Stereotypes and Question Making: Assessing Student Understanding in Spanish Literature and Literary Criticism Courses
Abstract
After Oxford College of Emory University adopted a 3-course requirement for courses designated inquiry-guided learning, faculty developed IGL assignments or redesigned entire courses. In this project, two faculty ask a “What Works?” question in assessing the change in cognitive sophistication of students with respect to the IGL features of each course.
Dr. Bridgette Gunnels wondered how to bring unarticulated stereotypes of Hispanics into the language and writing of her freshman and sophomore Spanish language students. She did not want to lecture students on stereotypes but rather challenge them to identify and deconstruct them through the use of images and short writing analyses. So she designed a regular assignment that presented students with isolated, successive images of Hispanic stereotypes. Students wrote short response papers in response to the prompt “Describe what you see" or "Describe this person's life" in effort to bring out preconceived ideas on the Hispanic experience in the US and the student's response to this perceived experience.
Dr. Jeffery Galle asked how to develop his students’ ability to ask central researchable questions of the short stories read and interpreted in his literary criticism class. Using one-minute response papers each week, students were instructed to identify the key moments and/or issues in the short stories of the week and then to develop at least three questions that they thought were researchable. Over the semester, students created weekly sets of key scenes and accompanying questions.
Using Wiggins and McTighe’s ‘Six Facets of Understanding’ and Perry’s work on cognitive development we will describe the incremental development of our students’ thinking through their progressive work with stereotypes and central questions using first assignments as pre-test. Chin and Osborne (2008) will be particularly useful in the analysis of student questions.
Location
Room 1220
Recommended Citation
Galle, Jeffery Dr. and Gunnels, Bridgette W. Dr., "Stereotypes and Question Making: Assessing Student Understanding in Spanish Literature and Literary Criticism Courses" (2014). SoTL Commons Conference. 83.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2014/83
Stereotypes and Question Making: Assessing Student Understanding in Spanish Literature and Literary Criticism Courses
Room 1220
After Oxford College of Emory University adopted a 3-course requirement for courses designated inquiry-guided learning, faculty developed IGL assignments or redesigned entire courses. In this project, two faculty ask a “What Works?” question in assessing the change in cognitive sophistication of students with respect to the IGL features of each course.
Dr. Bridgette Gunnels wondered how to bring unarticulated stereotypes of Hispanics into the language and writing of her freshman and sophomore Spanish language students. She did not want to lecture students on stereotypes but rather challenge them to identify and deconstruct them through the use of images and short writing analyses. So she designed a regular assignment that presented students with isolated, successive images of Hispanic stereotypes. Students wrote short response papers in response to the prompt “Describe what you see" or "Describe this person's life" in effort to bring out preconceived ideas on the Hispanic experience in the US and the student's response to this perceived experience.
Dr. Jeffery Galle asked how to develop his students’ ability to ask central researchable questions of the short stories read and interpreted in his literary criticism class. Using one-minute response papers each week, students were instructed to identify the key moments and/or issues in the short stories of the week and then to develop at least three questions that they thought were researchable. Over the semester, students created weekly sets of key scenes and accompanying questions.
Using Wiggins and McTighe’s ‘Six Facets of Understanding’ and Perry’s work on cognitive development we will describe the incremental development of our students’ thinking through their progressive work with stereotypes and central questions using first assignments as pre-test. Chin and Osborne (2008) will be particularly useful in the analysis of student questions.
