By Opening Syllabus involves progression from somewhat Closed Syllabus to increasing Open Syllabus where some initially unilateral decisions by the teachers become increasingly shifted to students’ agency.
I have recently realized that all of my past classes before I "discovered" Open Syllabus were to some degree run by Opening Syllabus pedagogical regimes. For long time my teaching was limited to Open Dialogic Instruction, which in itself provided impetus of students' agency and activism. However, when I added another component — Open Curriculum, — students' activism for their own education progressed much more rapidly as it provided the students with a public forum for introduction of their initiatives and collective decision making.
My colleague Kathy von Duyke calls Opening Syllabus "Trojan horse" because it helps the students experience and explore the ready-made pedagogical regime imposed on them by the teacher and move to democracy of the Open Syllabus. It has this move from Culture to Democracy, while in Open Syllabus the direction is reverse: from Democracy to Culture. Opening Syllabus promotes more ontological decision making for the students, since they experience situation (and its problems) first and then make a decision. Meanwhile in Open Syllabus, at least at the beginning decision making seems to be more intellectual in the nature rather than ontological, involving mostly considering hypothetical scenarios. In my observations, Opening Syllabus seems to provide less anxiety among students and they do not feel overwhelmed with the totality of organizational decision making that students in the Open Syllabus regime usually faced (especially when they new to the OSE).
On the other hand, a semester is often not enough for the Opening Syllabus students to shake off all imposed aspects of the class and enjoy full freedom of Open Syllabus.
Currently I teacher an undergraduate class on Cultural Diversity in Education run by Opening Syllabus involving Open Dialogic Instruction, Open Curriculum, and Flipped Classroom. Initially, I planned to run it as Open Syllabus in this class but I was away for a week at the beginning of semester and my co-instructor did not feel comfortable to start class as Open Syllabus so my plan was to renegotiate it with my students. However, so far my students refuse to discuss class, despite my explanation and encouragement, because they so eager to study other topics and I must follow their desires informed by my concerns, according to Open Curriculum pedagogical regime. Here is my Open Curriculum Syllabus for EDUC 258-14S-80, current Curricular Map, EDUC258-14S-80, and an example of assignment promoting flipped teaching: MP for topic 13, Sensitive guidance for boys, 2014-03-08. After teaching the class for 4 weeks, here is a list of emerging decisions that the students make outside of Open Curriculum and Instruction:
- How should the class instructors approach a problem that some students do not volunteer talking on a systematic basis? This issue was introduced by one of the class instructor. After intense discussion for 2 weeks and development of a list of 6 alternative solutions, the students voted on a combination proposed by 2 students: a) the instructors should ask students who are not volunteering but they should have the right "to take the 5th amendment" by saying "pass", no questions can be asked for justification (cf. Ira Shor's book), and b) the instructors first should ask a few people who volunteer before calling on on those who do not volunteer so the former can model the latter.
- A few students suggested to have "Sharing Time" at the beginning of class for 5 min in small groups to socialize and build a community. Some students disagree with this idea so we place it on probation by trying it and return later.
- Two students demand the students' right to interrupt the class to check with the class if it is time to change the topic. The class adopted this idea.
- A few students proposed to share responsibility for tracking class time together with the instructors.The class adopted this idea.
- Some students wanted to cut the time on discussion of the next topic at the end of each class by discussing it in small groups rather than in whole class and then voting — the class adopted the idea.
- I hope I did not miss anything….
As you see, the students are more and more engaging in decision making about the class and thus opening more spheres for their democratic decision making. At the same time, so far they clearly want to prioritize study of curriculum of their desire over organizational decision, which makes sense to me. As Oscar Wilde on said about socialism, "The trouble with Socialism is that it takes too many evenings." They constantly worry, as they expressed it openly, that they do not have enough time in semester to study all topics that they want to study (wow, what a learning activism!). Also, they clearly try to deconstruct the experienced class culture to make it better rather than to build it from scratch as it is done in the Open Syllabus pedagogical regime.
What do you think?
Hi Eugene,
Thanks for raising this important distinction between OpenSE and OpeningSE – you suggested:
"My colleague Kathy von Duyke calls Opening Syllabus "Trojan horse" because it helps the students experience and explore the ready-made pedagogical regime imposed on them by the teacher and move to democracy of the Open Syllabus. It has this move from Culture to Democracy, while in Open Syllabus the direction is reverse: from Democracy to Culture.”
