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Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

15 Sep

@mburtis

At the end of my recent piece with @mburtis, we rewrite the Quality Matters rubric "for a human audience, centering the people in a course instead of the tools, policies, and materials." (a thread) hybridpedagogy.org/the-cult-of-qu…

Martha and I write that "we don’t subscribe to any model that relies upon a simplified set of bullet points to do the vitally important work of instructional design." I often argue for "good-for-some-people-in-some-contexts-practices."

And so, we ask explicitly for folks not to approach our remix of the QM rubric as a set of best practices, but to use any course design rubric as an invitation to reimagine, inspect, adapt its advice from your own pedagogical perspective, for your own idiosyncratic work.

Read 18 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

27 Jun

I get frustrated when I see "rigorous" and "evidence-based" applied exclusively (or even primarily) to quantitative research. Narrative research is also "rigorous." Stories are evidence. Emotions are evidence. Analysis of affective responses is evidence. History is evidence.

I bristle altogether at the phrase "evidence-based," because of the gatekeeping contexts where I so often see it used. I immediately wonder, what kind of evidence? What ways of knowing are being privileged? And at the expense of whose voices going unheard?

And most meanings of the word "rigor" have no productive place in education, unless you believe school (and disciplinary culture) should be about policing, punishing, and gatekeeping -- again with the effect of excluding already marginalized voices.

Read 4 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

3 Jun

As a mid-level administrator, at several institutions, I constantly heard the word "optics." Too many times it didn't matter what work we did, only how that work *looked, and usually only how that work looked to people not directly impacted by the work.

At too many institutions, "innovation" is rarely about asking hard questions. "Inclusion" is too often about "metrics," and not about people. "Hard work" is often less about the quality of the work and more about supporting and reenforcing a culture of busy-ness.

I once talked about "doing less with less" in front of my provost--arguing for more carefully deploying resources to make them more effective, assuring staff were properly compensated for their labor, etc. I was glared at and told we should all "do the work of two people."

Read 12 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

2 Jun

Grades are anathema to the presumption of the humanity of students, support for their basic needs, and engaging them as full participants in their own education. jessestommel.com/grades-are-deh…

The relationship between students and teachers suffers when our systems and policies reinforce hierarchies and encode biases.

Invigilated exams won’t ensure integrity. Plagiarism detection tech won’t unseat online paper mills. Incessant surveillance won’t help us listen better for the voices of students asking for help.

Read 5 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

19 Mar

I’ve never been a fan of backwards design, learning objectives, or outcomes. Humans are idiosyncratic. You can’t plan for someone else’s learning. What you can plan for is how you’ll respond when someone surprises you.

Traditional approaches to backwards design start with the questions, “what do I want students to know or be able to do? how will I measure whether they know or can do those things by the end of a course?” The course is structured to bring students to that moment of measurement.

This sounds a lot like the “banking model” of education, which Paulo Freire critiques, the idea that there is content or skills in a teacher’s brain that can (or should) be delivered into a student’s brain. Backwards design flips how that work is structured.

Read 11 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

9 Mar

@readywriting

“‘You don’t behave enough like staff,’ I was told derisively by the tenured professor who was then my supervisor.” A devastating and important read by @readywriting. chronicle.com/article/stop-i…

In my last admin role, the staff on my team were treated in deeply problematic and patronizing ways. (Lee was on that team. Her voice matters.) I saw, not only what was said about them and about me (also staff), but heard some of what got said about them behind their backs.

I remember far too many meetings where I had to relay the contents of those conversations to the members of my team. It was devastating to morale and did direct harm to even the very positive relationships we had with many faculty.

Read 16 tweets

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