10-try-the-opposite-79-255 Here are a few more pages from Try the Opposite.

Enjoy.

John

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

Alan Maley – Writer of over 30 books, Editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers, and visiting Professor at Kebangsaan University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In my 40 years’ experience of ELT, I cannot recall a time when ‘new ideas’ was not on the agenda. It therefore seemed worth exploring some of the potential sources of such ideas. How are new ideas generated? Here are the ones I discussed:

1. Teacher Interaction.

Teachers get new ideas from each other, and this is one of the most important sources of innovation. Here are the most important contexts in which this exchange of ideas can take place are: in formal training courses, in teacher development groups, through attending conferences, and through informal conversations in staff rooms etc. It is also important to remember that interactions of this kind not only lead to the direct adoption of ideas (where one teacher simply borrows another teacher’s good idea) but also to generating new ideas (when one teacher takes another teacher’s idea and does something slightly different with it.).

2. Heuristics.

A heuristic is a ‘rule of thumb’ (If I do this, what will happen?). One of the most well-known and successful heuristics is John Fanselow’s : ‘Do the opposite.’ He suggests that, if we carefully examine what we habitually do in our classes and then try to do the opposite, we may stumble upon some interesting new ways of proceeding. There are many other heuristics worth trying. For example: ‘Withhold Information’, ‘Reverse the order.’ , ‘Combine randomly’ , etc. Fanselow’s point, which is worth thinking about, is that if we never try an alternative way of doing things, we never know what might have happened! Heuristics are a handy way of trying new ways of doing things.

3. Re-explorations of Traditional Techniques.

Traditional techniques, such as dictation, choral recitation, translation, homework, etc. are often criticised for being tedious and unproductive. However, if we take the trouble to re-examine them and to explore ways of doing them slightly differently, we shall often find that they can emerge fresh and useful. This is what a number of people have done. For example, Davis and Rinvolucri in their book on Dictation (74 different ways of doing dictation!), or Painter in her book on Homework (101 ideas for setting homework differently). Other areas ripe for re-exploration are story-telling, drills, dialogues and questioning techniques.

These traditional techniques offer a supportive framework ( they are very familiar to most teachers ) within which to make small but significant changes. Any teacher can reflect on a traditional way of doing something, and come up with an alternative, provided they are willing to consider the possibility.

4. Borrowing from Feeder-Fields.

A feeder-field is an area of inquiry or a discipline from outside ELT but which has potential for ‘feeding in’ to it. One example would be the way drama training for actors has many possibilities for language teachers: we can use many of these actor-training techniques for pronunciation and movement work with our language students. Others would include Applied Psychology (NLP- Neuro-Linguistic Programming; Multiple Intelligences Theory, Creativity Theory, etc.), Music and Art. It is unfortunate that ELT has in many ways put up walls around itself, so that many useful ideas from outside the walls never get in!

5. New, Developing Areas.

These are fields of activity or inquiry (both from inside and outside ELT) which offer new insights and forms of activity to the ways in which we teach. The most obvious is clearly Information Technology. The possibilities offered by on-line searches of the www, by e-mail exchanges with students , classes or schools in another country, by discussion / chat groups, or by direct on-line instruction are enormous, though it is necessary to caution teachers about an over-enthusiasm for the technology itself (the ‘new toy’ effect) at the expense of learning pay-off. Other areas ripe for exploitation include; Global Issues, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), the ‘new literatures’ in English, ‘Flow’ , and the Teaching of Advanced Learners.

Conclusion.

I would make two points in conclusion:

1. Innovation is not beneficial in itself. Mere novelty is usually short-lived. In order to be worth doing, an innovation has to have a clear pay-off in terms of student motivation, enhanced learning, economy of effort, etc.

2. Reflection and exploration by teachers into new or better ways of doing things can be a powerful dynamo for professional development. We may not always come up with brilliant new techniques but in the process of searching for them, we learn a lot both as teachers and as human beings.

