OUAN501 - The Flipped Classroom (3)

This lecture was delivered by Richard on the subject of 'the flipped classroom'. It was apparent that this was a topic he knew a lot about and felt strongly about from the start. 'The Flipped Classroom' is a model of teaching that focuses on allowing the student to essentially take charge of their own learning. The difference between this approach and other traditional teaching models is that the student is the centre of the model rather than the teacher. This in turn allows the students to explore and develop their own answers to their own questions. The flipped model allows for students to explore topics they are interested in or just that they are unsure about or want to know more about in greater depth as the conversation flows more as a debate is not being controlled or dictated by a teacher. This model can create a more personal and overall engaged learning experience for the students and the teacher will be there to deliver content that the students can use how they want to. After looking up this further I found that the flipped classroom is also seen as a strategy and a type of blended learning using instructional content, often online, and sometimes outside of the classroom. It also moves the traditional format of things like homework into the classroom. In a flipped classroom, students watch online lectures, collaborate in online discussions, or carry out research at home and engage in concepts in the classroom with the guidance of the instructor. Perhaps this model is also made possibly by the era we live in, as some of the teaching methods rely heavily on the internet and other tools that have been developed in the past few decades.

'The Flipped Classroom' is a philosophical model of education that eliminates authoritative and subservient ideas, making students in charge of their own learning as well as being able to think for themselves, in a creative manner.

A portion of the lecture was focused on a book that Richard introduced us to titled 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster' by Jacques Rancieres. The book referred to something called 'intellectual emancipation', which is by definition 'the fact or process of being set free from legal, social, or political restrictions; liberation.' It was written in the context of the revolutionary rupture in France 1968 where a student led protest and retaliation fought against the prevailing social order. Eventually, this transformed into a more widespread movement where strikes and workers united. Together they were fighting against the culture of the University which was largely perceived as elitist with a patriarchal bias. Richard told us about an analogy by Rancieres in which he retells the story of a French teacher called Joseph Jacotot who was exiled to Holland in 1818. Jacotot could only speak French and his pupils could only speak Flemish, meaning he couldn't teach them in their own language, or communicate with them verbally. Jacotot obtained two copies of the book 'Telemaque' of that was in French and the other in the Flemish language that the students spoke. He then told the students to learn French. Not long after, the students could make out a lot of the French from the book and understood the meaning of the book without the teacher having taught them directly. The analogy was his example of 'intellectual emancipation' and in turn raises a question about whether teaches are necessary for students to learn. I don't think it's as black and white has having a teacher or not having one, but perhaps this illustrates the idea that teachers don't need to have as much influence on the students learning as they often do - and it could potentially be more beneficial to step back and allow the students to learn amongst themselves or on their own. In conjunction with this, Jacques Rancieres also stated that when a teacher is giving a lesson and giving the students answers, the teacher is not helping the student, or at least as much as they could. As oppose to this they are bringing them into a false sense of reliability, so the pupils are not thinking for themselves, and those who memorise the information given to them will be deemed the more intelligent students in the class.

Jacques Rancieres suggested that everyone is of equal intelligence, in 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster', specifically the chapter 'Reason Between Equals' he says that we are all capable and all fundamentally the same. He asks the question, 'what kind of society could you build is you assume everyone is intelligent?'. Education is not about individualisation, it is a common pursuit and do to the way society is, and revolves around capitalism we are built on divisions - separating people in different ways, such as class, race, and perceived levels of intelligence.

Overall, I found the introduction to this topic quite interesting and found myself reading up on it more afterwards. The topic of intellectual emancipation is something that can be looked at in a variety of ways. For example, I've often thought through school that a lot of what I was learning relied on being able to remember certain things rather than develop and learn as an individual, just as Jacques Rancieres suggested when he spoke about teachers giving students answers and not helping them, instead bringing them into a false sense of reliability.