2.2 Discussion
My ICE Origin Story
I first came across the ICE model as a master’s student at Queen’s University. My professor at the time, who was teaching a Qualitative Research Methods course, used the ICE model as a framework for a rubric tied to a major assignment. The assignment was multi-part and required us to observe a teaching and learning scenario, take field notes, conduct a follow-up interview with an instructor, analyze the data, and write a final report. These tasks were critical learning opportunities in developing the skills, mindsets, and knowledge for conducting research in a trustworthy manner.
The Ideas that were shared in the final report highlighted my descriptions captured through field notes, the interview, and observations, and the Connections appeared as my interpretations made through the conceptual lens of the theories that I connected to as well as my own lived experience. This process helped me to make sense of the data in light of the contextual factors in the teaching and learning scenario. Finally, the Extensions involved the weaving of multiple sources in my paper and were critical in the reporting process to highlight a triangulated approach in answering questions of interest. And further in practice, this meant that I was expected to draw on multiple, diverse perspectives from the scholarly work in the field and begin the work of theorizing and finding my own academic voice in the process.
The assignment instructions were detailed, and the rubric was qualitatively descriptive about learning, intentionally mapped to each frame of Ideas, Connections, and Extensions. The ICE framework helped to elicit and prompt an in-depth analysis of the situation with rich interpretations of the data collected. And with a clear characterization of learning at each level, I was able to intentionally process new information and events, uncover patterns and themes, and then systematically make sense of how they might apply to other scenarios and contexts of teaching and learning.
Teaching and Learning as an Adjunct
Following graduate school I worked as an adjunct instructor and educational developer at a number of institutions in Ontario. Now assuming a facilitator role to both students and colleagues, I found that the clarity provided by the ICE model had a transformative effect on the ways that I was able to communicate the scope and nature of the learning in each of these contexts.
Many of the courses that I’ve taught as an adjunct professor were in music education, which focused on exploring notions of teaching and learning through various experiential activities. For example, I would have the learners participate directly in an activity that they might use in their own classes. One activity that I often included in the music pedagogy course was the creation of a machine using only sounds and motions that learners create with their bodies and voices. The ICE model became an intuitive way to conceptually and contextually experience the recursive process of making their machine. With each machine, they began with an Idea or concept expressed through various musical elements (rhythms, timbre, dynamics, melody). Students were required to make intentional choices about what kind of machine and what types of sounds they might explore in the process, and were asked to connect Ideas across individuals and domains (physical/cognitive/emotional).
In this activity, one of the main themes to convey pedagogically was the notion of gestalt in music teaching and learning; that is, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. This concept applies to many cases and examples in music education where ensemble work is involved. In facilitating Connections, many students considered questions and explored curiosities related to the combination and complexity of sounds and further experimented with the manipulation of various musical elements and their effect. Finally, the Extensions showed up in a deep, reflective process, both through writing and dialogue, when students shared the ways that music-making activities intersect and influence the self, the collective, and the field of music education at large. Overall, the students’ dynamic exchange of individual Ideas expressed initially through sound and movement became an interwoven series of connected stories and theoretical threads that led to a collaborative dialogue about significant themes of teaching and learning, both musical and extra-musical in nature.
Another instance in the music pedagogy course, where I was able to engage learners through ICE involved the co-creation of a rubric. In this case, the use of ICE conceptually enabled congruence between theory and practice, and became an opportunity for students to share lived experiences from their Bachelor of Education courses and their practicum field placements. In our co-creation of the rubric, a process informed by Andrade’s work (2005), we started with a draft rubric, which we used as a starting place upon which we could build a shared language and engage in consensus making.
We deconstructed the language and explored their conceptions of various concepts and terminology. This collaborative process encouraged students to think about their own conceptions of teaching and learning in relation to the experiences in the music pedagogy course, and in the Bachelor of Education program. As we worked through examples and shared experiences of what learning looked like, felt like, and sounded like at each of the three frames of learning in the rubric–Ideas, Connections, and Extensions–students reported eureka moments when they experienced a familiar concept in an entirely new way. Each time a qualitative description was examined, we layered on complexity through a process of sense-making that involved challenging assumptions, and trying on multiple perspectives to arrive at new and meaningful understandings. ICE, as an organizing frame, enabled the group to go deeper and unpack what we were taking for granted once we’d developed a shared language. In support of a grounded and transformative process of learning, the ICE model provided an opportunity to organise our thinking about learning in a manner that bypassed theoretical abstractions in favour of accessible and inclusive acts of knowledge-creation.
