component often helps to better engage them, while providing me with a systemic way of managing the content and assessments.
I wanted to move my system to a Manual Registration method, so I could save myself a step by allowing students to enter their own account information, and then provide an “enrollment key” to enter the course. Of course, not as simple as anticipated. First, was just trying to figure out how to get the system to allow the manual enrollment button to appear. My problem solving was a trial-and-error method. I clicked and looked, thought about what made logical sense, clicked some more, and eventually came to the following screen where I could enable the appropriate setting.
OK, so now an option appears on the shell for users to set up their own accounts. Click it, bingo, the user gets a screen to input information. Click OK – failure. There is an error message indicating there are SMTP issues. I know from terminology that this is an email issue, so I pursue finding these setups.
I find the following page. OK? What are my settings? Don’t know. Call Bluehost, my provider. Technical support gives my my SMTP host name (very obvious, I should have known this . . .) I am now at a decision point: do I need the additional information in the script? I decide less testing is better, so I establish an email account for the Moodle, and provide the password.
Problem resolved. System functioning. This process of problem solving, for me, was a very logical/analytical process. Very little, if any, creativity involved. I had to trouble-shoot, test options, gather information, modify plans, involve others who had expertise . . . all with a tangible, well-defined goal – getting the system to work.
I recently spend part of a week at Raystown Lakecamping with my family. My children enjoyed spending time with their cousins cliff jumping, swimming, and boating. We did “tent it,” which always leads to some levels of uncomfort. In order to mitigate the lack of sleeping amenities we did the traditional thing: use an air mattress.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had traditionally bad experiences with air mattresses. Night one is usually fine, but then there seems to be a problem with air leaking, which just progressively gets worse. The mattress gets pumped up at night, starts off firm, but by morning, various body parts are clinging to the hard ground. Ugg.
Thinking about this, I realized that temperatures change during the day – at night, when the mattress is full, it is cool, but during the day, the heat build up. In an air mattress, that means the molecular motion of the confined air increases, causing additional inflation and higher pressure during the day. This then puts additional stress on the matress, which potentially creates microleaks.
So I thought that if the pressure was relieved, this would prevent the additional pressure from building up. Sure enough, with a partial deflation, I went back to the mattress in the afternoon to find that it felt fully inflated. This, of course, died down during early evening, when I re-pumped the mattress before bed.
Interesting . . .
When I evaluate my thinking, I see this as a problem solving situation – which in my past definitions is a logical/analytical process. However, I am forced to think that there was some creativity involved. So I am at this cognitive dissonance trying to decide whether (or how) problem solving is a creative process. I have traditionally distinguished problem finding and problem solving as different cognitive processes – but there may be some blurring that I need to think about more.
Earlier this year, I was asked to participate (as a subject) in a research study examining teacher’s expertise as it relates to pedagogy, subject expertise, and inquiry (research) skills. During an interview, I was asked to recall a meaningful experience that influenced my teaching. I have orally told this story many times, but the researcher was recording and transcribing. I was fortunate to receive a copy of the transcript and am sharing it below:
Question: Can you recall what experiences informed your understanding of science teaching?
My response:
Yes! I can very much pinpoint the event that really helped focus and change my perception of myself as a science teacher. And it took place in March 1998. I was working with a teacher and he said, Frank you would really like this event, is called the Junior Science and Humanities symposium. It takes place at UConn and I really encourage you to go. I think you are going to get a lot out of it. Take a couple of students if you would like, and by the way, can you take my son too. He’s at the right age and I think it would be good for him to go. So I went to this symposium at the University of Connecticut. What I found were students presenting results from their research. It took place in 15-minute platforms: they did 15 minute talks followed by questions and answers from the audience. I was sitting in the audience utterly mesmerized by these students – how well they were presenting. I sat back and said what a fool I had been. As a neophyte teacher, I was teaching the way I was taught. Here I had my mind opened to remind me what really made a very positive influence in my development as a scientist and that was working in a research laboratory. Watching those students I realized what was meaningful to me – what made me a good student of science. It was not the didactic book knowledge but rather the meaningful exploration of science as a way to develop knowledge. So I walked away from that event saying this (authentic, applied research) is what I should be doing. From that point, I really started to shape my philosophy of education. At that point I did not know what inquiry meant or perhaps I had not defined it as well as I do today, but I understood the value of doing authentic research. The Junior Science and Humanities Symposium really shaped my whole philosophy of teaching – that we needed to move students towards the individualization and the authentic opportunities for them to do meaningful science. So I can confidently say that was the most important experience in my professional career to date. There is so much more to the story too. At that symposium there were also students presenting posters. I went up to one of the students who has developed this device and it was basically a homemade spectrophotometer: it’s a device used to measure interference of light. He was using it for photosynthesis or some whatever reason. He was very proud of himself and I was chatting with him and his teacher happened to be there. The students was from Greenwich High School, which was the next town from where I was teaching. I met this teacher, we really got on very well, and he became a mentor for me to inculcate me to doing science research process with students. He really was a wonderful teacher and it was an amazing experience in the sense that I recognized what I valued in my education and also I met someone who shared the same values as I did. We both had extremely positive experiences doing research with students. He became a mentor for me.
