The Polar Bear Pitching, as its name suggests, is a pitching event, in which representatives from start-up companies give a speech in an ice hole. This year, 2015, has the second Polar Bear Pitching. As the first time last year, it took part in Oulu, Finland.
As you may already know, I have been studying in Oulu since 2013. Last year, I wasn’t present to Raati shore to watch the event. But this year, I went there as part of the mentoring sessions. I’ll take it backward a bit. Last year, me and LET group visited Business Kitchen in Oulu, by then the inventor of the idea of Polar Bear Pitching, and also a former student in our LET programme, Mia Kemppaala gave us a presentation on the idea and decoration of Business Kitchen and also Polar Bear Pitching. It impressed me that they say, “there is no time limit” to speak in the ice hole, but actually, everyone knows that an ice hole, plus the low tempreture and little clothing in water, you really cannot make a speech there too long. It’s a very smart idea, it’s fun, innovative and natural.
There were hundreds of people including audience and media, gathered together to watch the event. I was too small to see the pitch directly with my eyes. The organizers are so considerate to prepare a big screen there, so I can watch the event, through cameras and projectors while present at the venue. I almost feel unreal, as if the world inside the screen is a different one than the “real” one. I can see all those people giving speech, I can see the host, I can see volunteers, I can see everybody on the screen, but it just feel unreal.
I did not watch the whole event because even though I wrapped myself in a pile of warm clothing, I had cold feel and slow circulation so I decided to take a break in Raati sports centre, which is close to the shore, where the pithing was going on. Before my break, I have to say that I love all the ideas brought by the start-ups, and also, I really appreciate the speakers. I like the wearable mobile phone that tracks children for safety concerns; I like the personalized insole to prevent heels hurting people who are wearing them; I admire the lady from Israel who, in every glimpse, every movement, looked so calm, confident and convincing; I like the Finnish artist who played a violin that was hand-made by himself. BTW, I just remembered that how humorous the ambassador of America, who was joking about his colorful pike t-shirt. Oh, and my favorite outfit: I call it “bumble bee” swimsuit for men. Bumblebees are one of the loveliest creatures on earth.
What I see from this event is innovation, endurance(of course, they were in ICE!), inner peace, high self-esteem, humor, and courage. Or in other words, I can see that this event is a perfect presentation and business card of the Finnish Sisu.
In the end, at last, I actually was imagining all the time watching the event, what would I do if I were in their place in the ice water. UUUUUUU I started shaking already even though I was just thinking about it. Good job brave people in ice!!
At last, just as the big screen thing, I have to mention that the organisers are very considerate and well-prepared: there are hot food and drinks for cold audience, hot-tub and sauna for speakers, and there is a break between the two halves of the 2-hour event. And, compared to last year, this year, they had a fancy round ice hole with smooth ice handles on the ladder, which leads the speakers into the water safely. Another well done to the organisers and volunteers! Kiitos!!
(Isn’t this song “brain-washing” LOL, check here for more~~)
As part of our LET mentoring session, we are required to read two relative articles. This time, I’ll brief the article A Longitudinal Study of Mentor and Protégé Outcomes in Formal Mentoring Relationships by Jae Uk Chun, John J. Sosik and Nam Yi Yun, published in 2012.
Though their studies are more concerned with mentoring in career context while our LET mentoring takes place in university settings, it does not make it difficult to find connection between mentoring practices in these two distinct situations.
Basically, the researchers of this article emphasized that mentoring is not a one-directional mentor and mentee (in their case, they call this protégé) relationship, in which mentors are regarded as the help-provider and the mentee as beneficiary. Instead, they see mentoring as a mutual relationship that benefits both the mentor and mentee. This reminds me of my answering nearly two years ago now when I was asked about my view on education when I was an interviewee trying to be enrolled by LET program. I said that my previous experience as a student and English tutor made me think that education should be a bilateral process, in which the teacher offers learners knowledge and learning skills, and in return, learners also have something from which the teacher can learn from.
Then suddenly, right now, I realize that this is just like “the interaction and balance of Yin and Yang” or the spirit of “Taiji”:
It is interesting that usually “big” and “zen” words from philosophers can find their existence lying in everyday events and issues from as small and tiny as minute trivial, to as big and important as the soul-building career, and eventually, the cosmos.