How Proust can change YOUR LIFE–Seeing the world differently by reading outside of our field

When I studied to be a teacher in the sixties, MA candidates in teaching at many schools of education were required, both the institution and the state the teacher preparation institution was in, to take at least 3 courses outside their area of study. So whether you were going to teach science, ESOL, history, English, elementary school or math, you had to take courses in the psychology, history and philosophy of education.
Over time, some state boards of education and teacher training colleges became more flexible about the requirements, but a few continued to require at least 3 out of 12 courses for an MA to be in areas outside the candidates’ specialization.
Teachers College, Columbia University was one of those places that continued to require at least 3 courses outside each teacher’s area of study. When I told incoming MA candidates in TESOL at Teachers College, Columbia University that they had to take at least 3 courses not related to TESOL, many were quite upset. They said that they had liberal arts degrees so had taken a wide range of courses and were ready to concentrate on TESOL.
During exit interviews, though, the majority of graduates said that they found the courses not directly related to TESOL very illuminating! They realized how limited each area of study is. And they realized that to see the world differently it is crucial to study something unfamiliar and unrelated to one’ goal.
Just as my passion for interpreting 1 to 3 page transcriptions of exchanges in a range of ways grew out of courses I took in literature where it was normal to interpret lines of a poem or novel from different perspectives, so many graduates from the MA TESOL Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, both in New York and Tokyo shared ways that their courses in pottery, dance, music, curriculum, peace studies, to name a few, reshaped and expanded their view of teaching and learning.
I was reminded of the value of reading outside of our field to gain insights in our field, as I was sorting out and rearranging books in our apartment in Tokyo. I came upon a book I bought 10 years ago when I was living in New Zealand, How Proust can change YOUR LIFE by Alain De Botton. (1997, Picador) On the cover, John Updike is quoted as writing “Dazzling” about the book. I decided to re-read it since reading most things only one time is almost the same as not reading them.
Here’s a quote from Proust about reading:

In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity. (Page 25)

In Contrasting Conversations, I wrote that a central purpose of observing other teachers is to see our self. Discovering that Proust in a different time and with a different purpose made a similar point I found exciting. Connecting what we think about in our area with what others think in other areas reminds us of connections between disciplines.

In a Chapter titled How to Take Your Time, Alain De Botton describes a conversation between Proust and young British diplomat. In response to “How do the committees work?”, the diplomat says “We generally meet at 10:00 am, there are secretaries behind.” (Page 72 and 73)
Proust told the young diplomat he was going through each day too quickly. He pressed him to give more details of what he did by not going so fast. Proust believed that not going too fast, noticing detail after detail had the chance of making the world much more fascinating, seeing the same event from a wide range of perspectives. Wow! The seeds of two of the themes of my work written about in such a stimulating way, totally unrelated to discussions of teaching. Discovering such hidden likenesses is to me a central goal of learning in all fields.
Though I have never seen Proust listed on any reading lists in courses related to teaching, he wrote extensively about his view of learning. De Botton says “In Proust’ view, we don’t learning anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped.” (Page 72) He cites this passage from Proust as one example:

A sprained ankle quickly teaches us about the body’s weight
distribution, hiccups force us to notice and adjust to hitherto unknown
aspects of the respiratory system, being jilted by a lover is a perfect
introduction to the mechanisms of emotional dependency. (Page 72)

Proust provides support for my claim that we need to discuss multiple meanings of words when we talk about teaching in his comments on stock expressions or clichés—what I would call jargon: scaffolding, positive feedback, range of proximal development, to name a few. “. . . if speaking in clichés is problematic, it is because the world itself contains a far broader range of rainfalls, moons, sunshines and emotions than stock expressions either capture or teach us to expect.” (Page 106)

To encourage you to read De Botton’s book, I present the conclusion of one chapter which will make sense only if you read the chapter.

