{"id":2976,"date":"2012-10-10T11:35:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T17:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=2976"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:58:20","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:58:20","slug":"shelly-wright-why-i-gave-up-flipped-instruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/10\/10\/shelly-wright-why-i-gave-up-flipped-instruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelly Wright: Why I Gave Up Flipped Instruction"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Why I Gave Up Flipped Instruction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This pretty much echoes my feelings on the “Flipped Classroom” fad. Well worth the read.<\/p>\n

While I may not have intentionally removed the flip from my classroom, I would never resurrect it. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

1) I dislike the idea of giving my students homework<\/strong>. Really? Yes. Students spend over five hours a day engaged in academic pursuits. I think that is enough. Recently I\u2019ve been reading Alfie Kohn\u2019s book The Homework Myth<\/em>. He has mined the research on homework thoroughly, and \u2014 overwhelmingly \u2014 it shows that homework has no long-term impact on academic achievement. That\u2019s likely shocking to some teachers.<\/p>\n

But beyond this, I think there\u2019s more to life than being engaged in academics. Students need to participate in a variety of pursuits \u2014 sports, music, drama, meaningful jobs \u2014 to fully develop all of their talents and discover areas of interest. Furthermore, students need to spend time with their families. What right do I have impinge on this?<\/p>\n

2)<\/strong> A lecture by video is still a lecture.<\/strong> This summer I had the opportunity to speak with a superintendent from a division outside of my own. He was curious about the flipped classroom. We were with a group of educators and he asked if anyone present had used it. Since I was the teacher with the most experience with it, I spoke about what it looked like in our classroom. Mostly I talked about inquiry learning and student choice.<\/p>\n

At the end, he looked at me and said, \u201cSo the videos \u2014 did you make your own, or use ones that someone else had made?\u201d My immediate thought was, \u201cyou don\u2019t get it.\u201d I was candid: \u201cIf you think it\u2019s only about the videos, then you have a really shallow definition of what this\u00a0could be. The real power is when students take responsibility for their own learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the reality is that many if not most teachers who opt for the flipped classroom strategy are not pursuing a student-centred approach to teaching and learning. The traditional model of learning is\u00a0simply being reversed, instead of being reinvented. The lecture (live or on video) is still front and center.<\/p>\n

Learning isn\u2019t simply a matter of passively absorbing new information while watching a lecture on video; new knowledge should be actively constructed. When we shifted to a student-centred classroom, my students took control of their learning, and I quit lecturing. I haven\u2019t lectured in almost two years.<\/p>\n

\"\"3)<\/strong> I want my students to own their learning.<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s been stated <\/a>that \u201cAt its most basic level, the flipped classroom gives students more control over their educations, allowing them to start and stop or rewind important lectures to focus on key points.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 To me, this isn\u2019t giving students control over their education, although it may be creating new markets for content-oriented videos and related materials.<\/p>\n

In our classroom, we sit down with the curriculum, and students actually see what the outcomes and objectives are. We then have a dialogue about what my students\u2019 learning might look like. They have a choice over what order they are going to work on outcomes, how they are going to learn and reach those outcomes, and how they are going to show me what they have learned.<\/p>\n

As my students worked with me to invent our own version of student-centred learning, we realized that the three questions every student in our classroom had to answer were: What are you going to learn? How are you going to learn it? How are you going to show me your learning?<\/em> This\u00a0became our mantra \u2014 our framework for learning. \u00a0This is what it means to give students \u201ccontrol over their education.\u201d<\/p>\n

4) My students need to be able to find and critically evaluate their own resources.\u00a0 <\/strong>Consequently, if I\u2019m continuously handing them resources, they are not going to learn this skill. It\u2019s more important for my students to learn to learn than to absorb the content in any video I might make and hand to them, with most of the thinking already done for them.<\/p>\n

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