{"id":6378,"date":"2015-07-07T06:45:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T06:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6378"},"modified":"2015-07-07T06:45:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T06:45:04","slug":"poor-pedagogy-in-the-east-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/07\/07\/poor-pedagogy-in-the-east-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor pedagogy in the East End"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said<\/a> last week that I anticipated a lot of sitting and listening when we met in the University of East London for a day conference about outdoor education \/ learning: Lessons from Near and Far<\/em>. \u00a0It was, however, much worse than I feared. \u00a0We began at 1000 and broke for lunch at 1340. \u00a0In those 220 minutes, there were 7 speakers but only 10 minutes were given over to questions from those attending.<\/p>\n

Whoever thought that was a good idea? \u00a0Even the last session, which was supposed to be devoted to audience questions to the speakers, was dominated by a prepared talk by a moderator. \u00a0It is shocking how often people, who usually bang on endlessly about the need for appropriate pedagogy, seem not to have the first idea how to do it.<\/p>\n

There was a break in those 220 minutes (coffee etc), so we weren't sitting listening the whole time, but that's beside the point. \u00a0The people attending mattered as much as the speakers, but we were treated like a theatre audience, just there to listen, inwardly absorb and clap; we were even told we need not take notes because the slides would be provided. \u00a0But we were not an audience, and it was not a theatre, even though we dutifully sat in a lecture 'theatre'. \u00a0As it turned out, we were mostly non-participatory participants in our own attempted learning. \u00a0Such a shame as the group attending was\u00a0both diverse and experienced. \u00a0As such, we had a lot to contribute to what the speakers were saying, but no one on the organising team appreciated that. \u00a0So\u00a0<\/em>thoughtless.<\/p>\n

It was much the same in the first part of the afternoon, with speakers dominating. \u00a0The moderator of the small group I was in tried to insist he controll the questions to speakers thereby preventing discussion amongst the rest of the group. \u00a0We were having none of it.<\/p>\n

Then, finally, there was another plenary, and I did manage to squeeze a question in. \u00a0I had to leave\u00a0before the end (although this was 15 minutes after the scheduled end-time); as I did,\u00a0the morning moderator was still going strong. \u00a0All that said, there were bits I found of value \u2013 inevitable, of course with such a topic, and the range of speakers. \u00a0There was also much to confuse and puzzle, which really needed a better forum for discussion. \u00a0 \u00a0I'll try to write about those when I've recovered from the day.<\/p>\n

My final point is that this sort of stand and deliver pedagogy is not only disrespectful to those attending, but also to those presenting because, they have limited chance for interaction with everyone there who have their own perspectives and ideas to share. \u00a0We all know that this exchange is important \u2013 or at least I think 'we' do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said last week that I anticipated a lot of sitting and listening when we met in the University of East London for a day conference about outdoor education \/ learning: Lessons from Near and Far. \u00a0It was, however, much...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}