Coming back from the crazy and wild imagination and brainstorming, to the article itself. The authors concluded three mentoring functions, which are:
“1. Career support includes providing challenging assignments, giving job coaching, sponsoring career advancement, fosteringpositive exposure and visibility, and protecting protégés from adverse organizational forces.
Psychosocial support involves sharing personal problems and exchanging confidences, providing acceptance and friendship, and confirming protégés’ behavior.
Role modeling refers to guiding protégés through mentors’ values, attitudes, and behavior.” (Chun et al., 2012, pp.1073)
Obviously, though making sense, these functions paralells with the “one-direction” view on mentoring mentioned in earlier paragraph. Chun and coleagues(2012) then came up with five tightly-connected and progressive hypothesis regarding the benefits of mentoring to both mentor and mentee, which developes its logic and viewpoints on transformational leadership, affective wellbeing and organizational commitment:
“Mentor outcomes:
Hypothesis 1: Mentors who provide greater mentoring functions (career support, psychosocial support, and role modeling) through mentoring relationships will report greater transformational leadership, after controlling for their initial level of such leadership.
Hypothesis 2: Mentors who provide greater mentoring functions through mentoring relationships will report greater affective well-being, after controlling for their initial level of affective well-being.
Hypothesis 3: Mentors who provide greater mentoring functions through mentoring relationships will report greater organizational commitment, after controlling for their initial level of organizational commitment.
Protégé outcomes:
Hypothesis 4: Protégés who receive greater mentoring functions through mentoring relationships will report greater affective well-being, after controlling for their initial level of affective well-being.
Hypothesis 5: Protégés who receive greater mentoring functions through mentoring relationships will report greater organizational commitment, after controlling for their initial level of organizational commitment.” (pp. 1075-1078)
Terms in those hypothesis are also defined and explained based on previous literature and researches. Chun et al.(2012) refer to the work of Bass and Avolio that under the umbrella of the term transformational leadership, there are four sub-concepts: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass & Avolio, 1997) Kram(1985)’s work(as cited by Chun et al., 2012) point out that the role-modeling process of mentoring enables the mentors to rediscover their own value and regain their confidence. As emphasized, mentoring is bidirectional beneficial to both mentor and mentee, Scandura & Ragins(1993, as cited by Chun et al., 2012) indicate that this role-modeling process also help the mentees to feel accepted and confirmed by mentors, thus gave the mentee confidence to acomplish career goals. Chun et al., (2012) adopted the definition of previous literature (Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector, & Kelloway, 2000, Warr, 1990) that “job-related affective well-being refers to individuals’emotional reactions to the job”, and that employees with higher affective well-being experience higher amount of positive emotions than negative emotions. Organizational commitment is defined as“emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization” (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p. 1, cited by Chun et al., 2012).
It is not a new idea to play and learn. Young animals play to learn hunting and escaping skills, human play to learn skills such as color-recognition, using hands, body balance , counting numbers, etc. In the article Mentor modeling: the internalization of modeled professional thinking in an epistemic game by Padraig Nash & David Williamson Shaffer, the role of playing epistemic game in mentoring is explored.
In this case, epistemic game is defined as “ computer-based role-playing games that simulate professional training.” (Nash & Shaffer, 2011) Nash and Shaffer (2011) come up with three research questions:
1. Did the players of Urban Science (the epistemic game the researchers used in this research design) develop planning epistemic frames?
2. During the game, did the players imitate the epistemic frame that the in-game mentors modeled?
3. Did the epistemic frames that players demonstrated during the game with the mentors persist when the mentors were not present after the game?
We can see that the researchers focused the effect of epistemic games on “epistemic frames”:
” the combination–linked and interrelated – of values, knowledge, skills,
epistemology, and identity” that professionals use to see and solve problems. (Shaffer, 2006, p. 160, quoted by Nash & Shaffer, 2011)
Despite the theoretical section, the research design and data analysis part is also of great help to fellow researchers, especially starter reseachers and students like me. I can see that every parts of the flow of thinking in this article connecting to each other tightly and neatly in a logical way.
Personally I also like games which can “teach”. For language learning, Duolingo offers a game-like app choice: you play language games in different “lessons”, you loose or gain “hearts” and “energy”. Lumosity and many other “brain-practicing” games is advertised to train your mind with various abilities, to make your brain “faster”. Other than “serious game” like these, I have some other apps in my tablet I found making sense educationally: Plague Inc, Frontier Heroes, Full Steam Ahead and Dumb Ways to Die.