The moral? That life can be a stranger substance than clichéd life,, that goldfinches should occasionally do things differently from their parents, and that there are persuasive reasons for calling a loved one Plouplou, Missou or poor little wolf. (Page 113)

My favorite tidbit from De Botton comes in his opening paragraph, though I am stating it at the end of my recommendation to both read De Botton and other books seemingly unrelated to day-to-day teaching. He says that a key reason we are unhappy is because of “the deadening effects of habit.” (Page 2)
So much of what is done in schools day in and day out is done by habit, by rules, by procedures! How deadening! And that is why many others and I constantly call for constant change in what we do in our classrooms.

As you can see, I am sending along some chapters from Try the Opposite. As I said, though the conversations are with teachers in Japan, the way of talking about our teaching as well as the suggestions for trying alternatives are applicable to teachers anywhere and at any level.

John

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Here is the promised Table of Contents for Try the Opposite.5-tto-table-of-contents75-tto-table-of-contents6

  Here is the promised Cover of Try the Opposite so that you can connect some of my comments in the Preface/Introduction which I had posted.

cover-of-try-the-opposite

     In my last message, I said I was going to attach the Preface/Introduction of Try the Opposite along with the Table of Contents so that you could read my rationale for my approach.  But on second thought , I decided it might be better to give you time to think about possible reasons for the idea of trying the opposite as a way to expand the range of our teaching practices before I shared my reasons.

    I am now attaching the Preface/Introduction to Try the Opposite which contains my rationale–Preface/Introduction to Try the Opposite. If you have had a chance to think of various reasons for such an approach, you can compare yours with mine.  

    I will be sending Chapters from Try the Opposite on a regular basis.

    John

In the May 18, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer reviewed research on “Why children who are patient prosper.”

In an aside, he makes the following statement about one of the psychologists he is discussing:

A few years later, he was hired as a consultant on a personality assessment initiated by the Peace Corps. Early Peace Corps volunteers had sparked several embarrassing international incidents — one mailed a postcard on which she expressed disgust at the sanitary habits of her host country — so the Kennedy administration wanted a screening process to eliminate people unsuited for foreign assignments.”

I was struck by the comment for two reasons. First, the inaccuracy of the statement — the volunteer had written this:

The people cook in the streets.

The people eat in the streets.

The people do everything in the streets.

They even go to the bathroom in the streets.

Nothing in training could have prepared us for this!

No expression of disgust here.

Second, Lehrer’s comment reminded me of the powerful impact the postcard incident had on me. I used the postcard incident, sparked by my fellow Volunteer in Nigeria 1, as a metaphor in an article, Postcard Realities. The article is not directly related to teaching but it reflects the main theme of this Blog: seeing what we do and say from multiple perspectives.

Marjorie, my fellow Volunteer, wrote comments similar to what all of us had written on the message side of postcards. In fact, the beautiful sunsets on the picture side of the postcard provided us with the perfect foil to our own description of what we observed.

I have never seen a postcard in any place I have visited or lived in depicting a slum, a mosquito, gang violence or addicts shooting up, to name a few common sights in the world. So Marjorie, like most of us, wrote an alternative description of the picture side of the postcard on the message side!

To understand our teaching, we have to see how what we think we are doing — often like the picture side of the postcard — is different from the message side of the postcard — what we are actually doing.

I have attached a pdf of my article Postcard Realities.

John

The majority of my fellow volunteers in Nigeria I were assigned to secondary schools. Because I had practice taught, I was assigned to a teacher training college where part of my responsibilities would be working with practice teachers.  As it turned out, though, one of the requirements for entry to the teacher training college where I had been assigned was a minimum of two years of teaching experience.  So all of the teachers I was asked to supervise had two to twenty times more years of experience than I had.  When the Principal realized this fact, he asked me to join the most senior member of the staff in his visits to schools so I could learn how to supervise.

