| 1 | Teaching and learning | |
Student learning is a vast topic. In this first word we describe a small number of simple but powerful ideas about student learning. These ideas suggest approaches to teaching, and can be used to select and plan teaching and learning methods.
Students' prior knowledge affects what they learn from you. We don't learn simply by accumulating facts and ideas. When we are told something, we relate it to things we already know or believe. We compare it to things we already know. We try to assimilate it into our current view or models of the world.
We may not do this instantly or completely. We may be willing to put our questioning, our critical faculties, on hold for a while. We may be willing to say, in effect, 'OK, this is all new and unfamiliar, I'll just listen to it and see how much sense it all makes on its own terms.' But we can't usually do this for long. Fairly rapidly -- certainly in much less than a hour's lecture or the reading of a chapter of a book, probably within a few minutes or even seconds -- we try to make connections with what we already know.
The relationship between prior or current knowledge and new learning is complex. When we hear or read new information or ideas or theories, we tend to test this against what we already know -- we check how it fits, how it relates. If the new ideas or information fit comfortably with what we know or believe, we are likely to accept what we are being told reasonably easily and quickly. On the other hand, if there is a mismatch between what we already know and what we've just heard or read, we have work to do.
We need to try to reconcile new with old knowledge. We may do this by modifying the new knowledge to fit our old schemas or world-views. Or we may change what we already believe to somehow accommodate what we've just been told. Or we try to make a new synthesis of the new and the old.
If all this is going on in the minds of our students as we teach them, little wonder that, at the end of a lecture, they're a little weary, and they haven't always learned precisely what we were trying to teach them.
How do we adapt our teaching to take account of this?
It is important for us to acknowledge that students are doing this complex set of tasks as we teach them. If we ask students to note down, or discuss briefly, what they already know about a new topic, we make it easier for them to relate what we are teaching them to what they already know.
If we acknowledge the complex business of learning as described here, and give them frequent opportunity and encouragement to reflect on what they're being taught and relate it to what they already know, we can aid the learning process.
These first words emphasise and re-emphasise that learning must be an active process. Let's add some more detail to what may otherwise become a cliche. Here's a five-stage account of the process of learning. In particular it is an account of learning from experience. Let's apply it to the production of an essay or report (but we could be doing any purposeful task).
First, it is suggested, we plan to do something -- in this case, write the essay or report. We may describe our plan in terms of what we intend to do -- 'write a 2000 word essay' -- or we may describe what we hope the essay will achieve -- 'describe Kolb's learning cycle and apply it to a particular example of learning'.
This of course is a cyclical account of the process of learning.
Learning occurs not from any single step in the cycle, but from going round the whole cycle; not just from doing, but from planning, then doing, then reflecting, then theorising and then applying and testing these theories in the next task. This idea of learning as a cyclical process adds considerably to the notion that learning is an active process. As well as involving action, learning entails planning, reflection on achievement, the construction of explanations and theories about the success or failure of what we have attempted, and then the use and the testing of those theories.
The cycle would better be represented as a spiral: with luck, subsequent voyages round the learning cycle represent advances, in knowledge and understanding and practice.
Our job as teachers is to provide students with the opportunity and the encouragement and the support to move repeatedly round this cycle as they progress through their studies.
We will be familiar with setting work tasks, and also with marking students' work. This cyclical account of learning suggests a number of things.
This may sound a little crude, rather like training rats. Sorry. But it's true. Students look to us for some direction. We cannot avoid influencing their behaviour. We must make sure that we reward what we really value, and that our students see us doing this. What moves us from rat trainers to teachers is that we can be quite explicit with our students about what we are doing and why, about what we are rewarding and how. We can debate our practice with our students. And if they persuade us to change our approach in some particulars, we can often do so.
Last modified: Friday, 24-Jul-09 09:29:26 BST