Frontier Heroes briefs kids and players of other age groups American history with funny little games. It is not boring to play with at all, and that the history knowledge is then “planted” in my mind as natural as it can be.
Full Steam Ahead, like the name suggests, it’s an educational game that teach the basics of ship designing. I have to say that the physical engine used in this game is very, very good: it’s like designing and trying the ship that I designed myself in real world.
Unlike teaching you “what to do”, Dumb Ways to Die (both 1 and 2) teaches you “what not to do”. You can listen to the theme music I attach at the begining. Avoid those dangerous dumb ways to die. (Please imagine my face wearing a serious look)
Usually I hesitate to buy an app, but for Plague Inc, I tried the free trial, paid to unlock the full version, enjoyed a lot and never regret. This is a strategic game, in which your task is to release a certain plague in a certain place on the world map, then it will travel and develop via modern world transportation. You can upgrade features of your plague through time, fight against human medical research; the shorter period of time you use to demolish human race the better. It sounds brutal, but this game educates and alerts people of infectious diseases.
Link to homepages or Google play pages of some of these apps:
Chun, J.U., Sosik, J.J., Yun, N.Y. (2012): A longitudinal study of mentor and protégé outcomes in formal mentoring relationships. Journal of Organisational Behaviour.
Nash, P. & Shaffer Williamson, D. ( 2011): Mentor modeling: the internationalization of modeled professional thinking in an epistemic game. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.
The last mentoring meeting took place in Aula restaurant when people from all the uni were enjoying their time in Cafe Lingua. This meeting was the last time for me to be a mentee. Next year, I’ll turn into a mentor and have meetings with new first year students! Looking forward to that.
This time, I can obviously feel that the atmosphere in our mentoring group is very relaxed and casual. Before the meeting really started, me and Miguel discussed about a piece of suspicious bread left on the dining table, and Salvador and me talked about his future plans and Chinese language. The theme of our meeting this time was extra-curricular activities we can do here in Oulu. Sasha prepared print-out sheets introducing activities being kummi students, university alumni ambassadors, red cross volunteer teachers, etc. She also mentioned about Demola , Business Kitchen, ESN(Erasmus Student Network) and NISO (Networks of International Students in Oulu). Attractive activities! Hopefully my second year of study I’ll have more time and maybe I can participate in some of them:)
Instead of in a regular classroom at the university, last “Learning of Expertise” class took part in the Business Kitchen in the city centre.
Entering the door, I noticed two interesting things: a set of kitchen equipment on the left, and a bonfire tea table on the right. As the place’s name is Business Kitchen, I could understand why I could see a kitchen there, but I did not get the point of the bonfire tea table until I listened to the presentation given by Mia.
Mia has been an LET student as I am, later she joined Business Kitchen and has been working there for years, bringing the place and great ideas. I noticed that on her laptop there was a Polar Bear Pitching sticker. The Polar Bear Pitching was a start-up event took place in Oulu, business start-up people pitched in a big ice hole in nearby lake, just like polar bears. I was not there on the ice, but I watched the event online and shared the link to my Chinese social media, so that my friends and family back home can get to know the “coolest” pitching event in the world. Mia shared us interesting and precious memories of how the event gradually came into being: they had the idea, found an appropriate person to promote the idea, built the webpage, attracted and persuaded both start-up business people and investors, found sponsors for the event, spread social media posts about the event especially by themselves and celebrities, organises everything and design everything. And, as a reward, their innovative idea and joint hard work together with other colleagues rewarded the BK group. Talking about designing the Polar Bear Pitching event, one of the unique thing is that unlike most other pitching events, Polar Bear Pitching has no time limits. The brilliant part is that, actually, there is time limits, which is “invisible”: you can pitch until you freeze! People pitching in the ice hole will try their best to say things that are really very important and waste no time.
Another thing about designing, let’s go back to the bonfire tea table. Mia said that when they began to design the BK, they wanted it to be an environment which can promote collaborative working. Mia came up with an idea that there should be a fireplace, because it’s cozy and relaxing when people sitting and talking around a fireplace. But for some reason, there is not a real fire place, instead, they have a bonfire tea table. Another nice point of the table is that the height of the table is low, when people sit around it, they lower their body and this also lower the barrier between different people.
