Module 1: IAT

I took the Male/Female  Career/Family IAT test.  I found taking the test troublesome, as it did not allow me to answer the questions as I wanted.   Both of my parents were teachers and my dad was also a swim coach.  Growing up, my mother did a majority of the rearing as my dad was busy with the swim team.  However,  the swim team was a part of my family.  We celebrated holidays as a family, we mourned losses as a family.  What I experienced was a large diverse group of people that helped raise me and influence who I am today.  Further, for most of my life at home, my family was the only Jewish family in the entire county.  When we first moved there, we were asked to leave by people who thought that Jews should not be a part of the community.   Dad ignored the requests (and in some cases, threats) and to this day my mom is an integral part of my hometown.  This, along with my swim team family, has helped define the lenses in which I look through, and it is one of extreme tolerance for individuals , their individual beliefs, and the roles they chose.    I did not understand why the IAT was so “black-white”  You were not allowed to choose which category you associated the word given.  I do not necessary associate female with family and  male with career.  As a matter of fact, my husband is (and has always been) a stay-at-home dad.  While he does have a job coaching the swim team, we as a family unit view the swim team as a family endeavor.   Needless to say, my results reflected my thoughts as I had a moderate association to female with career and male with family.

The process of learning is a culmination of associations.  We associate items to remember them.  I often have my students use acronyms to help them remember how to complete a certain mathematical procedure.  For example, GLAM is the acronym we use for solving multi-step equations.  G – grouping symbols.  L – like terms, A – undo addition, M – undo multiplication.  It works well for the students and I believe it is due to the fact they do not have to spend as much cognitive energy memorizing the acronym as they due the lengthy steps needed to solve a multi-step equation.   

James states that the teacher’s job is to build up useful associations.  “The more copious the associative systems, the completer the individual’s adaptations to the world “ (p. 42).  I believe the background in which I was raised enables me to adapt to various ‘bumps in the road’ most of the time, fairly easily.  Further,  I try to provide as many associative systems for my students when designing instruction in order for them to be able to apply what was learned to novel problems.