NTLF Vol. 8 No. 1 1998

NTLF Vol. 8 No. 1 1998 - Essay

Volume 8 Number 1

In the Shadow of the Diagram

James Rhem, Executive Editor

I often think in metaphors. Ideas come, which is to say, I find myself roused, interested, cooking up connections and questions and testing them out against my illustration, my metaphor. I tell you this as background to these ruminations on some unconscious influences I think most teachers feel, influences that have a negative effect on teaching. But let me back up a bit further and give you some background on this specific speculative excursion.

The Straight And Narrow

An old friend and I were driving down to Chicago. On the way, we began to talk about his teaching. I knew something about that since he'd directed my dissertation two decades back. I knew, for example, that he had a brilliant, quick mind given to wide-ranging associative thinking, that he built and rebuilt systems and theories as easily as others sharpen a pencil, and so it did not surprise me to hear that students complained that he was hard to follow. "Could he put an outline for the hour on the board?" they asked. They wanted a schematic to help them follow his thinking. He was sympathetic and was considering how he could give them one and at the same time be true to his less linear way of thinking, something he didn't want to curtail.

Indeed, I thought curtailing that would be a loss too. I remembered how challenged I had been by my exposure to his mind at work.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in a seminar for faculty developers where all the material was wonderfully outlined. At first, things went smoothly, so smoothly I found myself daydreaming about my friend and his students. Suddenly I thought of "concept mapping" and wondered if some version of that method might help his students follow the discussion and yet leave him free to think in nonlinear, more systemic and allusive ways. I made a mental note to suggest it to him later.

Clark And A Bag Of Nuts

As the seminar went on, I found myself observing another problem: the old tension between time and coverage. The experienced presenters scrambled to adapt on the spot, cutting some items, reconfiguring how to present others. At times genuine dialogue broke out around certain points. One felt widespread interest and group involvement. Just as quickly these moments fell victim to the pressure to move on down the outline.

About this time, I began to feel myself groping for metaphors. The class, the seminar was like an elevator falling past the floors of a big old-fashioned department store with the elevator operator wildly trying to announce what each floor contained: "men's shirts and ties, discussion techniques, ladies sports wear, course design ..." Perhaps because I didn't want to contemplate a crash, a new metaphor sprang up: A traditional class was like a train trip from Philadelphia to Chicago, and the point was to name all the intervening stops as an outline of the geography. Zooming along, trying to understand, watching topics whiz by, feeling the anxiety mount: that was what a lot of classes felt like. And it reminded me of my earliest trips to Chicago. Riding on the El trying to hear my stop announced, not wanting to miss it and be lost in the Big City. "Clark and a bag of nuts," I heard the conductor say, but it was "Clark and Diversey next," as it turned out.

Does Temporal Equal Linear?

Because classes begin at a certain time and end at a certain time, we think of them in linear ways, sometimes consciously, always unconsciously. The temporal order imposes linear diagrams, defining diagrams whose shadow hovers over how we use or misuse the hour. We live in built environments defined by sharp angles not curvilinear forms, even though nature doesn't structure itself that way. When Buckminster Fuller introduced the geodesic dome house, it never caught on despite its economic and engineering virtues. We kept looking for the corners.

But the corners (or cornerstones) of real learning were obvious in this seminar. They were the authentic moments of engagement where a natural flow of passionately felt questions guided the discussion.

The linear diagrams of knowledge and instruction that temporal order seduces us into constructing do not reflect the way humans learn either as individuals studying alone or in groups. Therefore, what if we composed diagrams of what a class hour looks like when real learning takes place and tried to structure the hour (or at least be ready to act within an hour) from that pattern instead? Though such a class would necessarily take place in time, it would not be designed by time, but by how cognition works with affect to effect learning, especially in groups.

Euclid On My Mind

It seems pretty clear to me that what's been called "the geometry of psychological space" (cf. George Kelly's theory of Personal Construct Psychology) that we habitually bring to class remains dominated by linear forms even though curvilinear or elliptical forms seem to dominate our most creative thinking and learning. And so I began to wonder (and wonder now): What sorts of images, diagrams, or metaphors might free the underlying psychology we apply to class hours from the tyranny of the Philadelphia-to-Chicago timetables we follow now?

Raindrops In My Head

Forgive me if I seem too poetic here, but the image that sprang to mind was of raindrops beginning to fall on the surface of a quiet pond. The circular waves radiating outward overlapping and engaging others seemed to me more like what happens in a class where real learning starts. It may not be a good diagram of dispensing information in an efficient, organized way--I'll grant that--but I do think it comes closer to picturing the miracle of learning as it actually occurs. Oddly enough, it's an image not too different from the way many concept maps turn out.

In a class hour whose inner workings were not presumed to hang nervously on its temporal limits, the actual beginning of class might occur in the middle of the hour. That would not be optimal or efficient of course. One would hope to start making rain as the hour began, but will we ever learn to recognize rain and drench ourselves in it when it does fall, sitting in the linear safety of a train headed to that metaphorical Chicago, coverage, the end of the hour? And dominated by our unconsciously linear diagrams, what will the geography of learning be to our students but a blur out the window? What will the great city of understanding be to them but "Clark and a bag of nuts" and a lot of useless anxiety about missing their stop?

Does Seating Matter?

If subliminal diagrams affect the psychology of teaching, might actual seating arrangements? Don Brown of Centre College in Kentucky thinks so, and he and colleague Sarah Bishop did some research to prove it. They compared intro student learning-related cognitions in straight row formation (SRF) and horseshoe formation (HSF) in a classroom designed for 30 students. An extensive questionnaire administered several times for each seating formation measured self-report variables ranging from concept understanding to feelings of anonymity and friendliness.

In addition to standard findings regarding exam performance and seating position in the SRF, they found that students in the SRF in the back rows reported stronger inhibitions against asking questions about things they did not understand and also stronger feelings that others understood the material better than they did. They also found a number of differences between the SRF and HSF formats which relate to learning processes and classroom ecology. Students felt more submerged in the SRF than in the HSF. In the HSF students reported feeling more "on view" and also more anonymous than when in the SRF (bystander effect?). In the HSF students did feel less pressure to answer questions than in the SRF.

In the HSF students experienced more feelings of being part of a group and also higher perceived understanding of concepts. Comparisons of students' reactions during self-selected HSF seats and randomly-assigned HSF seats proved -insignificant.

While Brown and Bishop's results echo earlier findings by others (Flynn, 1982) showing that horseshoe and split-row formations led subjects to feel themselves more responsive to each other's ideas, Brown says he'd want more replication of their results before coming right out and recommending switching to the horseshoe-formation.

Contact:
Don Brown
Centre College
600 West Walnut Street
Danville, KY 40422-1394
E-mail: brown@centre.edu.

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