An ICE Community of Practice: Cultivating a Process Pedagogy
In the summer of 2018, Sue and I invited a group of 12 faculty members from a variety of disciplines who were working at universities across Ontario to engage in a community of practice focused on the ICE model of learning and assessment. Over the course of two years, we met face to face and online, engaging the group in a series of educational development and interactions with one-to-one consultations, small group activities, and large group discussions. Because we wanted to honour the process as much as the outcome, we purposefully designed our interactions and activities for this group with an educative mindset rather than an instrumental one.
Characteristically, educational developers envisage possible futures for transformative professional learning by creating spaces and places that are inclusive, reflective, and open. We set out to create spaces for reflection, mindfulness, and intentionality in the process pedagogy in putting together this book. Cultivating relationships, as well as inspiring and influencing enhancements in teaching and learning, are at the heart of the work that Sue and I do as educational developers. The ICE project has been one such opportunity to connect with faculty to learn with and from one another through stories of respective teaching and learning spaces. We noticed along the way that faculty participants gained greater insights into their own teaching practice and their students’ learning, through the inquiry and writing process, and the act of articulating and exchanging stories.
The writing process initially evolved through the conceptual weaving of a variety of sources: Wilcox’s (2009) work on self-study as educational development; Wyatt and Gale’s (2014) exposition of collaborative writing as inquiry; Healey, Marquis, and Vajoczki’s (2013) exploration of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through collaborative writing groups; and the Bowen theory-informed use of Teaching Triangles. In group conversations over the two-year span, there were moments that highlighted similar themes across cases, and also moments that emphasized the diversity and unique nature of the application of the ICE model. Some of our favourite moments took place when the conversation diverged in unexpected ways and we saw the ICE model playing out in informal aspects of participants’ lives with windows of opportunity to share deep insights about teaching and learning practice with one another.
ICE as Educational Development
I started my career as an educational developer at the University of Guelph, where I met Mavis Morton, one of the other contributing authors in this book. As part of my role, I observed the creative ways that she incorporated ICE into a fourth-year seminar class and was blown away by the ease with which students were using the ICE model to articulate their own learning process. The focus on learning, as opposed to grading, was facilitated through a thoughtful set of tools that included a rubric, aligned formative and summative assessments, and activities that enabled a level of critical and creative thinking that I had not witnessed before at the undergraduate level.
My next role in educational development, at the University of Waterloo, offered multiple opportunities to work closely with faculty one on one to co-create their online and blended learning experiences. It was at Waterloo that I met John Johnston, who I worked with in the design and development of his first year Earth Science course. It was the first time that John had developed an online course and the first time that I had worked with a STEM professor. We met on a weekly basis for over a year and worked asynchronously on various drafts of content. It was the ICE model, from my perspective, that offered a powerful way to communicate the development of student competencies and mindsets that would operate at a micro level of assignments and activities. As a framework, ICE conceptually held the course together and offered a transferability and extendability of key principles to several of his other courses regardless of modality. The ICE model ultimately provided John and his TAs, students, and co-instructors with a shared language that accurately depicted the nature and quality of learning expected in the course.
One of the courses that I examined in my dissertation as a graduate student was “The Lived Experience of Disability,” which highlights Professor Anne O’Riordan as an instructor within the Occupational Therapy program at Queen’s University, as well as Bill Meyerman, who was a long-standing patient mentor for the course. In her chapter, Anne speaks in detail about one of the critical course components, the reflective journal. As aspiring occupational therapists, the students were expected to use journals as part of preparing them authentically for professional practice. From the outset of the course, the deepening of thinking and learning was both subtly and overtly connected to the ICE framework with a thoughtful juxtaposition of the ORID (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decisional) framework (Stanfield, 2008). What is also important to note pedagogically is the choice that was provided for students to express themselves in creative and critical ways in the journal through visuals, sound, poetry, and prose.