In my "Trojan Horse” approach, the course appears to be standards, but actually there is far more freedom there than it first appears. For instance, assignments have due dates, but there are no penalties for lateness. It takes students awhile for the fear of penalty to subside, and in my view, this is a problem with my method. I noticed if the first 3 weeks of the curricular choices are filled in and then students vote what is next, syllabus decisions are asked and made more readily, but when I have waited longer than that to open them to more choices, students’ never seem to lose their Foucaultian anxiety. Nevertheless, for these reasons I prefer the Opening approach: Democracy without culture can be a yawning chasm, our agency for Democracy can be limited by other agencies that don’t care about our Democracies, developing a complete Democratic syllabus takes time away from the content when we could use it more skillfully, and crafting an interesting course is part of my professional obligation and expertise.
Your insight on the relationship between culture and Democracy in the two approaches is insightful because Democracy is not culture though it can support culture, and I might argue it is a problem when it becomes THE culture. Our higher education students are dropped into our classrooms, which if we are honest mostly resemble something of barren desert islands (even with a working smart board). In this dry barrenness we try to reconstitute and create culture with students. Presenting them with an Open Syllabus model can make them feel they have landed on reruns of “Survivor” with every man for himself – as occurred in my first experience with OSE where the issue of who would have power became instantly contested. You documented that story well (Matusov & Brobst, 2013). In my brief experience introducing an Open syllabus regime I noted the fear students expressed about creating what felt like irrevocable laws that could harm their careers in the academy.
Similarly, and in spite of the “do not try this at home” warning labels on Democratic school environments, I actually did. I found that other agencies had agency over our agency, as with my own children in schools and with having insurance companies and other adult obligations breathing down my neck. This meant that our latitude for Democratic decision-making was quite confined compared to what it initially seemed. While it can make sense to ignore institutional dictates, it is important to have a ready made rationale and students need to develop these for themselves and without them I think they can be inundated by concerns. Just like outside agencies affected the amount of agency we could enact at home, the student’s must often use their course work to negotiate between credentialing, financial aid, grants, and future employment institutions. That being said, I still believe students’ authentic work is what matters the most.
In my view, the Democratic focused nature makes more sense when content is more open and the time together is likely to be longer. I’m thinking of Kurt Lewin’s (1939) work on Democratic social climates in kids’ camps. In a case where what to do is quite open and time is rather extended, the time spent developing Democratic processes used as a means to organize one’s activities and resolve problems makes sense. In contrast, our time with students is rather defined (Diversity issues in education) and short (2.5 hours per week). I would rather spend the time developing the culture first and included Democracy as needed for many reasons: there are many issues demanding students’ time, they often no little about the course content, there is no classroom community at the start of the semester, and they don’t know me. It takes me about 3 weeks to develop trust and a sense of community with students and excitement about issues in diversity. I feel like all of this needs to be carefully crafted, and I work hard to develop dialogue with students about the content. After all, dialogue about issues in diversity is its own speech genre, and students go through a period of inarticulateness and struggle to incorporate new ideas, words, and concepts into their discussion with each other.
I have found it really beneficial to have an OpeningSE for because the format supports a dialogic instructional approach, because without it, I am forever thinking of the next 3 points I should cram into students instead of listening to them and asking questions and provoking their thinking. I have a “Graffiti Response” where students write their ideas or experiences on the board as a class and they we survey and sometimes code them. I have “Group Chats” where students respond to folks in their table about a video or a perspective that is controversial, then report out as a whole class as I find students are much more likely to discuss to the class as a whole if they have had a little time to formulate their thoughts in these slightly more informal spaces. We do “unfinalized” final projects where the students give two presentations one a proposal, the second their ideas or decisions about some hot issue and then invite peer critical dialogue. This develops a lot of agency as students develop extensive dialogue with each other and sometimes ignore me (a great sign!). Students feel their opinions matter and I constantly position them as decision makers who are shaping and defining the culture at large, with are classroom as a reflective space to consider those decisions.
All these possible means to support student dialogue about the content have taken time for me to craft and are not ideas that they might have thought of, though their suggestions and criticisms have helped me to develop them. Some techniques make more sense with certain lesson topics than others. It seems just as productive to afford safe opportunities for criticism and afford students agency progressively through the semester as to start with Democratic decision-making. I think it can be interesting to think about what kinds of Democratic decisions might be made productively and when without detracting from the content – it is interesting to look at the list you made of your student’s concerns and how much they are focused on preserving time for content (including voting your lecture down if they feel its not useful!). I think it can be very meaningful to develop a semester timeline of critical decision-making students might engage in at important including yielding even this control eventually. We do, after all, have an idea of how our classroom island seasons will run to a certain extent, yet we can afford their agency and voices freshly creating each new semester.
Lewin, K.; Lippitt, R.; White, R.K. (1939). "Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates". Journal of Social Psychology 10: 271–301.
Matusov, E. & Brobst, J. (2013). Radical experiment in dialogic pedagogy in higher education and its Centauric failure: Chronotopic analysis. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Publishers.