Creating Disequilibrium through Conversation

Creating Disequilibrium through Conversation

The article “On Listening to What Children Say” introduces a concept of using a classroom interaction as a source to reveal information on student understanding and comprehension. The author Vivian Gussin Paley states that teachers should treat their classroom as theater in works in which students are actors trying to disperse their problem in the play which is the class content. I really love Ms. Paley concept of listening and gathering information through conversation. In my classroom I tried to have open conversation on the topic I was teaching. Most of the time I had open conversation was to relate the content material to the student’s every day life. Biology can be really tuff sometime at connecting to the real world because the student’s can’t see and feel the content. Open conversation is a great way to gather and analyze student background and understanding on the content. While reading the article I got the strange feeling that Ms. Paley was really talking about creating disequilibrium in student’s understanding through a imaginary story line. The root of the Ms. Paley theory is really Jean Piaget who stated that learning is a versatile activity in which student’s incorporate new information to their existing idea. We covered Jean Piaget in Chapter 3 of “Teaching Science to Every Child” which covers assimilation, accommodation and disequilibrium. Ms. Paley is using listening during conversation as tool to create disequilibrium. She also uses student’s prior knowledge to create this sense of confusion which directly correlates with student’s personal belief. This is a very good concept because the content relates to the student’s own confusion.

However I must point out some of the disadvantages of using this theory. First of all I wish the article provided example of a secondary teacher. I think it’s extremely tuff to have an open conversation which relates to experience of all the students. Secondly, at the secondary level the conversation tends to drift off into other avenues. Sometime it takes a lot of energy to get the students back to the content. Finally it is very time consuming to create disequilibrium with all of the students. Some of the students might just not find material interesting and motivating. As an educator I try my best to introduce each new concept with a lot of energy and enthusiasm but there are always some students that find material tedious. I really love the idea and I have done it in my classroom but structure and foresight are essential to having mutual learning experience in the classroom.

Campfire Effect

First of all while I was reading the “The Campfire Effect” study I almost fell asleep twice. The article was very dull and I felt like the author repeated the central idea way too much. I would have gotten more out of the article if I was informed about the types of strategies and theories that were discussed in the SEI classes. However I do agree with the author theory about changing teacher’s underlying beliefs and attitudes toward teaching students from diverse background in order to get help and teach English Learner Students. I also agree with that the states should install a curriculum that inform teachers about strategies and lesson plans which incorporate EL students to become essential part of the classroom. This study was focused on changing the beliefs and attitudes of pre-service teachers in order to increase EL students learning. I would like to see more data on the implementation of those strategies during their first year of teaching. The author does make comment about the latter statement in his discussion. He states “This question will have to linger until we complete our follow-up research on our pre-service teachers’ practice in their student teaching and first year placements to see what effect the endorsement curriculum truly does have on instruction (pg. 8).” As an educator I firmly believe in convenience and effectiveness of new strategies. Theories are great to learn but they lose their value when teachers can’t make connection to implement the theories to their everyday classroom. This article would have been great if it included data for the first year in-service teachers. I really wanted to see effects of SEI classes on teacher instruction and strategies. I’m not a firm believer of surveys because I think sometime students just feel about the surveys without really thinking about in terms of their own beliefs and values. Overall I think the article did make solid points and did provide data to those statements. This article would have been better if it provided examples of strategies and the results of the first year in-service teachers.