Yes! I can very much pinpoint the event that really helped focus and change my perception of myself as a science teacher. And it took place in March 1998. I was working with a teacher and he said, Frank you would really like this event, is called the Junior Science and Humanities symposium. It takes place at UConn and I really encourage you to go. I think you are going to get a lot out of it. Take a couple of students if you would like, and by the way, can you take my son too. He’s at the right age and I think it would be good for him to go. So I went to this symposium at the University of Connecticut. What I found were students presenting results from their research. It took place in 15-minute platforms: they did 15 minute talks followed by questions and answers from the audience. I was sitting in the audience utterly mesmerized by these students – how well they were presenting. I sat back and said what a fool I had been. As a neophyte teacher, I was teaching the way I was taught. Here I had my mind opened to remind me what really made a very positive influence in my development as a scientist and that was working in a research laboratory. Watching those students I realized what was meaningful to me – what made me a good student of science. It was not the didactic book knowledge but rather the meaningful exploration of science as a way to develop knowledge. So I walked away from that event saying this (authentic, applied research) is what I should be doing. From that point, I really started to shape my philosophy of education. At that point I did not know what inquiry meant or perhaps I had not defined it as well as I do today, but I understood the value of doing authentic research. The Junior Science and Humanities Symposium really shaped my whole philosophy of teaching – that we needed to move students towards the individualization and the authentic opportunities for them to do meaningful science. So I can confidently say that was the most important experience in my professional career to date.
There is so much more to the story too. At that symposium there were also students presenting posters. I went up to one of the students who has developed this device and it was basically a homemade spectrophotometer: it’s a device used to measure interference of light. He was using it for photosynthesis or some whatever reason. He was very proud of himself and I was chatting with him and his teacher happened to be there. The students was from Greenwich High School, which was the next town from where I was teaching. I met this teacher, we really got on very well, and he became a mentor for me to inculcate me to doing science research process with students. He really was a wonderful teacher and it was an amazing experience in the sense that I recognized what I valued in my education and also I met someone who shared the same values as I did. We both had extremely positive experiences doing research with students. He became a mentor for me.
Click HERE! photo credit: Mike GL
I am constantly amazed by the reality, that I am sitting in my kitchen, hooked up to nothing, and writing, which seamlessly travels through the air to parts unknown. Today, I virtually spoke with my brother-in-law, the impetus to the sliced bread story and got the following link:
http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/return-common-sense
I like how we are using 21st-century skills (collaboration, written communication, problem solving) and tools (IT) to make the process almost effortless. We are such consumers of information – the real challenge is to become better producers.
I think I need to follow up with this senator and see if I can conduct a recorded phone interview to get some more perspective on this interesting story which just oozes problem finding/problem solving in such a different type of context.
I’m sure there is more to come . . .
http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2618&q=320892
My kindergarten daughter brought home a book from school today, When I Grow Up. My daughter’s teacher has, throughout the year, had the students complete “Think Books,” where the children draw a picture and write a sentence to explain their “story.” I can tell by the book that the teacher was working on “evidence.” The student had to say what she wanted to be, then explain the reason. The teacher then assembles the student work and makes a bound book that the children bring home on different nights to share with their families.
What I like about the “Think Books” is that the students are making an authentic product that they share with their families. There is a certain level of quality when it is shared with many. Here’s her page:
Maggie's Career Think Book