Bear pit pedagogy

In our digital literacy teacher training programme at Plymouth University we create environments that encourage critical thinking. My colleague Peter Yeomans (AKA @ethinking on Twitter) says we create the 'bear pits' for our students. In other words, we enable digital and physical learning spaces in which they can freely explore ideas, argue with each other (and us) over concepts and theories and in so doing, develop their reasoning and thinking skills.

In order to develop key critical thinking skills, learners need to be able to argue effectively. They need to be aware that there are alternative perspectives and they need to be able to defend a position from attack. They must also investigate theories critically, because if they simply accept a theory as 'truth', they may be leading their entire classroom down a blind alley. Too much bad theory has crept into the classroom in recent years, as I have previously commented, and we want to ensure that our trainee teachers are aware of flaws, counter-arguments and alternatives to all theories. That's why we encourage our students to critically engage with course material, and then to extend their knowledge by creating their own additional content around it.

We encourage them to develop their own Personal/Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) so they can lock into and exploit the vast communities of practice that already exist out there in the rapidly expanding Blogosphere and Twitterverse. They are quite adept at using the tools at their disposal to create these connections, but first they need to be convinced. Once they realise the benefits of blogging or tweeting, and can see how much they learn as a result of engaging with remote peers, they engage with it enthusiastically. When students are given projects to complete, blogs, videos, podcasts, they are expected to organise their ideas, form their argument and present them in seminar or digital format - and then they must defend them. You see, when students are required to present something they have learnt to an audience, they need to know it well before they can present it convincingly. It's not the easiest route for learning, but it invariably turns out to be deep learning. The bear pit approach is more akin to dropping them in the deep end, and it can be a little uncomfortable at times.

One final point: We also give students the license to challenge us, and sometimes, if we feel it necessary, tutors may even debate each other in front of the students. Academics don't (and can't) always agree on everything, so why not model critical discussion for the benefit of the students? I would be interested to hear from other teacher educators about what approaches you use and whether you see any value in what we are doing with our bear pits.

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Bear pit pedagogy by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.