My wife and I enjoyed a movie last night, The Cider House Rules.  We are a bit behind the times when it comes to movies, but have been making a rapid comeback since we started our Netflix subscription.

A brief introduction synopsis from the Internet Movie Database:

Homer is an orphan in remote St. Cloud, Maine. Never adopted, he becomes the favorite of orphanage director Dr. Larch, who imparts his full medical knowledge on Homer, who becomes a skilled, albeit unlicensed, physician. But Homer yearns for a self-chosen life outside the orphanage. When Wally and pregnant Candy visit the orphanage Dr. Larch provides medically safe, albeit illegal, abortions Homer leaves with them to work on Wally’s family apple farm. Wally goes off to war, leaving Homer and Candy alone together. What will Homer learn about life and love in the cider house? What of the destiny that Dr. Larch has planned for him?

What stood out for me in this movie was the relationship of a teenage boy with his mentor and his desire to spread his wings and seek out his own life.  Homer, played by Tobey Maguire, is a young orphan who learns to be a physician, even though he never attends medical school.  From a situated perspective, he becomes a brokered member of the community of practice – receiving his cognitive apprenticeship from his mentor, Dr. Larch. 

Homer respects and honors the relationship with his mentor, but realizes that he needs to grow beyond the walls of the hospital/orphanage that has been his home his entire life.  He seeks new experiences as an apple picker and a lobsterman – potential careers that are not necessarily on par with his cognitive ability.  He does this because he has the desire to experience a more visceral life – to interact with others, to value hard work, and certainly the feeling of independence.

Dr. Larch struggles with Homer’s departure from his lifelong home, and at one point comments “I think we may have lost him to the world. . .”  Dr. Larch is conflicted with the desire to have Homer work in partnership with him and allowing Homer to experience the world without the constraints of pleasing and staying with him.

As a mentor, this is certainly the monumental challenge – to give a young mind the skills, dispositions, and knowledge of a discipline-domain, while allowing the student the freedom to grown and move beyond the experience.  We are often selfish, but the greatest gift we really can give our mentees is the gift of self-direction, self-reliance, and independence.

As a research teacher/mentor, I have been fortunate enough to see some of the long-term results of these relationships, and am amazed how these students, now doctors, scientists, as well as a host of other professionals, recognize the importance of the relations they had with me. 

It’s too bad Dr. Larch didn’t get to see Homer at the end of the film – if you don’t know why – rent it.  I’m sure you’ll see why I could relate to this film so well.

Last week I heard about the amazing water landing of the US Airlines flight on the Hudson River in New York City.  I was in the midst of many projects and didn’t have a chance to truly appreciate the magnitude of what had happened until I viewed a slide show of pictures.  The images are breathtaking, and I hope the link I am providing to this event lasts a long time.

What amazes me most is, in less than one minute, the pilot identifies a problem, creates a strategy for solution with multiple options, selects the best option, and finally executes the option in a near-flawless fashion.  This is what creativity and 21st-century skills is all about! (Well, maybe we don’t need to teach students how to crash land a plane, but we do need to give them the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to successfully navigate the challenges that they will undoubtedly encounter in their future.)

This situation makes me really consider the creative mind, in this case, the pilot.  Preparedness certainly favored this mind, and the expertise displayed in the choices made were enhanced by previous experience.  Sandy Kay (1994) defined creativity (specifically problem finding) in terms of an individual finding, defining, or discovering an idea or problem “not predetermined by the situation.”. This definition is problematic because it assumes there are no underlying or situated factors that might influence decision making factors. There are boundaries and parameters that are required for individuals engaging in creative problem finding and solving behaviors that are established by the field of study and the domain-culture (i.e., Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). These predetermined factors must surely influence the nature of the problems individuals attempt to solve.

IMHO, the pilot was capable of such a creative and successful act because he had the necessary expertise, coupled with a situation that mandated immediate action.  Without his experiences as a pilot and a safety consultant he could NOT have been as creative as he was. 

In terms of education, the lesson seems to be that we need to engage students in authentic experiences that challenge them to develop skill sets that allow them to solve problems well.  From a situated cognitive framework, becoming members of a community of practice – practicing both the trade and the thinking of professionals – is a necessary tool to become a productive, contributing member of a 21st-century society.

I was recently asked to present a professional development workshop to teachers on blogging. The blogs I work with in my classroom are very different from this one. This blog really is more of a reflexivity journal for me, while my classroom blogs really are based on students socially constructing knowledge together. I think my graduate students, who often view this blog, might differ on this description, as their comments reflect social learning here as well.

Here’s the presentation:

In any event, my workshop, which lasted around an hour and forty-five minutes began with an activity about asking conceptual questions. This part of the workshop took an hour. For me, this was far more important than the actual technology use. After all, if we talk about good instruction, blogging only becomes an instructional tool. Asking students meaningful, open-ended, ill-defined, multiple perspective/response questions are critical for developing thoughtful intuitive minds. A blog can asynchronously facilitate this.

So we’re back to the same ideas, which ultimately are critical: technology should enhance instruction, not replace or impede it. It should make learning meaningful, not burdensome.

This is a challenge in the statistics class I am taking, because the technology, in this case, SPSS statistical analysis software, should allow students to understand and interpret concepts. When the technology gets in the way of learning concepts, then real learning stops occurring. The software needs to only be a tool to allow students/researchers to make meaning of their questions – to help them validly and reliably answer them.

I gave a statistics assignment over the past week to my students which challenged them to assimilate most of the course content and explain it in an applied assignment requiring both visual and written interpretation.  Basically, they took their data set that they had generated in a previous assignment, and analyzed it descriptively:  means, medians, modes, standard deviations, interquartiles, box-and-whiskers, and the like.

But this post isn’t about what the students had to do, it’s about my impression of how they did it.  I received many emails from students expressing how they worked hard, collaboratively.  Together they were able to figure out how to complete the assignment.  They repeatedly told me about the groups that met up together at the University lab, to work, share frustrations, successes and, struggles, and ultimately create tangible products, based on authentic data.

I can’t think of a better example of situated cognition in action.  They were socially constructing knowledge together.  It was in their social interactions that learning took place.  What is interesting, is that they chose to learn this way. 

They were using the authentic tools of the practicing educational researcher:  student achievement data, SPSS software.  Of course, to most, they are new (neophytes) to the field of educational research so they are on a peripheral trajectory to the community of practice. 

Seeing this type of learning in practice makes me think that I must continue to strive to provide cognitive apprenticeship opportunities for the students, both in class, and in the “homework” opportunities to make the experiences as authentic as possible.  I think these homework assignments should represent the most meaningful learning that takes place for the course.  Kind of interesting to consider the role of an “in class test” in a situated learning model.  Doesn’t really fit so well.  But, as most know, a doctoral class in statistics, complete with objective in-class assessments is a right of passage towards the letters that are earned after your name. 

So how do I reconcile the the two? 

• Make the assessment as authentic as possible. 
• Use the tools of the community of practice. 
• Allow students to have the necessary resources to solve problems. 
• Evaluate on concepts, not isolated facts. 

Any other suggestions?