Download psych 4 across the curriculum

July 2003
Fourth DRAFT
Psychology Across the Curriculum for Interdisciplinary Learning in
the Sciences
Skip Robinson Ph.D.
Introduction
We know that we and our students feel as well as think. How can needs for thinking and
feeling be best integrated to improve a person’s satisfaction with the experience and to
increase that person’s effective learning?
We know that different people learn best in different ways. What combination of learning
contents, processes, and forms can we develop, fine-tune, and perform to optimize each
student's learning - learning that will "stick"?
We know that crucial complex ideas are not naturally bound in by a single discipline.
How can we help participants weave this most vivid tapestry?
We know that to meet a student in the classroom we also encounter more subtly the
surface of that student's whole life and its meaning past, present, future. How can our
class experience encourage the class participant's questions, quests, and passions - matters
that can make the individual's life more meaningful and alive?
We know that we and our students already swim in a psychological sea. In our learning
processes we consider contents and concepts even while we feel. We reflect; we weigh
what is most important; we remember the past; we dream and make dream meaning; we
imagine the future; we yearn to steer our learning course by means of what is most
meaningful to us and pertinent to our lives. We quest. How can we best encourage the
experiencing and bringing together our thought, our passions, our hopes, and our goals?
We as teachers in interdisciplinary learning environments already have begun to consider
more systematically how students' own ways of motivation and learning suggest the
bridges on which we can meet them.
In many ways, although we do not have psychology as one of the formal subjects we
shared in the National Science Foundation interdisciplinary learning community in the
sciences, "Reflections of Nature", at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, we
are already using psychologically focused philosophies and techniques to undergird the
operation of our curricula.
This paper may encourage reflection by brief reference to other "across the curriculum"
work, by reviewing some psychologically important work imbedded in learning
communities by their very nature, and by suggesting six areas for further consideration.
Other Subjects Across the Curriculum
"English Across the Curriculum," over its recent years of practice in the field, has proven
a strong success in a wide variety of applications. Clear writing and clear reading are
disciplines needed in every other discipline. Writing cogently within and about an
academic discipline is naturally a cornerstone of that discipline. English curriculum
people networking with those in a variety of other fields and interdisciplinary
combinations over recent years have furthered writing communication skill training in a
widening variety of disciplines.
Integrating math study across the curriculum makes emmanent sense and is being
explored at the present time.
Under the right developments, psychologically resonant concepts and processes across the
curriculum in the interdisciplinary learning of the sciences and social sciences may
further deepen and integrate science learning and communication. Such study can honor
how the mind works. Design content and process may be more precisely based on the
broadened knowledge.
Some Characteristics of "Reflections of Nature"
and Other Learning Community Work
When several subjects are being taught under a common interdisciplinary theme, such as
"Reflections of Nature," every subject deserves probing both for its own pertinence and
also for its "fit" with every other subject being incorporated. How could psychology fit
into and contribute to this?
Although "psychology across the curriculum" is a viable subject for study in any setting,
it is doubly pertinent in a learning environment/learning community which, by its nature,
integrates psychotherapeutically intriguing processes.
So much psychologically important is being tried that being more conscious of dynamics
of what is happening can enrich the experience and fine-tune its foci. Some key methods
with psychological ramifications already in use in learning community work in
interdisciplinary study in the sciences and social sciences are
a.
Cohort in common - students and teachers staying together for
sufficiently ample time period of course
b.
Team teaching - team learning
c.
Interdisciplinary consideration of issues
d.
Variety of learning environments - in, out, large
group,
small group, diads, single writing,
observing, reading, fishbowl,
teamwork
e.
Co-learning - everyone in the room is understood to be a learner,
including the teachers
By having students and teachers staying together for the significant period of time of the
course, helpful emotional connections, even bonding, can form among the class
participants. These connections aid student satisfaction, develop a "safer" environment
for exploration, open opportunities for productive group project work, and improve
learning in ways that group "bonding" and teamwork can further.
Team teaching and team learning permit the benefits of joint planning with its multiperson perspective, a wider exposure by the participants to different teaching styles and
emphases. As the teachers explore curriculum and process in advance, they can discover
together not only how the issues fit across disciplines but how the learning environment
can better offer these as content and process discoveries students can make.
Because different students learn in different ways and because all students benefit from
being exposed to a variety of learning settings, participant learning is increased by the
variety of learning environments the teacher team develops to make the key issues more
accessible - large group, small, 1-1, action projects, writing, group sharing, etc.
Finally, in terms of what is already being done, the emphasis on all people in the learning
environment being co-learners (that the "teachers" are as active in their ongoing learning
as the "students" are and seek to model good learning behavior) can have an exhilirating
effect on participants in team-building. This allows a reduction of hierarchical structures
and their implicit "turn-off" messages (I'm the teacher - listen to me, since you don't know
things; remember what I say; you'll be tested). By all being co-learners, the whole room,
with the right chemistry and time, becomes bonded in each person’s quest.