Similar with Mia, Johanna was a member of LET, but she was a researcher. Johanna did her presentation in a more free way. She shared with us her story with BK and her collection of interesting pictures. Both of Mia and Johanna said that they thought in the past that they would have nothing to do with “business”, they thought business is all about coldness and money. But somehow they are working in the field of business and they found out that business is not as awful as they thought. This echoes with myself: I sometimes assume something coming to me to be horrible and that I assume myself not able to manage the situation, as a result, I feel afraid. Assumption is the biggest enemy.
I saw many sparkling things in Mia and Johanna’s inspiring presentations: both of them are enthusiastic of her job; second, they are talented and hard-working and able to bring their LET knowledge into practice in real life cases; three, both of them are qualified and before they started working for BK, they were just waiting for opportunities, and suitable opportunity (BK) was waiting for them too.
Two weeks beforehand we started to discuss about our third mentoring meeting time. We proposed several dates and time, but it seemed that not everyone could make it, finally, we marked February 27th on our calendar. We were thinking of eating pizza somewhere together and make the meeting less formal and more relaxed, due to the time thing, we have to try it next time.
This meeting was carried out virtually. There are many tools we could use, but finally we chose Google Hangouts, which is a Crome extension with chatting and video calling function, in addition, it enables us to have group video calls free of charge, which we cannot do for free with Skype. Using Hangouts was a total new experience for me, I downloaded and installed the .exe file, and again, downloaded and installed required plug-in, and, finally, I answered Sasha’s call and joined the meeting.
There was some technical problems at first, somehow there were laud noise coming from nowhere in all of our headphones, it lasted for about one minute, then disappeared automatically. This happened two or three times, after that, everything was fine.
Remember I wrote about eating pizza together earlier in this post? It did happen somehow virtually but in real time among some of us mentees and mentors: Andres has eaten a pizza at home, and I had my pizza being heated in my oven while I was having the meeting.
The theme was Master’s thesis. We talked about our research interest, data collection, research method, and so on. We also asked about the progressing of our mentors’ thesis, and some practical questions, like, what is exactly the process of coding the data, are tools like SPSS or Nvivo helpful, etc.
This meeting relieved my “thesis blues”, and I get to see that writing the thesis is just a “natural” process that every graduates will go through, no matter how terrifying it may look like at the beginning, or how time-consuming and tiring when analysing and coding the data. I am not alone on this task.
Back to the end of last semester, we started the mentoring session as part of the Learning of Expertise course.
Before the first “mentors and mentees” meeting, we watched a presentation from the second year LET students about their mentoring session last year when they were first year students as we are now. I remember the metaphor in presentation was a story of two little foxes. They follow older foxes and want to see what are the “grown-ups” doing. Then the old foxes notice them, and realize that the little ones have reach the age to learn new hunting skills. So the big foxes each teach one of the little ones: the two little ones learned different skills.
“What does the fox say? Dingdingdingding dingadinglingling dingdingdingding dingalingaling~”
That presentation made the idea of mentoring clearer. After the presentation, each mentoring group went to different places and started the meeting. In our group, we had the meeting in a meeting room near the library. It was a nice room with a big table so everyone can take a seat around. We were divided into pairs, each pair interview each other, exchange information about ourselves: name, home countries, previous studies, hobbies, etc. After that everyone, including the mentor and mentee, talked about our partner. Soon we knew each other, and got more familiar with each other.
The most interesting part was when we were working together to come up with a name and a logo to our mentoring group. We were given a pile of pictures, which could provide us with clues and ideas. At last, we decided to name our group as LET’s net. The inspiration was from a Spiderman image. And the “net” here refers to the net-like relation and connection among the LET people and their knowledge.
After that meeting, though knowing the idea of mentoring, I still felt a bit confused, or I can say, looking forward to what will happen in future. 🙂
On January 22th, 2014 our mentoring group had our second meeting.
This meeting is challenging, interesting and really helpful! We played a game, matching learning theories and their contents. We made some mistakes because some of the theories were new to us, and we forgot some detailed concepts after the winter holiday :P. The last part of the game was to discuss about the results, so all together we were able to re-familiarise ourselves with what we had learned last term. Then the next part was also interesting. The four mentors each gave us a case scenario they designed, and we as the mentees can read the case description and try to find out what learning theories fits into those cases.
This meeting acted as a “starter” for my studies in a new semester. It helped me to put myself together after the holiday and reactivated theoretical knowledge I had learned.
