There's More to It Than Content

Here's the reality pedagogy gist: teaching is about more than just having a bunch of information to disseminate to the empty vessels—er, students—in front of you.

But before we get into how it works, let's take a dive way back into the depths of history for some very professional-sounding and ancient background.

 

How about virtual reality pedagogy?

Back in the day of 2011, Christopher Emdin of Teachers College, Columbia University wrote a paper titled "Moving Beyond the Boat without a Paddle: Reality Pedagogy, Black Youth, and Urban Science Education." Metaphors and multi-syllable words? It must be fancy. And it was. The article appeared in The Journal of Negro Education, a Howard University publication, and in case you're hankering for a sample…

• "Research in education has indicated that teachers who are qualified (certified via licensure) are not necessarily effective educators..."

Provocative, eh? And one more:

• "Even when teachers do have sufficient content knowledge, many still lack the tools necessary to address the cultural divides that render them ineffective in teaching science."

But you knew that, right? It's that thing about how knowing the deets just ain't enough: if a teacher can't communicate with students, it doesn't matter how much info that teacher knows—it's not going anywhere. And according to Emdin, one of the biggest barriers teachers face—particularly in trying to reach urban black youth, the focus of his research—is a cultural one.

So now we get down to the reality behind reality pedagogy. The concept behind Emdin's theory is that before teachers can teach anything, they must understand the realities of their students. Yep, hence reality pedagogy. And guess what? Even though Emdin is a math and science educator, reality pedagogy can be used in all disciplines.

So. There are five distinct steps in reality pedagogy that teachers and students need to engage in together. Emdin refers to them as the 5 Cs (catchy), and they are

1. Cogenerative Dialogues
2. Coteaching
3. Cosmopolitanism
4. Context
5. Content

Let's take 'em one by one.

Cogenerative Dialogues

Often shortened to "cogens," cogenerative dialogues make a lot more sense when you break them down to what they actually sound like: dialogues that are co-generated. Meaning that the discussion isn't led by a particular individual; instead, all participants have equal opportunity to talk, and no one voice is valued over another.

These dialogues are modeled after "cyphers" (informal gatherings of rappers, beatboxers, and sometimes even breakdancers) that allow individuals to both demonstrate their skill and co-create. If only every day of class were like that, right? Anyway, cyphers are central to freestyle battles, in which a group of rappers stand in a circle and take turns laying down rhymes, trying to outdo one another.

Of course, in Emdin's cyphers, the cogens, no one is trying to win. It's more of a win-win sort of thing. The purpose is for the teacher to meet with a small group of students outside of class and invite their input and critiques of the way things are going in the classroom—what's working, what makes them roll their eyes or shut down, and what would legit help them to get more out of their classroom time.

Through these dialogues, the teacher can learn about the students' needs while also giving them a powerful voice in their education. When their critiques of classroom structures and strategies are heard and valued, the students become active participants in their learning rather than those passive vessels we dissed on earlier.

Coteaching

The second C is about involving students not just in the critiquing of instruction methods, but also in the actual teaching. Radical, huh? Emdin recommends having students actually teach lessons, and not just in the "research this idea and present it to the rest of the class" manner. Instead, he suggests assigning students the task of writing a lesson plan and putting it into practice, perhaps even providing them with a teacher's manual or sample lesson plan to get them started.

It may sound like a recipe for disaster—and it can be if it's not executed well—but it makes a lot of sense. After all, how much better do you understand a subject or a concept after you've prepared to teach it to someone else?

This strategy accomplishes a few things. First, it gives students a chance to take charge of class content. Second, it lets them know that you understand they can be experts in determining the best ways for content to be delivered to them. And third, it gives them an opportunity to experience, firsthand, the challenges of teaching.

That's a lot of birds with one stone.

Plus, you get away with not having to plan the full lesson that day. Just saying.

Cosmopolitanism

It may sound like a teaching strategy based on the drinking preferences of the ladies of Sex and the City, but bear with us. Cosmopolitanism in the pedagogy sense is about creating a classroom environment that incorporates norms, behaviors, and roles that exist in students' lives outside the classroom. You know, in the cosmopolitan world around them.

Let's get specific. Outside of the classroom, students grow up together, ride the bus together, look out for one another, exchange high fives, or elaborate handshakes in celebration or greeting. And in a classroom, that same level of interconnectedness and responsibility for one another has to be cultivated.

Emdin suggests that one way to accomplish cosmopolitanism is to assign students various responsibilities and roles in the classroom. For instance, one student could be responsible for being the class greeter to welcome visitors to the room—whether a speaker, a volunteer, an administrator stopping in for a quick chat with the teacher, you name it. Gets the job done.

Want some other student roles? You could have materials distributors, a technology team (wouldn't it be nice if someone else was in charge of getting the SmartBoard online once in a while?), or even, as Emdin suggests, a class comedian who is in charge of providing comic relief. These roles could rotate at various points to give multiple students the chance to fill a given role. True, not everyone can be class comedian, but democracy is democracy.

Simply put, the goal of cosmopolitanism is to create a culture of student investment in the classroom and to give students roles that "ensure that students develop a connection to the classroom and a desire to learn within it," in the words of the great Emdin.

Context

The premise of context is that teachers must understand the backgrounds of their students in order to better understand how to engage with them. Emdin goes (source) so far as to say that teachers need to be "hyperfocused on the immediate communities the students are from." That's pretty durn focused.

One example Emdin provides of using context is naming areas of the classroom for areas of the community. Instead of referring to the storage closet as "the storage closet," rename it for a well-known store or location in the community (i.e., "If you need a textbook, go ahead and get one from Joe's Variety"). You could also rename the sides of the room for important intersections (i.e., "Group one can gather at the corner of 5th and Main; group two should go to 3rd and J Street").

Even Emdin admits that it may sound kind of superficial—or at least better suited for your younger youngsters—but he emphasizes that in making these gestures, teachers communicate not only that they understand the students' communities, but that they also recognize the value in where the students are from.

Bottom line with context: the classroom shouldn't be a separate and sanitized environment.

Though it should be more sanitized than the drink cosmopolitans.

Content

Hmmm. Content just so happens to land dead last in the 5 C's. And you can bet that's intentional.

Emdin believes that this C, the one most of us start with, can't be broached until the other four C's have come into play. Why? Because, like we said back at the beginning, teachers can have the most profoundest grasp of content in the world, but it won't make a lick of difference if they don't have the ability to disseminate that information—something that can only be accomplished by focusing on the other four Cs first. How…Constructive.

For more on reality pedagogy, why not go straight to the source? Check out Emdin's TedX Talk.

And see if you can count up any more C's while you're at it.