Scaffolding the PWTs: Using Graphic Organizers, Metaphors, and Analogies

Scaffolding the PWTs: Using Graphic Organizers, Metaphors, and Analogies. As a part of the strategies we used for scaffolding understanding to help students make connections to theory, practice, and ethics we used graphic organizers, metaphors, art, and analogies to help students imagine, express, and represent their thinking. By doing so, we also purposely and explicitly modeled how useful these strategies are in helping all students grasp difficult concepts. Figure 1 is a typical example of a graphic organizer a student used to remember important ideas.

Figure 1. Sample Graphic Organizer

The triangle for “three important points to remember” was contrasted with a circle showing “a question rolling around in my mind.” And a square depicting four ideas that “square with my beliefs.” Cynthia’s class read Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (Freire & Macedo, 1987). Freire and Macedo explain their theories using sophisticated language that addresses a wide range of topics related to language learning, cultural uses of literacy, politics, and power in literacy education. The graphic organizer helped students clarify and anchor their developing understandings of the authors’ and their own theories, ethics, and practices. It also demonstrated the value of “making the implicit explicit ” through graphic organizers to support discussion and learning from text (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000, p. 12).

In her class Patience focused on helping her students make connections to research-based theories, and then guided them in describing and explaining their practical or living theories of education. As students read and discussed theories and principles of foreign language learning and teaching, she asked them to think about implicit theories and strategies discussed in class that served as a basis for their current practices. JW(2004) writes in her paper stated that she had not only “discovered there are names for …the strategies I have been using,” but also their underlying theories. They also discussed theories which they wanted to use as a basis for their practice alrealthey wanted to base their practice on, and their values about the relationships involved in teaching and learning.

Patience and her graduate students also used the squares and circle graphic organizer; however, she adapted it and required students to choose four theories and/or principles of language learning and teaching they had read about that “squared with their beliefs.” Figure 2 is an example of student thinking about theories and principles of language learning that squared with her beliefs.

Finally, each student put together brainstorming they had done on all three elements—their theories, practices, and ethics—and made a visual representation of their PWT. The class shared their visual representations with each other. Some representations were as simple as three intersecting circles. Others were more complicated. Gina pictured her PWT as

…a rose bush, with strong roots symbolizing the theories and methods that are the foundation of my practice. The rose bush can only produce beautiful flowers if planted in good soil. Therefore, the soil is a symbol of my personal beliefs and values…. My practice, like the rose bush doesn’t have one strong trunk; instead it has many different branches, each one holding a special rose. (GT, 12/9/04)

Figure 3. Visual of a PWT

Creating the visual of their PWT (Figure 3) provided an opportunity for learners to change symbol systems from language to art and also allowed classmates to experience and interpret them from different sensory perspectives. The students were then required to write a culminating PWT paper that enabled them to explain and discuss their emerging theories of practice.

Metaphors and analogies allowed students to examine their assumptions about teaching and learning. The metaphors tapped an area of thinking that helped our graduate students imagine different possibilities. To bring graduate students to an awareness of their practice, to help them “articulate their beliefs and attitudes about teaching,…and about the role of their students” (Hall, 2001, p. 72), Patience used a metaphors of teaching activity from Hall (pp. 72-73). In class, her students selected metaphors from three lists that captured their beliefs about how they saw themselves as teachers, how they saw their students, and how they saw their classrooms. Working individually, they chose five metaphors from each section, listed them, and then discussed them as a group. Graduate students saw themselves as advocates, coaches, judges, and referees. The majority of them saw their students as sponges and balls of clay. Four of them saw their classrooms as a community, a family, and a concert. As a culminating activity they discussed what the metaphors revealed about their assumptions about teaching, as well as the images that were “conflicting and compatible” (Hall, 2001, p. 72).

Visual representations of their PWT provided artifacts that could be explored by their peers. This activity helped Patience realize more than ever, the need to continue to tap into diverse learning styles by having graduate students develop visual representations of their thoughts and ideas. As described, asking graduate students to highlight different elements of PWT in different drafts of papers with colored markers helped learners in the Fundamentals of Literacy class, track evidence of their own thinking and develop ownership of their developing theories.

During one conversation Cynthia asked, “which t are we talking about?” (Patience, Meeting Notes, 2004). We then decided to use theory with a small t when talking about teachers’ practical theories or “living educational theories” (Whitehead, 2006, p. 32) and theory with a big T when talking about researched-based theories (Patience and Cynthia, meeting notes, 2004). Since in her class graduate students were looking at theories and principles of language learning, Patience had her graduate students use these as a basis for their PWT and then build on these to discuss their emerging practical theories. Cynthia concentrated more on building graduate students’ practical theories, along with their ethics and practice.

Dialoging with our preservice and inservice teachers helped us build community, develop a common language with our students, and learn to “look through multiple perspectives” and “build bridges among” ourselves (Greene, 1997, p. 519). Over the course of the semester, the language of PWT became embedded in weekly class discussions as well as in graduate students’ papers. For example, reading and discussing Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (Friere & Macedo, 1987) in the Fundamentals of Literacy class made graduate students aware of their own challenges with comprehension. In weekly discussions they admitted their confusions and questioned each other’s interpretations of particular phrases and paragraphs. The following excerpt from a PWT paper is an example of a graduate student’s appreciation for the value of sustained dialog in improving understanding and building a learning community.

From Freire’s Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, I learned more about myself as a literate person, as well as reaffirmed my convictions that literacy learning is a social act. It was not only through the many margin notes and re-reads of confusing passages that I was able to make any meaning out of Freire, it was through open dialog and collaboration with the learning community. There was collaboration among the class as the pieces of the Freire puzzle were debated, discussed, and theorized in order to construe meaning…. (AO, 11/22/04)

Each of these experiences (day care, preschools, public and private schools) helped shape my ideas about teaching…. Trial and error became my biggest mentor. This was helpful and frustrating at the same time…. I felt like a fireman, putting out fires all the time. But my master’s program has empowered me to combine my professional knowledge and the practical experience I have acquired through my years of working with children into a philosophy of what I really believe and stand for. (JW, 12/ 2004)

Another graduate student writes of the changes she sees in her teaching. Her role as a teacher she said, had changed from being an authoritarian to a guide.

I can see the evolution of my PWT in my reflective writing. Through my reflections I realized I was teaching my students the same way I was taught. The metaphors of teaching reflection paper shows some changes in my perceptions of teaching… I …see myself as a guide helping them learn. (GT, 12/2004)