Before I start posting on my solo phase, I found these videos really funny:
This is the “Marshmallow Experiment” video Ernesto showed us in the lecture:
When I was searching for the video above, surprisingly, I found the link below, which is a funny and fake “mature” version:
Planning my solo phase:
In this final solo phase, I’ll read materials as before, besides, I will refer to notes I made in the lecture on SRL and assessment. While reading, I will also take some notes, so after reading I can have some ideas in mind, and I’ll put my understandings in the “crazy monster mindmap” I made and also in this blog post.
1. Before the lecture and the reading, I thought the relation between assessment and SRL is as simple as “how to measure and assess the final outcome of SRL”. So when I was thinking of assessment and SRL at that time, “exams”, “quizes”—words that reveals my not-so-happy memories and stirs my anxiety came into my mind.
But now I finally have that idea that assessment does not only concern about the final outcome of SRL, but can happen throughout the whole process of SRL (self-assessment), and under proper training, guidance and help, it can promote SRL in general. As Ernesto and colleagues quoted in their article Rubrics and Self-assessment scripts effects on Self-regulation, learning and self-efficacy in Secondary Education, “Self-assessment involves comparing one’s own execution process and performance with some criteria to become aware of what has been done to change it if necessary, and to learn from it to perform the task better in the future.” (Lan, 1998)
2. Just as other SRL skills, self-assessment skills can be taught and learned; and it would be better if students learn those skills at a young age. “Hattie et al. (1996) found out that younger children benefit the most from training. The major advantage of training children how to regulate their learning in the beginning of their schooling is that during these first crucial years, students set up learning and self-efficacy attitudes (Whitebread, 2000) which are easier to change than when students have already developed disadvantageous learning styles and learning behaviour. “(Hattie et al., 1996)
It has been proved that proper use self-assessment tools, such as rubrics and scripts can promote SRL.
Because of language barrier and translation errors, rubrics and scripts were just another two words for me before I found some definitions and examples.
According to Wikipedia, in education terminology, scoring rubric means “a standard of performance for a defined population”. The definition is also given in Ernesto and his colleague’s article, “Rubrics are self-assessment tools with three characteristics: a list of criteria for assessing the important goals of the task, a scale for grading the different levels of achievement, and a description for each qualitative level.
It is noteworthy that although it seems that rubrics attach much importance to the assessing of final outcome of SRL, they’d better be given to students before the task, so they can have a clue of what the teachers/ examiners want to see, and so that they can set proper goals, which will help them better complete the task.
And as Ernesto and colleagues put in the article: scripts are specific questions structured in steps to follow the expert model of approaching a task from beginning to end. (E. Panadero et al., 2012) Compared with rubrics, scripts are more specific and detailed, following the steps given in the script, students can be clear about what they have already done in the past, what they should do at present, and what is still remaining in the future.
3. Wonders about “think aloud protocols”. (not quite relevant to the articles. It is based on my crazy note-taking and thinking which I was excited with during the lecture…I put it here because I want to reflect my thinking to my readers and a “future me”)
Question: what is the point of think aloud protocols?
Possible answers:
1. To make the internal process of thinking visible/audible to the researcher?
2. To “push” the learner to think while reading/ watching, so he/she can actually say something that makes sense?
3. The recording of which can be used by the learner him/herself to remind his/her own thoughts?
But:
1. Even recording the think aloud protocols may not be able to ensure the learning outcome:
a. the learners might think and talk because they are supposed to do so, and the things they read/watch never will be encoded and may not enter the long-term memory.
b. Do the learners in an experiment know that their thinking aloud would be recorded and analysed? If no, that’s fine, because probably they will be more natural during the experiment. If yes, they may unconsciously act differently than the way they normally do.
c. Some good learners just cannot think aloud, they can only focus on one task at one time: either thinking or talking, for example. So they may perform poorly in the experiment but actually they learn a lot.
Solution:
Take situations not only above but also other possibilities into account, and design control/ experiment groups according to different types of subjects.
Connection:
1. The idea of “self-assessment” reminds me of the “meta-cognition” part I did weeks ago. They are somewhat similar. But it seems that meta-cognition is more general than self-assessment. Meta-cognition is about the learner him/herself, the task, and the strategy in general; while self-assessment mentioned how to, what to, and what to use when assess one’s own SRL process.
2. Also, assessment and SRL can be connected to the idea that SRL is not only about individual learners, it is also a social thing. Self-assessment tools such as rubrics and scripts are usually designed by teachers and other experienced educationers to help learners learn more efficiently and more effectively with clearer goals and better self-regulating skills.
