David J. Kujawski has written a good article explaining the basics of Present, Critique, Reflect, and Refine (PCRR) as a teaching strategy. Although he writes from a science background, the pedagogy of PCRR can be altered to accommodate any type of class. The method is especially useful for creating a culture of learning through argumentation. Kujawski writes, “The PCRR strategy promotes conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena in various disciplinary core ideas through the development of explanatory models that can later be applied to enrich student understanding and help explain other phenomena. [It also] develops an inquiry-driven, evidence-based mindset that supports model-based science teaching and three dimensional learning and assessment.” You can read more in his article “Present, Critique, Reflect, and Refine: Supporting Evidence-Based Argumentation Through Conceptual Modeling” that appears in Science Scope’s December 2015 issue.
COMPLETION BUILDS SELF EFFICACY
Rod, Risely, executive director of Phi Theta Kappa, released an op-ed piece about community college completion that presents a compelling case. He writes, "One has to wonder why, when the first community college was established in 1901 to provide access to higher education, completing college was not seen as integral to its mission. Clearly, today completion must be seen as central to the mission of our community colleges. To continue with our automotive analogy, it is a moral imperative that our institutions take responsibility for providing its consumers the tools and knowledge to “build a car” with the appropriate features that will lead them down a road toward economic prosperity and well-being. Community colleges must change their approach and accept responsibility for advising students upon enrollment on the importance of completing the associate degree prior to transferring to senior colleges. Studies show that community college students who transfer to senior colleges prior to earning the associate degree significantly increase their chances of never earning the baccalaureate degree."
LOOKING BACK TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE
David Gooblar urges us to encourage our students to be critically self-reflective about themselves and notes that the end of the semester is a great time to do it. He writes, "There are many reasons to have students complete self-evaluations at semester’s end, but perhaps the best is that the exercise encourages metacognition --- essentially “thinking about one’s thinking” — particularly in the context of getting students to consider their approach to our courses as they progress. But metacognition is a significantly valuable tool at the end of a course, when there are so many opportunities for self-reflection. At that point, students have been working on the same subject for more than three months; before they move on to other courses, and other professors, give them time and space to reflect on what they’ve done, and how they’ve done it. A self-evaluation is a great way to get students to assess how they approached the course with an eye to improving their learning strategies in the future. It can also help cement the particular skills they learned in your course — in effect, they remind themselves of the skills they’ve acquired, and may be more likely to put them to use in the future."
