Teaching means to
facilitate learning
Proposal for a 2 day training for teachers, in city college, Bangalore, India.
" You need chaos in your soul to
give birth to a dancing star". Nietzsche
“Inside you there’s an artist,” wrote the poet Rumi, “that you
don’t know about.” The creative element in our personality is the
psychological/spiritual strength that gives us incalculable potential for
self-expansion.
This seminar will be utilizing a variety of creative activities to teach us how
to utilise effectively our creative potential, develop spontaneity in our
interaction with others.
To find the freedom to express feelings without being worried about the
judgement of others.
You will learn to:
As you can take your student
only as far as you have taken yourself this course will be experiential rather
then theoretical, we will help each other to find those aspects within ourselves
first.
Rational
The course is structured so that much of the learning is experiential, as we believe that this has more beneficial and lasting results. Whilst a sound theoretical and philosophical grounding will be given, it is the linking of theory to personal experience and real life that is seen as essential to creative teaching. The course is seen as a joint exploration between the students and tutors. Students are encouraged to question ideas and assumptions, both their own, those implied in theory and those of the other course members (including the tutors).
Integration in our view does not simply mean bringing these approaches together in a new unified whole. We do not promote one model of integrative teaching. Instead we recognise the divergence between different points of view, and that at times they use different words to identify the same thing. We present these ideas to be studied and discussed.
In so doing we hope to avoid the over-emphasis on either thinking, feeling, physical sensation or behaviour at the expense of the other aspects of selfhood.
The actual process of integration is seen as being 'in progress' and, importantly, as work to be done by each student individually.
In this context the course aims to facilitate the integration of
cognitive, physical, behavioural and emotional understanding, within a social
context. In order to create a critically informed and sensitive foundation for
the further development of students’ self actualisation.
In
particular the course aims to:
· develop increasing self-awareness, emotional and sensory sensitivity, and reflective ability towards the relationship between self and others and help the student too become a social being.
· develop the capacity to use a range of skills in teaching including the ability to communicate effectively within appropriate working relationships, maintaining suitable boundaries between teacher and student, and reflect upon a range of interventions and their meaning to teacher and student
· develop appropriate attitudes, values, awareness and skills for work in individual, group and social and organisational settings
·
develop the students' own critique of what is meant by teaching
and learning.
The quality of relationship required for teaching practice cannot be acquired solely by either cognitive or experiential means. Each mode of learning must deepen and enrich the other to achieve the integration of understanding necessary to develop the learning process. Although students will be introduced to key concepts at a cognitive level, they will be encouraged through the examination of case material, the sharing of fellow students' personal experience and the exploration of their own inner world, to trace and experience the powerful process of such material in themselves and others.
This integration of cognitive and experiential learning provides the basis upon which students comprehend the power and complexity of material central to the activity of teaching and learning. It is a process of realisation that impels their return to search core concepts with increasing levels of critical awareness and precision and to search within themselves for increasing self-knowledge and sensitive understanding of others.
Our experience is that in paying attention to difference, respecting diversity and by holding the tension of the opposites, a richer unity and symbolism emerge for each student. The course work is designed to provide ongoing inter-related opportunities for students to develop their own position as social beings and members of society.
The course uses 'experiential teaching techniques' to study in detail the range of interactions between teacher and student. It addresses both the theoretical, content and process frameworks, which will enable students to understand these interactions, at a cognitive, emotional, sensory, and dynamic level.
Rationale
In this component the intention is to study in detail the interactions between teacher and student, and to provide a theoretical framework for the understanding of these interactions. The primary purpose is to enable the student to develop an awareness of each client's world and give informed, appropriate and feeling responses.
Aims
· To provide a setting for developing appropriate teaching/learning interaction;
· To increase self-awareness;
· To reflect on the individual teacher’s own contributing, personal agenda and how this affects the relationship;
· To provide constructive feedback that the student can use;
· To demonstrate the practical application of different teaching skills;
· To allow the student to develop his/her theoretical knowledge and its practical application;
· To explore different approaches to problems in a safe, learning setting.
Objectives
On completion of this course teachers should be able to:
1. conduct a teaching session showing an ability to form appropriate responses with reasonable consistency;
2. show an increased self-awareness, especially as applied to the process and dynamics of teaching sessions;
3. to develop understanding of teaching/learning skills and relate those to his/her teaching practice.
4. work with and apply personal and professional boundaries appropriately.
Learning is a change in a person’s behaviour resulting
from experience. That means that it is not enough for people to say that they
have learned something. There has to be also something that they do which is
evidence that the learning has taken place.
Learning can occur in three
areas: knowledge, skills and attitudes.
•Knowledge
Providing
students with some information they did not have previously may change how they
perceive that particular issue. Knowledge provides a context within which
skills can be used appropriately.
•Skills
Showing
students how to do something and then letting them practice may increase their
confidence in a particular skill. Skills are mastered through practice and
feedback. The process of learning skills is gradual and involves making
mistakes and therefore needs the constant support of the tutor.
