reflective abstraction

Graves, chpt 5

My first reaction to this case study was that Blyth didn't consider her students' individual needs when planning the course, so how could she know what to do? But logically, she did what she had to do, and was very thorough in her planning. With a one-month course, there would be no time after the clock starts to do needs analysis and plan accordingly. She drew on her experience and the information she'd been given, and did research to find out what they would need to know, and went from there. She planned to be flexible, which is good, especially since she would need to tailor it to her students as she went. It's great that she had so much time for pre-planning, and syllabus development. It occurs to me that if time had been pressing, she could have asked for the program syllabus in advance and modified it.

She writes about the planning process as if it was a very smooth and logical one, and gives us those incomprehensible mindmaps - She's not being clever and non-linear: she's trying to recreate her actual notes to "show the process". It seems too contrived. If you take away the funky little silhouettes around the sections, it's just a slightly disorganized outline, with extra sprinkles. When I say "incomprehensible", I mean to the average reader. She even acknowledges in her log that people might not be able to read it. Thus, she writes out the process linearly as well. Both versions of her "mindmap" are too smooth, for me. Of course, this is the final draft, edited for time and content, ready to be served like pap to our eager little grad-student-birdie-mouths.

I would like to see some MISTAKES. She even says at the end, after the course is totally finished, that she wouldn't change anything. Who, in their right mind, expects us to believe that her thorough planning was so perfectly wonderful and forsightful that she made no errors in judgement? Then she admits that she didn't get to cover the communicative aspects of the course ... and breezily says well that's okay that didn't fit in with my course goals anyway, and they won't need it. Funny, I thought language was all about communication. Who knew? Oh yeah ... Blyth. She knew everything in advance, even. I must say, I think her perfection is a bit too, well, blithe.

posted by E.M @ 11:02 PM