Evaluation:
1. The example of rubrics reminds me of last summer, when I was busy preparing for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam. There was a “chart” in my book describing the scale of how the examiners grade different levels of performance in the reading and speaking section. It served as important criteria for me to assess my own performance when I was rehearsing and preparing for the real exam, because so that before and after my practicing writing and speaking, I have a general idea of what the examiners expect from me if I want good grade.
But the IELTS rubrics to me were not perfect: they were often too general, or I sometimes under-graded or even over-graded my works without even noticing.
Then I had to read the instructions carefully. Combining the rubrics and the instructions, I could be confident about the task I was going to complete.
It is also interesting that I did all those self-analysis and meta-cognition unconsciously; what’s more, I got to know terms as “meta-cognition”, “meta-analysis”, etc. after I came to Finland and study in the LET programme. Not knowing does not necessarily mean not being able to practice. This phenomenon is connected not only to the topic of this solo phase, but also to the “strategy” part as well. This may also apply to our everyday life: we may not understand the mechanism of our beating hearts, but our hearts beat as long as we are alive; we may not understand how we can smell, see, taste and touch, but we can. Everything is somehow connected.
2. As I mentioned in the Idea part, rubrics and scripts are both important self-assessing tools that plays different roles: one emphasis the end, the other care more about the process to the end. So my metaphor is a map. Here is a subway map of Beijing, China:
The map alone is like a complex of rubrics, showing hundreds of start points and destinations. Assume we are going to place A (the goal) from place B, and we want a fastest way to get there (expert steps), the map(rubrics) itself might not be enough. We need a “script”, showing step by step, which subway route to which direction should we choose at first, after how many stops at which station should we change the subway, and finally, where to get off the subway and get out of the station.
But here lies another problem or worry: if students are used to strictly follow the steps given by scripts, will their imagination and innovation be killed gradually because they do not need to think that much than without scripts? And how do we know if the instruction given by scripts fit every student? Here I say, “strictly follow”, because I do think scripts work, but we just need to make them well-designed, helpful but not over-informative; we need to leave some space for students to think, too. And there’s no “one fits all” solution; we want scripts to be constructive and properly general. And do educators really know that their solution is the best one? I prefer to use “better” or “the best so far” instead of “the best”; because everything is dynamic, there might be better ways discovered by students themselves and new generations of teachers and educators. Who knows? 🙂
References:
Panadero, E., Tapia, J. A., & Huertas, J. A. (2012). Rubrics and self-assessment scripts effects on self-regulation, learning and self-efficacy in secondary education. Learning and Individual Differences, 22(6), 806-813.
Dignath, C., Buettner, G., & Langfeldt, H. P. (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively?: A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review, 3(2), 101-129.
Lan, W. Y. (1998). Teaching self-monitoring skills in statistics. Self-regulated learning: From teaching to self-reflective practice, 86-105.
Hattie, J., Biggs, J., & Purdie, N. (1996). Effects of learning skills interventions on student learning: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 66(2), 99-136.
Hendy, L., & Whitebread, D. (2000). Interpretations of Independent Learning in the Early Years Interpre´ tations de l’Apprentissage Inde´ pendant dans le Secteur des Tre¤ s Jeunes Enfants Interpretaciones del Aprendizaje Independiente en la Edad Infantil Temprana. International Journal of Early Years Education, 8(3), 243-252.
We, the LET group visited the Ubiko learning environment in Oulu Teacher Training School for the Learning of Expertise course, 15 November, 2013. And I wanna say, Ubiko gave me much more than I expected!
Before we entered the Ubiko, Heikki briefed us about Ubiko and the school as a whole; also, he asked us to set a goal for the morning in Ubiko. I thought for a while, firstly I saw that the reason why I was there in the Teacher-training school was that it was planned by the Learning of Expertise course; then I understood that if I want to learn something from the visit, it would be “comparing the Finnish and Chinese teaching cultures”, then I realised that the goal was a bit over-generalising, so I made it more specific: “the comparison between Ubiko’s culture and that of most Chinese schools”.
(Source of the picture of Chinese classroom: http://www.tjdx.gov.cn/pic/0/00/00/64/6465_921961.jpg)
When I was at the entrance, I felt excited, for it was my first time visiting a Finnish elementary school. I saw kids playing with and chasing each other, which reminded me of my own childhood. Time flies and I’m already over 20 years old now. I noticed some kids were saying something in Finnish and looked happy; Aippi told us that she heared those kids saying they were very excited to see us. I guess the reason was that we look different with native Finnish, we are from all over the world.
