Category: Teaching

A friend of mine posted this on her FB.  An article about depression.  More often than not, people who are depressed show many signs such as the way they use certain words (i.e. language).  They speak “the language of depression”.  To untrained eyes, such things can go unnoticed.  

The two aspects that worth to be noted are content and style.  Content consists of emotion expressions, use of pronoun, rumination and social state (i.e. in the case of depression, social isolation).  Style relates to how one express oneself.  It relates to the former aspect, content.  For example, the use of absolutist words (e.g. never, always, nothing, absolutely etc.) might indicate how a person views certain situation.  A sentence like “There is nothing that I do matters” indicates how a person is using self-handicapping note in the language with reference to oneself (i.e. the use of the word “I”).  

So, please be aware of our own language or others to detect any sign of depression.  Indeed.  Mind your (and our) language, please!

One of the juniors asked me if giving students a concept map assignment is appropriate to measure cognitive skills (the code C6 – creating level).  I asked him back what makes him think otherwise because to produce a concept map is not easy.  It is not simply cut-copy-paste thingy (unless one copies other’s concept map).  To produce one as your own, you need to have a good understanding about a concept and how it relates to other sub-concepts.  It is not easy to produce a good and meaningful concept-map.  I guess, this junior rarely uses concept maps to be articulated and reflective.  Apparently from his question, it does resonate with that parts that he seems to be lacking of.  

While doing my PhD, I did many concept maps like this.  But, I find it difficult to draw a concept map in a white A4 paper.  So, I changed the medium.  I wrote on brown paper napkins that I could find inside any toilet in my school and it is FOC.  It did help me to stay focused on what I want to write and organise my thoughts.  In fact, a concept map is one of the ways that self-regulated learners will use to be reflective in a pictorial form.  There are research about this.   

So, when I crafted the assignments that I want to assign to my students taking SPPP1012 Educational Psychology, I want to them to be reflective.  Being reflective demands a person to have a certain routine and habit.  In this case, to produce a concept map for every topic learned also means helping students to develop a routine which I hope will turn into a habit.  2 in 1 thingy.  Students will learn how to produce concept maps and hopefully they could teach it to others.  Secondly, students might also develop good habits to summarise their thoughts in different forms i.e. pictorial format.  

What a heck!  As a teacher later on, the students will have to teach their secondary students how to illustrate points using I-think note (I-think note is a form of concept map).  How can they teach the students if they never had any experience to draw concept map before?   As an instructor, I ask the students to submit the concept map on regular basis because I would have a look at their concept maps and give my feedback so that their concept maps would be useful and more meaningful.  This is an example that I “show” real example to my students so that when they become teachers, they would make it as part of their habits to give feedback to students.  

For more information about I-think, check it out on KPM website.

As I marked the exam papers, I could not help from wondering this thing “What does it mean to be a truly educated person?”.  Looking at some of the lackluster inarticulate answers of my PG students, I was wondering what went wrong in my class.  Did I emphasis the wrong thing?  Did I emphasis exam results than what they should know regardless of whatever grade they might get? 

I encourage my students to be reflective.  I give them reflective questions.  When I found a note about what kinds of questions that self-regulated learners ask themselves, I share the note with my students.  In one class, I discussed with them about self-regulation model/theory and using the note, we discussed about how we can use it in different context of our lives.  I did my best in this case to guide my students not to be good test takers, but true learners.  But again, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink“.

But one thing that I notice is not many of my students are avid readers.  Meaning, not many of them like to read.  When I asked some of them if they have the textbook that I have recommended, NONE of them have the textbook (this was my UG class).  Unfortunately, it happens not only in my UG class, but also in my PG class.  The only difference is for my PG class, they realise the importance of having a textbook in the middle of semester, so by week 10 (there are only 14 weeks in one semester),  majority have the textbook.  Well, better late than never.  The UG class?  I rest my case. Perhaps they did borrow the textbook from the library and it is just that I don’t know about it (husn zahn in Arabic – or in English it means think positively or in Malay – bersangka baik)

I was marking the personality psychology paper.  I am sad.  I thought that they could answer well because they were allowed to bring in notes.  Well, apparently, some of them didn’t study well.  It can be seen from their answers.  A copy -paste answer with lack of articulation.  So, I decided to take a break for a few minutes by checking my email.  Sengtat has promised me to submit a part of the first chapter of his thesis.  I have yet to receive any email from him yet.  Sigh. 

As I browse the title and sender of the emails that I received, my eyes caught something.   “Thank you, Dr Hadijah”. 

Jolyn gave me an email to thank me for the best wishes card that I gave them yesterday (the first student who did so).  I never thought and expected any student to thank me.  After all, it is just a card.  

But, I want to make difference in my students’ life (in positive ways).  Like what my mentors have done for me.  For example, Yedullah Kazmi gave me books, pencil and whatsnot.  Every time I read the books that he gave me, I always remember the time when I was his student.  Even though he used to call me SII (stupid, idiot, ignoramus), but I never sulked or felt bad about it.  I consider it as a form of endearment.  What a heck!  It is not easy to be the chosen one to be called as such.   

But, I do believe that we need to invest in relationship.  It is quite easy to invest in it using money, but most difficult one is time and concern (care?).   

I don’t know how far my effort will leave its impact, but I do believe that “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together“

I have taught this course more than one semester.  It has been more than 5 years in fact.  I am not saying that I am an expert in this subject matter but I know the difficulty of remembering many theories related to personality which belong to different schools of thoughts.  It is not easy.  So, to help the students in this matter, I allow them to bring few pages (A4 size) of notes that they can bring to the exam hall.  

But I never thought that they would exchange their notes among themselves during the exam.  I never anticipate this thing could happen.  This was the first incident that happened in five years (and I hope this would be the last).  This is akin to cheating because you are looking at other people’s notes, rather than on your own.  I was informed by a student who saw this and I double checked it.  When I walked around nearby the conspirators, I noticed that there were notes with different hand-writing on both sides of them.  I knew instantly that what had been reported is true.  Indeed.

I didn’t want to spoil the “mood” so, I just kept it to myself.  But I would definitely not let this thing go without any punishment.  This is a classic example of “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” or in Malay “Diberi betis hendak peha“