Six Questions in Further Considering Psychology Across the Interdisciplinary
Science (and "Reflections of Nature") Curriculum
1.
How do different people learn? - as individuals and in small groups. There are
psychologies of learning that may prove pertinent. They deserve continuing study.
For instance, just the finding that the majority of learning takes place using the visual
sense has great implications for the development and tactics of operating a learning
environment. If we were to study the psychology of learning systematically and from a
post-modern point of view, what would we learn to help improve the impact of these
classes?
2.
How do we develop a “passion-cognizant curriculum”?
Tragically, students are regularly trained to separate their lives from their schooling.
When we seek to start healing this unfortunate rift, how can we help each other explore
the deepest questions in one's life? How can they be brought into the curriculum?
In 1994, the learning community in Sonoma State's psychology department (a block class
including Development of the Person, Humanistic/Existential/Transpersonal Psychology,
and Integrative Seminar) asked participants on the first day of the first class what the
deepest question(s)/quest(s) were in each participant's life. What were the questions they
felt most passionately about exploring? What had the most meaning in their lives? When
these had been thought about and shared with the group (to the degree each participant
chose – each could also “pass”), the facilitators underscored that these questions could
become the key study of each interested participant's semester. A number of learning
community participants decided to do this and later reported that connecting life
meaning/quests to class study were prompting a what they described as a quantum jump
in their own internal motivation to learn. A quest-based/passion-based curriculum
deserves exploration.
3.
How do we best balance focus on thought and on feeling? Thought and feeling
are both absolutely primary facets on the jewel of learning. They are as connected as the
left and right sides of your body. As a parallel, using only one part at a time is a is very
inefficient/ineffective, like running a two-cycle motor on only one cycle.
4.
How do we integrate the individual's existential search for the meaning of this
moment (for making this learning moment vibrant with meaning)? The present is really
all we have yet we are often gone into the past or the future. Don’t we need to look into
this question? If we only focus on what the "author" said and meant, what the "artist"
painted and meant, what the "external authority" said, we leave no room for the
passionate personal ferment already inside this classroom among its residents. There is a
potential for exciting products from the class participants’ work.
Imagine how all this can connect with participant lives and memories.
If we grant the value of seeking ways to integrate the course subjects "out there" with the
participant's own lived life "in here," then we and they benefit from the power of their
own inner processes, which draw them out to share how they see and feel things. How
does this reading "touch" them? What are they feeling? When participants come in the
door, what are they carrying in their minds? Can we check-in daily with each other to
help ground and focus the group?
During class, does the content material being scrutinized bring up feelings? vivid
memories? highly pertinent life stories? What could others learn from?
How does this content relate to a participant and that participant’s life and meaning?
What is really happening inside the participant right now?
One learning to communicate needs, wants, and curiosities shares his/her insides with the
others, teaches, enhances bonding, connects "outer" and "inner," develops lifelong skills,
and on.
After all, really, our lives are at stake in the seminar room. We need to pay attention to
what we mean and how we mean it. We need to take time for this. We're working on our
meanings. Life is short.
Participants learning to speak to co-participants from their depths can benefit every colearner in the place.
5.
How do we balance optimum content with optimum process?
Lecture is, of course, just one of many process options. So is cognitive discussion. When
do small seminar groups or support groups come in? When 1 to 1? How is exchange
among participants facilitated? How much should be planned beforehand? How much
should become part of the "evolutionary" process in the class? On a practical level, we
need to remember that optimal use of process can enhance content learning and connect it
into the individual's own foundations.
6.
How do we increase the building of “community” in a learning community? How
can psychology help? Every study suggests that community-building is a hallmark of
interdisciplinary learning communities with common cohorts. How can we understand
and improve how the community-building takes place?
In the field of psychology, the
study of small group process and facilitation and the study of organizational development
seem particularly pertinent areas for inquiry.
For instance, how can each participant learn basic small group process and facilitation
skills? These would not only enhance the group experience during the learning
community but are also exactly the kinds of skills employers around the country are
clamoring for these days.
In Closing
By exploring our feelings as well as our cognition, we increase the chance we have to live
our lives in the classroom, being ourselves. By learning to drop more of our facades and
defenses, we free energy for exuberant learning. By being to talk about what is sparked
up inside ourselves by course content and process - childhood, memories, suffering, fear,
joy, the sense of the present - the classroom potentially becomes more fully alive - the
curriculum more thoroughly vivid and continually in exploration.
As we consider better applying psychology across such a curriculum, if we are lucky, the
science of nature in content can meet a developing science of process. Their mutual
exploration can enhance both.
Living one's own life while exploring the life of nature, learning practical skills to be
more often one's own authentic self with others, being with others who are learning to do
the same in nature's here-and-now of a classroom: This sounds like a broad and resonant
environment in which to go on the great search and to go on it together.