'Pedagogy Moments' in action

On Monday, we talked about the value of being open about not just why but also how you hope the people you teach / form / lead will actually learn.

I want to be clear what this doesn't mean. Don't spend your entire first session waxing poetic about your glorious pedagogy. In fact, you probably shouldn't even use the word pedagogy*, unless your participants already have some exposure to learning theory or the purpose of your experience is to provide such exposure.

What I propose is being constantly on the lookout for ways to be transparent and explicit about our reasoning when we frame our learning experiences or introduce particular activities.

I'm taking some inspiration here from Virginia Theological Seminary professor of liturgy Shawn Strout and his idea of the Liturgy Moment, except I encourage you to be even more embedded. Setting aside regular time outside of liturgy to teach briefly and informally about liturgy makes perfect sense. But our goal here to be regularly convening Pedagogy Moments throughout our teaching and facilitation.

* By the way, I typically use the word pedagogy whether I'm talking about teaching adults, young people, or a combination thereof. You've probably heard the term andragogy, sometimes used to refer to Malcolm Knowles's specific theory of adult learning and sometimes meant as a catch-all term for approaches to teaching adults. Sometime I'll do a post about the many reasons I avoid using andragogy unless I'm specifically talking about Knowles.

OK, let's look at some examples. I'm going to pull primarily from my own work for this week's topic, since this is something I'm really intentional about.

Example 1: In the syllabus or promotional materials

I believe that, from the very beginning, you want participants to understand the prevailing approaches of the learning space you're convening together. Here are a few excerpts from my Adapting Christian Formation syllabus that serve as embedded Pedagogy Moments and seek to set not only agenda but also tone:

From the course description:

These are the questions we'll be exploring together as we encounter and experience modes and practices of Christian formation that honor agency and identity, foster collaborative leadership and participant co-creativity, and make space for authentic incarnations and enculturations of gospel values.

From the section on student expectations:

This is a course where we’ll be talking about practices with the potential to make our faith communities healthier and more equitable places, and that requires thinking and talking about race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of social positioning.

Most people who have benefitted from various forms of social privilege (including many instructors) find doing so uncomfortable. Most people who have experienced harm from various forms of social oppression have had to do so from their youth, sometimes literally in order to survive. This shouldn’t be news to anyone taking this class, but knowing about privilege and oppression intellectually and treating ourselves and others equitably in light of it are very different things.

In this course, we will do our best to hold each other accountable (ourselves first, and each other as appropriate, in truth and love) for practicing now in this space what we’re hoping to preach and practice in our ministries. That means … [enumerated group norms follow]

Here's the big one. I mentioned on Monday that one benefit of teaching transparently in this way is to head off resistance to approaches that might be unpopular. The introduction to the section on course assessments seeks to do precisely this:

Studies in the learning sciences consistently show that more frequent, lower-stakes  engagement with learning materials and new skills leads to more effective, long-lasting learning. Thus, in this course we have multiple opportunities for “effortful processing” each week in the form of class activities and discussion postings, as well as application of course skills and content through 2–4 week authentic assessments.

Perhaps you're starting to notice that the art of navigating these Pedagogy Moments is to strike a balance between a lack of transparency and, well, so much transparency that you basically bowl people over with it. If you read this newsletter regularly, you can probably guess that my natural tendency is to err on the side of over-sharing in this respect.

This little bit of self-knowledge can guide me as I try to decide whether I've overdone it at various points. But the true arbiter is student feedback: "You're killing us with all these long intros and extra text, Oliver!" was the gist of my first round of course evaluations, and I've worked really heard to rein it in—including, above, through the use of links for students who want to go deeper.

Example 2: In your activity intros or assignment write-ups

Pedagogy Moments do not need to be long! Here are some brief descriptions of the method to the madness in various assignments in my course Changing Church: Missional Practices and/for Beloved Community.

From a reading and reviewing assignment:

In Weeks 4 & 5, we’re curating resources intended to illuminate or support a wide variety of missional practices. Curation is itself a kind of missional practice, because it emphasizes that

no single person needs to or indeed can know everything;

learning from diverse perspectives is inherently valuable; and

through appropriate formation, support, and partnership, just about anyone can lead just about anything (though that’s no excuse for ignoring considerations of power and representation in deciding who should lead).

That one is more "why" than "how," but there are definitely subtle nods here to my underlying social constructivist and connectionist beliefs.

From my boilerplate reminders in the prompt for every discussion forum:

Respond to the question posed by one or two of your classmates. Be mindful of who has and hasn't yet received replies, and try to choose classmates in such a way that everyone receives some feedback. Fostering community requires that everyone believes their contributions will be valued.

So much of the value of robust pedagogical grounding is for setting tone and interpersonal expectations in the learning space. Share the responsibility of maintaining healthy community with your participants! There are plenty of age-appropriate ways to do so with even quite young children. (See final resource below.)

Example 3: Just naming your approach is valuable

Here's one I encountered recently out in the wild. (Spoiler alert, for a spiritual direction training program to which I've been accepted!)

Notice that there are not a lot of details here, but there are nods to the both the "why" and the "how," plus enough explicit naming of the approach that someone in research mode can get more info if they want it:

Our andragogy (adult learning model) focuses on the inner development of the spiritual seeker and guide, compassionate sacred activism, familiarization with the world's religions and prominent spiritual movements; and the many ways spirituality is being experienced today, including "spiritual but not religious." This approach helps us deepen our knowledge of how clients/companions experience the Sacred in their own unique ways. Over time, this leads to an unfolding awareness that beneath each tradition runs a river of ultimate truth shared by many.

Obviously, I've been sharing examples from online programs that do much of the work of Pedagogical Moments in writing. But I assume it's clear how you could turn this kind of copy into very short spoken scripts and asides to use in verbally introducing activities and experiences in the classroom.

Summative Resource: Chris Emdin's "7 C's" (Reality Pedagogy)

If you haven't yet encountered the work of education scholar Chris Emdin, I can't recommend it highly enough. His book For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education is a master class in highly intentional and culturally relevant teaching. (Believe that post-ellipsis claim—any teacher or formation leader will benefit from engaging with Emdin's vision.)

I particularly love his use of "cogenerative dialogues," conversations modeled on cyphers in which classmates hash out what's working and what's not in the classroom, in ways that shape student and instructor presence going forward.

Here's a good intro if you want to dip your toe in before committing:

I'd love to see and hear your examples of Pedagogy Moments in action! If you try something like this in the coming days, let me know how it goes. I'm confident it will bring you closer to your students and help them navigate your learning space more effectively.