Certain locales buzz loudly with talk of flipping, or switching the traditional domains of homework and classwork. The idea is that students do reading and learning at home (though videos, mostly, it seems) and then class time is spent on assembling, interpreting, synthesizing the material whose basis was absorbed at home.
The old-fashioned would call this simply “assigning a text” to read and then discuss, analyze, or investigate in class. English classes at St. John’s have been doing this for at least forty years that I know of. To be fair, not all disciplines do it. Math, I was surprised to find when I came here to teach, while it assigned readings in a text never really expected them to be done–at least, if you go by the fact that I was told to “teach the lesson for the night’s homework” before the end of class each day, it was clear there was no penalty to students for not doing the reading. Hence, if they were busy, there was no reason to do it.
I am doing a great deal of reading this summer of pedagogy and some on curriculum, and while “flipping” is one buzz-word, it is subsumed in the greater topic of “educating for the 21st century.” Such education would seem a very reasonable thing to me for us to do if I were sure how to accomplish it–or sure that very many people in this community actually wanted it. As far as I can see, no standardized test yet tests many of the so-called “21st-century skills” we are encouraged to develop. I hear little groundswell among parents for much except “successful” college admissions. Students themselves are more interested, perhaps, yet even they are not, shall we say, agitating for better or more modern teaching. Or learning.
Perhaps I will attempt to put into practice some of the “21st-century” teaching and learning tools/techniques of which I read. A qui s’y interesse, je me demande…