On my first joint visit with this senior supervisor, one Mr. Ononye, I was invited to sit on a stool next to him in the front of the class where he was supervising a practice teacher.  About five minutes into the lesson, Mr. Ononye shot up from his stool and, pointing at the teacher, shouted, “You call yourself a teacher? Sit down!  I’ll show you how to teach.” I was so shocked by the Mr. Ononye’s sudden movement as well as his comment that I fell off the small stool that I was sitting on.  But the practice teacher was not at all shocked!  He moved from standing in front of the class to sit on the stool that Mr. Ononye had just left vacant. He seemed eager to see what Mr. Ononye was about to demonstrate.

Mr. Ononye’s comment is a symbol of the most common conversations about teaching between supervisors and either practice teachers or teachers who have to be reviewed for promotion or for retaining their position. Supervisors project their values on to the teaching activities they observe.  Here is a slightly exaggerated description of the aims of the usual post observation conversations: “I am going to observe you and your actions.  After the lesson, I will tell you what is right and wrong about your teaching and what needs to be improved.  I will prescribe better activities or collaborate with you to develop better activities.  Or, if you have a problem, tell me, and I will help you solve it.  I have been teaching a long time and know what will be needed to improve your performance as a teacher and to solve the problems I observe.”

I have found the usual post observation conversations stultifying and through the years along with many others have encouraged a wider range of post observation conversations.  On my blog, I introduce a range of contrasting post observation conversations designed in the first instance to explore and understand teaching and learning rather than to improve teaching and learning. Of course, over time, as we understand what we are having our students do, we will select some practices that consistently engage us and our students more.  But the initial goal is understanding rather than improvement.

The contrasting conversations you experience are based on these seven assumptions:

Assumption 1: We don’t know what good teaching or bad teaching is for all students in all settings with all teachers.

Assumption 2: Much of our teaching and our students’ behaviors are ritualistic-governed by unconscious rules the same way much of our other behaviour in life is governed by unconscious rules or habits.

Assumption 3: When we and others use the same word to refer to a practice, it is unlikely that we both have the same practice mind.

Dictation to one might be a listening test to another.

Role-play to one may be recitation to another.

Drill to some might refer to repetition and to others the rote memorization of grammar rules. Conversely, when we each use different words to refer to practices, we cannot assume that the practices are different.

Focus on form and emphasize the importance of accuracy might refer to the same practice, to cite one example.

Assumption 4: In addition to the fact that the same words often refer to different practices and different words might refer to the same practices, words we use to discuss teaching tend to be general, one-dimensional and judgmental. Here are a few frequently heard comments: “Use positive feedback; don’t worry about accuracy as long as they are fluent; meaning is more important than form; always start with an icebreaker or a warm up activity to relax the students.”

Assumption 5: Each of us is capable of generating many alternative practices through the observation and analysis of our own teaching and language use outside of classrooms through discussions about practices with our students and colleagues.

Assumption 6: What we and our students actually do in class and what we think we and they do are in most cases totally different.

Assumption 7: Atrophy is a condition that applies to teaching practices just as it applies to our bodies and other things in nature. Without constant tweaking of our practices, most practices become less and less effective.

Here is my description of the contrasting conversations that will emerge as you do the activities on this blog:

Rather than observe classes live, let’s jointly transcribe a two to three minute section of a class that you and I have taught and are keen to explore.  As we analyze the excerpts and view a video of the excerpts we each select, let’s try to see something new about teaching and learning, alter the practices in the excerpt based on what we see that is new.  Then, let’s compare the original transcriptions and video excerpts with those of the alternative practices Let’s ask a few students for their comments on the contrasting excerpts as well.

Let’s have as our goal a deeper understanding of teaching and learning. Though as we try alternatives, we are likely to see that some practices are more engaging and powerful than others, the immediate goal of observing and analyzing our teaching is understanding rather than improvement or prescriptions for ourselves or others.

If you are keen to try contrasting conversations, I invite you to do some of the activities on this blog suggested in articles that will be posted soon.