{"id":5786,"date":"2015-09-29T09:48:05","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T15:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=5786"},"modified":"2015-09-29T09:48:05","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T15:48:05","slug":"where-is-the-value-added-in-the-flipped-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2015\/09\/29\/where-is-the-value-added-in-the-flipped-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is the Value-Added in the Flipped Classroom?"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

I’ve been pondering the concept of the “flipped classroom” for some time now. This article speaks to a lot of the things I’ve been thinking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Historian Rachel Hope Cleaves recently identified a recurring meme in the history of food advertising: pigs slaughtering themselves. She first tweeted an image of pig leaping into a meat grinder. Others followed with different examples of suicide, some not requiring machines. Over and again, our porcine friends happily sacrifice themselves for our gustatory delectation. The irony of these pictures, if you know anything about pigs, is that they are among the smartest animals in the animal kingdom, and therefore unlikely to carve themselves up to be served on a platter. Yet there they are, happily chopping away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Source: The \u2018flipped classroom\u2019 is professional suicide<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

As a part-time instructor, I am acutely aware of the tenuous nature of my employment. As a veteran teacher and instructional designer, I am always wary of educational fads. For some reason education seems to be particularly susceptible to fads. Now, most teachers are genuinely interested in doing right by their students, so their zeal for each “new” elixir \u00a0should give us pause.<\/p>\n

There seems to be a\u00a0tendency for educational ‘leaders’ (and I use the term cautiously here) to acquire a cult of personality, so that the mere fact that these people have said something gives it a legitimacy it may not deserve. I have come across more than a few education professors who position themselves as sages when many of them really don’t have much real experience at all. \u00a0Let me explain:<\/a><\/p>\n

A\u00a0great many of the educator-academics I have met have degrees ONLY in education. Sure, they may have taught in a \u2018real\u2019 school for a little while (often not long though), but I can tell you from personal experience that one or two, or maybe even five years of actually doing it\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>will not give you the experience you need to really understand how hard it can be to teach\u00a0something<\/em><\/strong>. The perspective I gained after teaching CS for 25 years is light-years away from what I knew after I\u2019d been teaching for 5 years.<\/p>\n

Teaching about teaching is a whole different game. It\u2019s meta-teaching. I have to hand it to them though; they\u2019re good at that. They often fool countless students into believing they know what they are talking about (some call it pseudoteaching<\/a>). You know what though? They really don\u2019t. They actually don\u2019t know what they\u2019re taking about \u2013 mostly, they\u2019re just good salespeople. Sure, they may understand it, academically<\/em> \u2013 in other words, they understand it like I can understand what it\u2019s like to be a brain surgeon by reading about it and watching movies about it. Truth is, until I\u2019ve had my hand (or whatever) inside somebody\u2019s head, I can\u2019t understand. Not really.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Until you\u2019ve actually had to teach something<\/em><\/strong>, You don\u2019t really understand what\u2019s tricky about it. Talk to any \u2018pure educator\u2019 about teaching recursion. Mostly, they have no clue.<\/p>\n

I think all academic educators ought to know something besides education. They should not only know how to teach,\u00a0 they should know how to teach SOMETHING \u2013 and they should have had to do it. <\/em><\/strong>If nothing else, it might give them an appreciation for the difficulties specific to teaching some thing, as opposed to teaching in the general sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back to this “flipped classroom” fad. While I will grant there may be some value in off-loading some of the more straight-forward stuff to videos for students to watch outside of class time (like assigning reading), there are many problems with this approach – not the least of which is that we don’t have any actual evidence (other than a few small studies) that it solves any problems. The “flipped classroom” became a fad when Salman Khan<\/a>\u00a0started to push it. He had some good ideas to be sure, but he is not the saviour that many in education claim he is.\u00a0People demand “proof” that games work as educational technologies, but when some education celebrity says something is cool, teachers and academics fall all over themselves to subscribe to buy their Product, in much the same way people flock to celebrities who claim to have health and fitness solutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Professional suicide aside, sending your students home to watch or listen to lectures so you can spend time in class working with individual students may help some students, but I can tell you from first-hand experience, it disadvantages others. So really, all you’ve done is\u00a0switch one group of disengaged learners for a different one.<\/a>\u00a0If you are one of those teachers who likes to be a follower of celebrity, then I guess it will make you feel like you’re part of some “IN” crowd. If that’s how you make your pedagogical decisions, then maybe you should re-think your profession, because this makes you part of the ongoing problem\u00a0rather than the\u00a0solution.<\/p>\n