As we penetrated deeper through the warm-lighted corridor, along each side of which are noticeboards colored with posters and drawings that pupils made, we got closer to Ubiko. I could already feel the homely culture of the school.
The first thing that caught my eyes was this:
‘
a cozy, secure big sofa-like place for lying, chatting, reading, listening to music, etc. And it’s like a “ship”, carrying kids through their childhood and seas of knowledge. I know this is an old metaphor, but is still a good one. 🙂
Then we entered a classroom. If I’m going to give some keywords, they would be: flexibility and encouragement. Do you know why? Clues are given in the pictures below.
Did you notice that the carpet in this room has two colors, and that the teaching area has two sections? Heikki told us that those sections are for reading, teaching and discussion. The color blue can sooth the emotions, make students calmer so that they do some work in which concentration is required; and the color red make people more active, so students can be encouraged to be more talkative and more willing to share their ideas in discussion. According to the teachers’ observation, the quite and shy girl could also voice her opinion when sitting in the red area. Heikki also mentioned that details in that room was also well-designed and tested: safe material of the carpet, proper texture of those sitting cubes, and even the lightening: just to make sure that the teaching activity can be efficient and effective in that room.
As for flexibility, as you can see, in the picture below, the “walls” are flexible. they can be removed to make an “open” classroom or closed to make a smaller one, and they can also be used to divide the room itself into several smaller ones, so that they can be used for different purposes.
This is the area for hands-on activities, which I really love!
After that room, we entered another classroom, which has similar but different arrangement. It was with white cold lighting and more things like light-weighted and irregularly-shaped designer tables which can be easily moved and combined into different shapes by even small children. Heikki told us that the idea was that, they are testing which environment would be more preferred by children, and that in which room children feel more concentrated and comfortable to study.
By the end of our visit, we walked pass the “regular” teaching place. Interestingly, though there are more children in Ubiko than in the regular classrooms, Ubiko is much less noisy, which indicates that students are quieter and more concentrated in Ubiko, and that decently talored learning environment can promote more effective learning.
It’s note-worthy that the whole process of designing and building of Ubiko was research-based and student-centered. The researches done by the University of Oulu provides Ubiko with teoretical support, and Ubiko offers better education for kids in the school; and in return, data collected in Ubiko can be studies in the University, which can be used to develop the researches, to make them better serving Ubiko.
Back to the goal I set before visiting Ubiko. Chinese education in my opinion from my earlier experience, is much more teacher-centered: teachers arrange what is “useful” for students to learn, most students are pushed by teachers and parents to learn; which makes schooling and learning boring and challenging. I can say that many students in China don’t enjoy going to school. Also Chinese educators attach more importance to “order” and “curricular”, they think classrooms are “holy” place to study in, and that students must sit up straight and be always concentrated, which is impossible for human brain. We are more like pouring knowledge into students’ brains.
But that kind of “traditional Chinese school” was from my childhood memory, which means, it was based upon information years ago. Now, with more young generation teachers, who have a more open and flexible view of learning and education, I do believe the “rigid” teaching style will see its change. And I know, things are already changing gradually.
Planning Phase: Describe your solo phase task:
I’ll read the three required articles and review my notes taken in the lecture concerning the topic: SRL and Meta-cognition. After that I will try to make my thinking on this topic clearer and reflect what I learned in this blog post. Another thing is that I’m going to add more branches and sub-branches to my Coggle mindmap I created concerning SRL.
What topics and concepts are related to your task?
Meta-cognition, self-evaluating, self-monitoring, goal-setting, etc.
Set a goal for this work period:
7 days.
How confident are you that you will achieve your goal?
Confident.
Main Points + ICE Notes:
Before I go to the ICE part, I am embedding here the Coggle mindmap I created concerning the topic of this blog post, in which there is a collection of my main points on this specific topic.
Here’s the screenshot:
I understand that it can be too small, so here I also attach the link:
Meta-cognition is “cognition about cognition”, “knowing about knowing”, and “thinking about thinking” ( Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, 1994). Meta-cognition in SRL is not only about a learner knowing where he/she is in the learning process, instead, it concerns about the knowledge about oneself, the task, and the strategies.
