Copyright 2004 by Kelvin Seifert. Please do not quote or circulate without express permission of the author.

Teaching Ambiguity and Its Limits in Educational Psychology

The Interplay of Ambiguity and Its Limits

Of themselves, classroom events rarely have single, transparent interpretations, but are more likely to have multiple meanings and implications; in this sense they are usually, and perhaps inherently, ambiguous. Yet for any classroom experience, there are also limits to the range of interpretations that are reasonable and possible. This interplay-between ambiguity and its limits-is important for preservice teachers to learn. Ideally, new teachers should reflect on alternative interpretations of what they see, but also assess the limits of their reflections-discerning when alternatives are not merely different, but improbable or unreasonable.

I wish to describe a way I've used to develop sensitivity the interplay of ambiguity and its limits as students learn about educational psychology. By nature, the method does not focus on teaching of any single concept from the field, but focuses instead on highlighting relationships among at least two concepts simultaneously, and on how the concepts might be expressed in classrooms.

A Strategy for Highlighting Ambiguity in Practice

In teaching educational psychology to preservice education students, I focus nearly every class session on one or more narratives about classroom learning or teaching experiences. The narratives are brief (1-2 paragraphs each) and may come from students, from my own teaching experience, or from a text which is particularly rich in narrative examples (i.e. Seifert, 1999). As in many courses about educational psychology, I use the narratives to illustrate concepts the topic currently being discussed. In my course, however, I deliberately discuss each narrative in terms of several additional major concepts, recalling both those studied earlier and foreshadowing those planned for detailed coverage later.

As the course progresses, students have opportunities to write and analyze narratives of their own devising, always striving to interpret them in terms of more than one concept at once (preferably 2-3 at a time, depending on the concept and the narrative). By end of the course, thanks to this practice, most students can, with at least modest fluency, write brief narratives (or anecdotes) and analyze them in terms of multiple meanings based on educational psychology. Here is one, for example, written by a student about 3/4's of the way through the course:

Billy was a four-year-old who lived in a small house, on a small street, in a small town, with his small family. Everyone in town knew them, but they had few close friends, because Billy and his parents were all deaf, and used American Sign Language to communicate. Billy had not started school yet, and ASL was the only language he knew.

One day, Billy was playing in his front yard sandbox. A four-year-old girl who lived a few houses down came walking along the sidewalk with her mom and stopped in front of Billy. [After a brief, non-verbal greeting between the Moms and between Jenny and Billy,] Jenny joined him in the sandbox, and Billy had made his first friend. Billy didn't really understand why Jenny couldn't understand his language, but it didn't really matter to them, and they found ways around it. To get her attention, he would nudge her. If he wanted her to pass him something, he would point to it. If he wanted her to come somewhere, he would take her hand and drag her. Jenny did the same.

Billy continued to play with Jenny until summer ended. Then Jenny went to the local kindergarten, and Billy went by bus to a school for the deaf. At school, Billy made friends who were also deaf, and Wayne become one of these. Wayne lived in a neighbouring town; he could draw cars and tell jokes with his hands. As they grew older, Billy appreciated Wayne more and more. He knew he could "tell" Wayne things with ASL, and that they shared common interests.

Billy still saw Jenny once in a while around town, but now they just waved hi, but that was all. He no longer played with Jenny. It had become important to Billy that his friends be able to communicate with him in his language-and Jenny couldn't. Jenny had made new friends too, mostly girls, and spent a lot of time talking with them. She didn't reach out to Billy, because he wouldn't fit in with her new friends. Over time, they even forgot how close they had been as young children.

In this story, the author pointed out four major concepts or issues which we had discussed in educational psychology:

1) stages of friendship development as described by Robert Selman and William Damon-the earlier friendship was a matter of convenience, whereas the later friendships were based on shared interests, activities, and skills;

2) development of gender segregation as a contributor to gender roles-one reason why Billy and Jenny did not stay friends was because of their increasing immersion in the separate worlds of boys and girls;

3) ASL as a full-fledged language-signing functioned as a language for Billy, and was experienced as a "foreign" language by Jenny;

4) inclusion/segregation of persons with disabilities-the educational system failed, in this case, to bridge the gap between the deaf and the hearing, and left Billy at risk for marginalization in the long run.

To be successful, students' narratives and analyses must have several qualities:

1. To insure broad coverage, students must use no concept more than once during the test as a basis for a narrative or its interpretation.

2. To insure that students understand the extent and nature of ambiguity in educational psychology, I also require that each narrative be analyzed in terms of at least two possible concepts. For the "final" writing event, they have to analyze the narrative in terms of three major concepts.

3. To insure that students and I understand each other about what counts as a "major" concept in educational psychology, I ask students to recommend concepts to be used for analysis on each test, based on discussions held among themselves prior to the test. I use students' recommendations as much as possible, but reserve the right to modify or depart from students' choices where appropriate.

To assess the exams themselves, I use a simple rubric based on the concepts are illustrated clearly, accurately, and appropriately, and on whether they integrate more than one concept into a single story, and on whether they relate as much as possible to classroom or other teaching and learning situations.

Seifert, Kelvin. (1999). Constructing a psychology of teaching and learning. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

1. Please address correspondence to Dr. Kelvin Seifert, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2.

2. The story quoted in this article was written by Lisa Ayow, a student in the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Manitoba. I wish to thank Ms. Ayow for permission to quote and discuss her story here.