(Week 3) Reflection-in-action!

In my last post, I reflected on real-life example of how Schon's idea of the high-ground vs. swamp in my local context here at Algoma University.  In this post, I would like to reflect on Schon's  "reflection-in-action".

While I was completing my education undergraduate degree at Lakehead, my two teachables were Geography and Physical Education.  I remember taking this one course in Kinesiology (also known as human kinetics), where the professor asked me to explain to the class how to "perform a free throw".  Having played basketball my whole life, I quickly, and confidently, accepted the challenge.  However, at that time, I didn't realize that I had never really thought about the mechanics behind the movement and I simply wasn't able to verbalize the motion much to my embarrassment.   The professor then used my failure to explain about tacid knowledge and knowing-in-action. It was a powerful learning moment for me and it taught me, through my own ridicule, to think more from the body, not just the mind.  

In the one of Schon's articles, he gave the example of refection-in-action with the crooked fence.  I relate to this description, because woodworking is one of my favorite hobbies.  I agree that there is a lot of problem solving and reflection-in-action involved within this trade. The whole expression "measure twice, cut once" is a great representation of how a woodworker goes about any project constantly reflecting on each measurement and how the project will all finally fit together in the end.  My father, a seasoned carpenter, always tells me that the real secret to good woodworking is covering up all your mistakes as you work on any project.

The woodworking example, above, is a great representation of how a typical layman might go about refection-in-action. In Schon's article, the Crisis of Professional Knowledge", he explains how many teachers, as practitioners, have a hard time describing what they know and do not know and, as such, might view reflection-in-action as a threat or sign of weakness .  However, Schon's sees this reflection-in-action as part of competent practice and that it is of critical importance.  Can teachers be taught to have a capacity for reflection-in-action or invent on the spot to help students before them?  This is a good question which was posed in class which resulted in a great discussion for Week 3.  I believe that refection-in-action comes intuitively because I've met very few teachers, who don't want to improve their practice.  To do so, there has to an inbuilt system of checking and/or reaffirming that what you are doing at the moment, as a teacher, is meeting the needs of your students.   In this sense, it is like an internal set of checks and balances.   

Week 3: Schon's High-ground vs. Swamp

In the assigned readings for Week 3, Donald A. Schon uses the metaphor of the "high-land" and the "swamp" to explain the difference between the rigors of science and real world problems.  This description of the swampy lowland which is "messy" and full of the "real-world problems" as separate from the higher ground, where science prevails is very powerful for me.  My family grew up on a farm where the common lay person, who faces the problems did not (and still does not) have much say in the decision making.

Reading this article, I can not help but to reflect on a situation which occurred at Algoma University when I first started working here in the Fall of 2012.  Around this time, our university was able to secure a big contract with the Saudi Arabia Cultural Bureau to start accepting Saudi students into our academic programming.  From the high ground, the university saw this as a quick way to increase our enrollment and made easy revenue. Over the next two years, we accepted over 250 Saudi students into our university, mostly in Computer Science and Business, resulting in first-year classes which were between 80-90% Saudi.  Talk about messy!  As the higher administration focused on the #s and $, hence "the business model", the problems in the trenches were left up to the staff and faculty to sort out which really impacted the quality of our offerings.      

As a new employee of the school, I saw this situation as a ticking "time bomb" because our university had put all their energy into recruiting student while committing few resources dedicated to retention efforts.  The students, not fault of their own, often came ill equipped with the skills competences and language proficiency required to pass first-year academic classes.

As a knee-jerk reaction, the University decided to open a Foundations Program to help prepare the students for first year classes which was poorly designed and managed which compounded to problem.  To make things even messier, our university, with the help of a government grant, decided to conduct research into whether or not the Foundations program was in fact meeting the needs of the Saudi students even though everyone who was involved with these students at the school knew that it was failing.  Talk about bureaucracy!

Hired as the part of the International Support Team at this time, I was thrown into the swamp where I ended up conducting focus groups for the Saudi students to help understand why their attrition rates were so high at AU.  In these focus groups, I found out that many of them were accepted into AU because our institution had some of the lowest entrance requirements in Ontario especially for Proof of Language Proficiency.  At that time, many of our pathway partners (ESL providers) in Southern Ontario were also sending us Saudi students who were well below the IELTS 6.0 entrance requirement for academic study.

The solution to all the above problems, from the lowland, was a cry to raise our entry requirements and a better monitoring system for the quality of our pathway partnerships.  However, the argument from our higher administration was along the lines that if we cast out a smaller net, we wouldn't be able to catch as many fish.

It is no secret that any smaller institutions within Ontario, and across Canada are facing steep decline in enrollment.  As universities accept more foreign students to bolster their enrollments numbers, I beg to ask the question - What happens to the quality of education?   I really enjoyed Schons article because I work in a university where there is a big divide between higher administration and staff/faculty.  I wonder if other publicly funded universities in Ontario are experiencing the same problems.