Commentary searching

"Commentary driving" is the technique of describing what you are doing and seeing as you are driving, and is a technique employed by instructors working to train the police, and as part of advanced driving tests.  It helps, it is said,  you use your eyes properly and improves your hazard perception.  Here, from driver trainer Chris Gilbert, is more information about the technique.  

What about commentary searching?   What about getting someone to describe what they are doing when they are searching, say, Medline, and why they are doing it?   Devising a mark scheme for this might be a bit of a challenge, but as a formative assessment?   Perhaps getting people in pairs to commentate on their search to each other?  And then to comment on each other's commentary?

Well, something to try in the new year, perhaps.

How much is enough?

Younger son's homework is to choose a country and find out about it.  He has a list of questions.  What is the climate like?   Does it rain?  Is it hot?   What animals live there?   What about the culture?

We found something about animals in "Planet Earth", a BBC related book he was given by a friend.  We found the names of three ("mountain monkey", kodkod, a small wild cat, and the pudu, the world's smallest deer, in case you want to guess which country it might be!).  

It was the weather that made me write this.   The country in question is so large that the climate in different parts of it is very different.  Some parts are very high, and cold, some parts are very far from the Equator and also a bit cold, but other parts are equatorial and tropical.   So what is the answer to the question on the sheet?  What would the answer be if the country was the UK?  Would it depend who you asked?  How much detail is required?   We went for an answer about how there was a range of climate, which is a way did not answer the question.

It made me think: how much detail was needed?   Was I thinking too hard about the question, which after all was designed for a 7 year old, not a *@ year old parent.  Was a quick to write sentence what was needed, even if it was not the whole story?  Was the point to be able to write something, or to realise that climate is different in different countries?

Then I thought, what about the level of detail needed when thinking about literature searching?   What a first year undergraduate needs to be able to do is different from a PhD researcher or systematic reviewer.   What a clinician looking for evidence for practice needs to find will be different from that systematic reviewer.  I think I knew this, but had not really thought about how it was ok not to go into detail or give what I, as an experienced searcher, thought was the complete answer.  An answer that enables people to do what they need to, at that time, is the one to look for.

The point of my son's question was not to test the knowledge or information finding powers of the parent, or to write a complete account, but to look for particular qualities in the student, which suggests that an answer incomplete to the parent is ok.

Practice based learning

Was at the optometrist, at the hospital.   With the optometrist was a doctor, a Specialist Registrar, undertaking ophthalmological training.  They were introduced as an observer, but in fact the optometrist asked several questions as the various tests were done.   What did they notice about what just happened (eye movement, for example)?   Did they notice a particular phenomenon?  What did that phenomenon mean?   And there were explanations, although some longer ones were obviously being saved for later, after I had left.

It is a side effect of being a medical librarian that visits to hospitals are fascinating.   Thank goodness that those visits have not been for me life threatening or life changing.  (Although a visit last year after a fight with a tramline was possibly more potentially life changing than I realised at the time, and it was still fascinating because I had no real idea while I was there what had happened and how I had got there, and no real thought at the time about how much more serious it could have been.  That thought has only come later).

But this one was fascinating for another reason.  It was interesting observing the observer, and observing the teaching (or facilitation of learning, if you would rather).

Would that method work for medical librarians?   The observer did not administer any of the tests, but they did observe and have to understand enough to answer the questions.  What did just happen?   What does it mean?    Could we just demonstrate searching techniques, say, and then ask about it?   Maybe it is preferable to get people doing active things, but if you have to teach a session using a search demonstration (because you are in a seminar room, for example), there are lessons here.  Perhaps later in the day, the observer got to administer the tests, of course that I will never know,

Two thoughts to end.  Interesting that -
 
- the one asking the questions and the one answering were not from the same professional group, and perhaps interesting that the one answering was a doctor and the one asking was an allied health professional (this may just show how out of date I am, although it is an example of interprofessional learning);

- the observer was not there to comment on the behaviour and technique of the other, as would happen if you went to the GP and a medical student was examining you.

Classroom observation

I get to take my younger son to school three mornings a week, not something every parent gets to do.  On the way home recently I found myself thinking about levels of understanding and evidence based practice.    As you do.

The children enter the classroom ten minutes before registration.  On the whiteboard (electronic) is a piece of work.  They do that work on individual whiteboards (the sort that need pens).   It might be writing down the nouns they can see in a picture, or adding adjectives to a sentence.  When ten minutes is up, the bell goes, and grown ups, who are allowed to stay and help with this work, have to go.

For some grown ups, "help" is writing the questions on the whiteboard for their child (the teacher would rather they didn't), for others (including me, sometimes), it is frustration when their child does not engage with the task.

Sometimes the whiteboard work is numbers, and recently it was partitioning numbers - 25 is 2 tens and 5 units, 123 is 1 hundred, 2 tens and 3 units, for example.

My son could not remember what to do.  He had done the work before, and at the time had understood it well enough to explain it to me.  On this occasion, everyone else on his table had made columns, one for hundreds, one for tens and one for units, and then filled them in.  Reading the question on the class whiteboard made me think this was a possible way to do it, but I could not remember how he had done it before.

I suggested he try the table and columns method.  Just before I left for home, though, the teacher mentioned to me that the column way of doing it was what one parent had done, and then everyone on that table had copied it.  I am not sure who copied it - parents or children - but it was not the method they had been shown in class.  That might explain why my lad was reluctant to do it that way, even though he could not remember how he had done it in class.  I wonder where the parent had come across the method?

The child next to him offered to help, but his help was to allow my lad to copy his table of columns.  My lad obviously did not understand what he was seeing but copied it anyway.

Several things occurred to me on the way home.

First, my lad had understood partitioning when he did it the first time, and had explained it to me.  When they had partitioning to do on whiteboards at that time, he had been able to do it.  And now not.  Why not?   Had he forgotten?   Lack of practice since?  What form did his understanding at the time take? The fact that I could not remember what he had explained to me is telling, too!

Then, he did not feel able to use the method that those around him were using.  I could see it made sense, but did he remember that it was not the method they had used before, even though he could not remember that method?

Then, what did the parents see as "help"?  Completion of the task?  Doing it for their child?   However, I am not sure I saw that - even if a parent writes down the questions, they don't write the answer.   Even if it was a parent who thought of the table and columns method of partitioning, it was the child who was filling in the numbers.

As someone involved in higher education, I then started to think about medical students.   They have learnt to do something in a particular way, and they might remember that way.  For example, they have learnt to search Medline in a particular way and might remember it for an exam.  But do they remember why that way is the "best" way, or a good way, at least?  Have I covered that in my teaching?  Can they apply those skills in another context?  They learn to search to complete an exercise, and again to pass an exam, but can they use it to find information for assignments or even, in due course, for patient care?   Do they see that those skills apply in those other contexts?   Can they remember those skills for long enough to use them in another context?  Or if they can't remember those skills, do they at least remember they need them, and go and learn them again?

What do they see as the aim of learning a particular thing?  Just to pass a test or click a box?  What application does it have?  And what happens when they have spent time learning other things, do they still remember it?

Then there is the "see one, do one, teach one" model - that is copying what you have seen.  Can you teach it if you don't understand it?   If you keep up to date and find out about a new way to do it, then do you need to understand what you did before in order to be able to change your practice? 

And having thought of all that, I got home.