I'm taking undergraduate Technology and Engineering Education (TEE) classes concurrently with our MA pedagogy class. The main difference is scope. My TEE classes (so far) focus solely on the classroom (motivating students, disclosure documents, lesson plans, etc.) and the emphasis seems to be on making it seem...not easy, but doable. There is a lot of confidence building. Whenever a fear or anxiety is brought up, the phrase "Don't worry, you'll be fine" is tossed out at some point after addressing that concern.
Our class is not incredibly different from my TEE classes. I'm still learning what I can do in a classroom, but now the ramifications flow in and out of the classroom.
For example, my TEE classes suggest a direct line of confidence. If you do this, then this will happen or if that doesn't work then try this and remember this. My goal is to establish my own language and teach it to the students I may have in my classroom.
Our text says this of its own pedagogy:
Neither immersion in Situated Practice within communities of learners, nor Overt Instruction...necessarily gives rise to this sort of critical understanding or cultural understanding. In fact, both immersion and many sorts of Overt Instruction are notorious as socialising agents that can render learners quite uncritical and unconscious of the cultural locatedness of meanings and practices.
The four components of pedagogy we propose here do not constitute a linear heirarchy, nor do they represent stage. Rather, they are components that are related in complex ways. Elements of each may occur simutaneously, while at different times one or the other will predominate, all of them are reatedly revisited at different levels (New London Group, 32).
This is a product of learning the Cha Cha and the Paso Doble at the same time.
One particular sentiment that I gained from our readings that I want to incorporate into my young pedagogy is that there isn't one standard. Students "are simultaneously members of multiple lifeworlds, so their identities have multiple layers that are in complex relation to each other" (NLG, 17)
Our readings are pushing me to understand that I have a responsibility to integrate learning compatible with their work, citizenship, and lifeworlds in the present and near future. The earlier I can incorporate such integral facets of learning into my language, the more concrete it can become.
As a side note, the final section of the article A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies titled "The Internation Multiliteracies Projects" is perhaps the greatest summation I have ever read. I wish I had read it before reading the article. I hope this doesn't sound sarcastic because it is awesome.
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I think that it'd be really interesting to be in your shoes right now, attending "introductory"/undergraduate education classes (I'm not sure what to call them without sounding like I'm trying to be condescending or whatever). The juxtaposition of all of this new-ish teacher vocabulary put in the context of our readings probably makes for some interesting comparisons and discoveries. As I read your post, I kept thinking about multiple intelligences and the responsibility that we have as educators to do as much as we possibly can to provide the best access to all types of learners in as many different ways as possible. It goes back to the idea of the multimodal person. We are all different combinations of "stuff" and ways of learning, and no to people are exactly the same, so sometimes teaching the "Cha Cha and the Paso Doble at the same time" is helpful in providing access to all kinds to learners.
As I read your post talking about confidence building--"Don't worry, it'll all work out!--it made me realize what a different dynamic we have in our classes. I don't know if that's good or bad. I feel like it's good in that we're not necessarily satisfied with the really easy answers, but I wonder if sometimes I keep trying to make things more complicated than they are. Last night my mom was trying to find this quote to carry on a discussion about how there might have been something chemical in the fruit that Adam and Eve ate that caused a physical/chemical reaction in their bodies, thus causing the Fall. This is interesting, but I think it's unnecessarily complicating the issue. Isn't it enough to know that they fell? Isn't it ever okay to say, "It'll all work out."?
I think these issues we are tackling are challenging, but I also think they're a little more doable in practice than I'm allowing them to be in my mind.
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