Meta-cognition and the learner:
In this sub-topic, meta-cognition mainly concerns self-evaluation and self-monitoring. In order to be a good self-regulated learner, the first step would be that he/she need to reflect where they are in a certain academic field: prior knowledge, strength and weakness, interest, etc. Before learning something “new”, a learner need to recognise him/herself, to activate prior knowledge, make connections between the learned and the new, and then he/she can see whether the knowledge waiting to be learned is new or not. And to my understanding, to some extent, pre-learning meta-cognition can influence people’s will to learn. Some people mistakenly think that they already have enough knowledge about a certain topic or field, thus “refuses” to learn. As for self-monitoring, my understanding is that a learner need to be responsible for his/her own carrying out the learning plan.
Meta-cognition and the task:
The task also need to be understood, mainly in three aspects: task purpose, task structure, and task components. Different specific tasks have different purposes; for example, the purpose of a reading task can be 1. acquire knowledge from the reading material itself, 2. get familiar to different writing styles and structure, 3. practicing reading skills, etc. Understanding task structure is also important, for example, before a writing task, a learner need to consider the writing topic, the style, wording, etc. Finally, the task components, take writing task again as an example, to complete a writing task, we need to come up with an outline, draft, then polish the writing until we think it has good content and structure, ect.
Meta-cognition and strategy:
Concerning strategy, three types of knowledge must be understood: conditional knowledge (what is the strategy）, procedural knowledge (how to apply the strategy), and declarative knowledge (when to use the strategy).
Besides, meta-cognition is also about goal-setting. A learner need to set good goals to guide his/her learning process. A goog goal must be specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, and temporal.
Connections:
Before this solo-phase, I thought that meta-cognition is only about pre-task self-evaluation; but now I learned that it is not the whole picture. Meta-cognition involves many aspects including self, task, and strategy.
Elaboration:
As I mentioned above, some people mistakenly believe that they already know enough in a certain field, or they just simply do not want to admit that they need to learn more things; and they refuse to learn. This not only happens in academic settings, but also in our everyday life. I have this older relative who claims that she knows everything and that it is a shame to learn new things from younger generation. I think this is a sad case.
I have to admit that I am one of those learners who have problem setting good goals and apply proper strategy when learning. I think maybe after this solo phase and the SRL course, I’ll be better at managing my emotion, motivation and strategy using in not only learning but also daily life in general.
Reflection:
Recall your Solo phase planning. How well did you succeed? Why?
The original plan did not work out well, as I mentioned in the planning part of my last solo phase blog post, I planned to do the reading of the second and the third solo phase together in a week. But I found the time planning is not very reasonable: I simply cannot pay equal attention to those two different tasks at the same period of time; when reading about the motivation part, I cannot stop thinking about that topic and the mind-map. As a result, I changed my plan. I dropped the reading materials for the third solo phase until I finished the reading, mind-map designing and blog posting of my second solo phase.
Anyway, though there were some delay and changing of plan, I succeeded, finally. Now I feel much relieved. What could you do differently next time?
The first thing would be a better time-management. As there will not be any overlap in solo phase tasks, I think I will not have that “mixed and messed” time planning next time, hopefully. The second thing would be my mind-map. As you will notice, the “tree” branches are not very well-organised: there are still some branches overlapping or “wondering” where they should go. I’ll see if I can fix them when my thinking about SRL becomes better-organised maybe after the final solo-phase.
References:
Järvenoja, H., & Järvelä, S. (2009). Emotion control in collaborative learning situations – do students regulate emotions evoked from social challenges? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 463-481.
Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of Self-Regulated Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38 (4), pp. 189-205.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2011). Motivational sources and outcomes of self-regulated learning and performance. In B. J. Zimmerman, & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 49–64). New York: Routledge.
Butler, D. L. and Cartier, S. C. (2004). Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning. Teachers College Record, 106 (9), pp. 1729-1758.
Dinsmore, D. L., Alexander, P. A., & Louglin, S. M. (2008). Focusing the conceptual lens on metacognition, self-regulation, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review doi:10.1007/s10648-008- 9083-6.
Weinstein, C. E., Acce, T. W., & Jung, J. (2011). Self-regulation and learning strategies. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 126, 45–53. doi:10.1002/tl.443
Metcalfe, J., & Shimamura, A. P. (1994). Metacognition: knowing about knowing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(source:http://www.pitchfestoulu.com/polarbear/img/bearlogo.png )
HB 
