Week 5 | Responding to Students Resistance to Learning | PIDP 3260

In chapter 17, when it talks about “Before any thought of making an appropriate response to resistance, you need to make a clear sense of its origins. Without this you risk spending time and energy pursuing irrelevant solutions.” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 228). I believe it is important to make sure you really understand why resistance is happening by asking the source directly because then you won’t waste time trying to make up scenarios in your head. This will then allow you to focus on realistically what a good solution might be to solve the problem.

In chapter 17, when it talks about “when students are being asked to work at too advanced a level” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 229) this can bring resistance. I do think that there is some resistance, however, I believe it is still important to challenge students as well. I remember when I was a coding teacher at BCIT and I was the first teacher to incorporate unit testing into the curriculum. I would say unit testing is very challenging for beginners. I know there were many students who were against it when I first started incorporating unit testing. This caused a lot of stress. However, I also saw the tremendous growth compared to students who were not taught the entire life cycle of coding. For that reason, I think it is still important to bring in advanced topics because eventually everyone will overcome that challenging moment and they will feel like they have achieved something.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “we can adjust our teaching approaches, assignments and forms of assessment accordingly” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 229). I thought this is an ok approach but it’s not always possible to make the changes needed at the right times. I remember my first year of teaching I had to change a lot of the course materials but I was not able to change it all on time because I really had no extra time to fix things. Instead, when I taught the same course a second time it became easier and better for students to learn. I was able to fully listen and make appropriate changes as needed as soon as possible to make sure the majority of students were listened to.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “former students who were themselves resistant to learning but who came to appreciate its value for them can speak to its relevance” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 229). I thought this is an important point because students want to hear from other students what they think. They want to know if other students learned a lot and if it helped them get a job at the end of the program. Students will definitely find it hard to believe what a teacher is saying because they are not in the shoes of the actual students so it is hard for them to fully understand them.

In chapter 17 it talks about “modelling the learning behaviors” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 230). I think this is important to some extent. Of course, we all sometimes forget what we have said at the beginning of the course and students remind us of what we have said. But we are all human and all we can do is just adjust and fix things as we go. However, we still need to do our best to be consistent or else students will get resistant of what the teacher is trying to say.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “if students feel they have a say in determining the curricular focus, specific content, pedagogy, and evaluative approaches of a course, they may well feel a greater connection to learning. “ (Brookfield, 2015, p. 231). I do agree that students will feel a connection to learning. However, I also believe that you cannot always change things just because students say they want certain things changed. There are some students who just want to get by but not actually put in the work/effort to complete certain tasks. I will still setup surveys for students to complete to get their opinions, however I will not always listen to all the feedback that is given to me. I still believe that there is a certain way to structure the course and help students learn and grow especially in the coding field.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “when a course is taught by a team with different personalities, learning styles, and pedagogical orientations, the changes are raised that most students in the course will find that their own learning preferences are addressed for at least part of the time.” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 232). I do agree that it is important to have different people teach different courses sometimes. It can allow for different teaching perspectives. This can help some students who may have been struggling learning from another instructor. Everyone has a different way of learning and it is important to give students that variety of learning opportunity.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “breaking up the assessed work that students have to do into as many incremental asks” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 233). I think this is a good way of doing this as well. I remember I would give assessments instead of a midterm. The assessment would be broken down to the content we learn every 2 weeks. This way the students don’t need to worry about remembering everything all at once. I also did not give an exam for my coding class in term 2 and 3. Instead I just gave a final project because they can demonstrate their understanding by creating an actual project they will present at the end of the semester.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “using a grading rubric” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 233), I thought this might not be as helpful in coding classes. I like to break down my marking in terms of what coding techniques I am expecting to see throughout their assessments for example. I clearly talk about it in the assessment’s instructions. I mark students based on if they have setup the right number of functions, variables, and proper indenting and naming conventions. I know that not all students like to be marked just based off of points for certain sections, however it does give a clearer and more detailed explanation then of what exactly the students were missing.

In chapter 17 when it talked about “you should never be too proud to say why in your view it’s important for students to learn something” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 234). I agree that not everyone will understand why it is important to learn a certain coding topic for example. However, you need to be able to bring in real world examples to justify why it is important. Though they might not see it initially, maybe later in their coding career it will all make sense to them. That is why it is important to not feel bad if students still don’t understand why, it is important to learn a certain topic.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “the more students succeed, the more their resistance may weaken” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 235). I agree with this. Sometimes I remember the assessments were a bit challenging which did lead them to resistance. However, I made sure to follow up that hard assessment with some easy exercises in class to help give a balance in their skill level and grades. I wanted to make sure students succeeded. I also didn’t want them to feel like they have to resist all of the new assignments because not all of them will be that challenging.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “to push too fast in this situation just leaves students exhausted” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 236). I can agree with this statement because I remember when I was first learning coding in the digital design and development diploma as a student, I got really tired by what I was being taught in class. I remember feeling tired and overwhelmed at times. It would have been nice to have a bit of a breather at times which was not always given. This is why I always planned my classes to break down the information into assessments and not midterms. There has a week or so something in between to just catchup and let students relax a bit. Then after all the assessments the students just needed to focus on the final project so it left them with two months of time to just focus on one thing. They already knew the material because of all the assessments I gave them. Now they just needed to apply their learning. It made things a lot more relaxed in class for everyone near the end of the semester.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “it is sometimes helpful for teachers to describe their own resistance to learning” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 237). I agree this can be a good thing to talk about. I remember because I took the digital design and development diploma before and then I was teaching coding there I would tell them my experiences and how I resisted learning some coding before because I knew how hard coding can be. But I assured them that I would help make sure their experience is a lot smoother but it will still take a lot of work to get good at coding.

In chapter 17 when it talks about “if all your reasoning means nothing to learners, then you have to grant people the right not to learn something” (Brookfield, 2015, p. 237). I agree with this statement because you cannot force people. But also, because I was teaching in a full-time diploma program the students were still required to do certain exercises and assessments for specific courses because the course outline said so. Also, so matter how much I tried to convince some of the students who were straggling, not all of them wanted to improve or grow. Some students were just looking to pass the program that is all.

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The Skillful Teacher, On TEchnique, True and Responsiveness in the Classroom. Retrieved August 5, 2024