EDUC5105, Unit 2: Can you crunch those numbers again?
Meaningful, memorable, and motivational contexts: Situated cognition and authentic activity
Whenever we talk about the importance of context in teaching, I often think of this quotation of unknown origin (it’s been attributed to Lao Tzu, and Maimonides) that talks about the importance of teaching a person to fish, as the act of doing so will feed them for a lifetime; whereas simply giving them the fish results in them eating only for a day.
If I consider this quotation in the context of classroom instruction, the same applies: If I tell my students what they should be learning, how it should be presented, and how to provide the best answer, they’ll do an excellent job regurgitating that material on a summative assessment…but what of it? What comes after that?
The answer is usually nothing - they would just forget about it because the hard part (cramming and regurgitating) is done. Brown et al. (1989) use the analogy of a tool set to describe the importance of context in education: “[Tools] can only be fully understood through use, and using them entails changing the user’s view of the world” (p.33). Similarly, they go on to state that “People who use tools actively rather than just acquire them […] build an increasingly rich implicit understanding of the world in which they use the tools and the tools themselves [emphasis added]” (p.33).
The Artifact
In my specific context, I teach business management, and while I personally find it interesting, I can understand that some of the content can be dry; however, I was happy to find out that most of my students are fans of NBC’s The Office. Jackpot right? Absolutely. I’m a big fan of the show myself, as it got me through university, and more importantly, it contextualizes the different tools that we learn about it business. Best of all, there’s a multitude of clips from the show that have been uploaded to YouTube.
Here’s an example clip below. I used this as a way to situate the teaching of break even charts (along with variable, semi-variable and fixed costs), as well as a discussion of limitations to the break even chart as a business tool.
Pricing models…why don’t you explain what that is?
Brown et al. (1989) go on to create a taxonomy of learning activities structured according to three groups of individuals “just plain folks”, “learners”, and “practitioners” (p.35). My instruction, I believe starts at the level of instruction for students, which consists of reasoning that occurs through understanding of laws; resolution of well-defined problems; and achieving a definite solution to the exclusion of constructed meaning (p.35). Not a bad place to begin, as this provides a sort of baseline upon which to reach the level of the practitioner: reasoning that is the result of causal models that are based on conceptual situations; ill-defined problems (that necessitate the need for a balanced evaluation of qualitative and quantitative factors); and negotiable meaning that is based on a context specific to the organization that we’re studying (p.35).
So how does this impact my practice? I think the principal thing that I learned from the process of integrating The Office into the teaching of business is that business doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it shouldn’t be! Given the nature of the subject, there’s always something new happening, a merger to discuss, an ad campaign to critique, an ethical issue that reveals itself. The list goes on, but these things have to be situated in a context that students will understand and with which they will engage. The process of retention beyond an exam, I’ve learned (and can thankfully articulate), is based on authentic activity (Brown et al., 1989), or that which is “important to learners, because it is the only way they gain access to the standpoint that enables practitioners to act meaningfully and purposefully” (p.36).
Sources:
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X018001032
NBC. (2018, May 2). Crunch the numbers [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHNBKg9xI6Q