•Attitudes
Providing
students with a new experience may modify their attitudes. Attitudes arise from
the set of beliefs formed as a result of a person’s individual history and
experience and which inform this person’s view of the world. Whether
deep-seated attitudes can be changed through training is debatable, but new
experiences may modify attitudes.
Learning takes place if the
above changes lead to a different behaviour.
Learning which is based on the
student’s experience within the training session rather than on tutorial input
of the relevant information alone is much more effective. This experience
stresses the importance of the awareness of the process and active
participation.
G. Kelly, who developed
Personal Construct Theory, has seen people as ‘scientists’ who make hypotheses
about life, which are based on their interpretation of reality as they
experience it. Personal constructs are developed through experience and are
constantly adapted in the light of ongoing events. We learn how to order our
world in the light of our experience; therefore learning which creative experiences
can develop and enrich the individual’s constructs.
C. Rogers believed that the
individual’s self-concept was a social product, shaped by the interaction with
the environment. In order for people to develop a healthy self-concept, they
need to experience unconditional acceptance, positive regard, empathy and
congruence from ‘significant others’. He encouraged educators to be learners,
to be involved as a total person in the process of teaching and learning, to
offer students experience and resources rather than direction and leadership.
A. Maslow said that there is
no substitute for experience, that basic knowing is a direct, intimate
experiential knowing. He identified the tension between the basic need for
safety and security (the base of the pyramid) and the need to change and grow.
Growth requires courage and involves risk taking, a willingness to break away
from old patterns of behaviour, making mistakes and being open to new ideas.
The elements of learning can
be provided by experiential learning structures, which would also meet basic
safety needs. In this type of structure students can feel free to use their new
experiences to learn and change.
How the student experiences
the teaching is crucial. The knowledge delivered by the tutor and passively
received by the students will confirm the message that in order to develop
themselves they need to be dependent on the expert, who will read their minds
in order to determine their needs.
The basic principle of
experiential learning is that the learner’s actual experience plays a
significant role. the learner is directly involved in an event and then draws
learning from it. This is an active type of learning - of doing rather than
receiving.
David Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning
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A.
Concrete
experience: What is happening? The personal involvement in
experiences.
B. Reflective
observation: What happened? The understanding of the ideas and situations by
observing them, and reflecting on that observation.
C. Abstract conceptualisation:
What does it mean? The use of logic and a systematic approach to problem
solving.
D. Active
experimentation: What shall I do as a result? Practical application in order to
achieve goals.
There must be a link between
what the student is taught and his or her perception of a present situation.
Things that students are asked to learn must logically connect with what they
already know.
The starting point for
training is this: what is the student’s present understanding of this
particular situation covered by the training session? How much do they already
know?
This link is made without
putting the students down for their ignorance of theoretical understanding.
If the tutor does not make a
link between the student’s present understanding and his or her own
theoretically informed understanding the students’ learning may not take place.
Tutors must therefore have knowledge relating to the content of the session, but must also take into account how to structure the session to maximize students’ learning.
It may be useful to start with
an exercise, followed by questions and discussion and tutor’s input.
Any exercise needs to be
clearly linked to the material presented.
Checking how much students
already know engages them actively in the process from the beginning and
enables the tutor to make an input at the right level. Mix formal instructions
with some activity: exercise in small groups, followed by big group feedback
and allow time for questions to be answered.
Presenting too much detailed information
in one session will cause students to forget it, so allow me for the summary of
the main points or review the session briefly the following month, clearing up
any misconceptions.
At the very beginning of the
course, provide a model of interpersonal skills. Make a clear group Contract
discussing the aims for the course, for each term, for each session; discuss
shared responsibilities for the results. Invite discussion around expectations,
anxieties and special needs and around creating an atmosphere of safety,
respect, trust, honesty and openness.
Explain to the students that
training is a shared enterprise and that they do not have to abdicate their
power to you. You are responsible for providing structure and content, but will
also respond to their needs as far as possible if they let you know about them.
One of the most common
complaints at the end of courses is that students had too little time to make
links with the learning they bring to the course. Sometimes they say the tutor
has dismissed knowledge and skills from previous experience. Tutors need to be
alert to possibilities of enrichment through this linking and welcome it gladly
for the student, the group and themselves.
Person-centred Teaching and Learning
Rogers believed that anything
that can be taught to another person is relatively inconsequential and has
little, or no significant influence on behaviour. The only learning which
significantly influences behaviour is self-discovered learning. Such personally
discovered truth, which has been assimilated in experience, can not be directly
communicated to another person.
In some teaching the results
can be damaging. This type of teaching seems to cause the individual to
distrust his/her own experience and to stifle any significant learning.
Therefore the outcome of traditional teaching is either unimportant or hurtful.
One of the best, but most
difficult ways to learn is to drop your own defensiveness, at least
temporarily, and to try to understand the way in which the experience seems to
appear and feels to the other person.
Another way of learning is to
state your own uncertainties, to try to clarify your puzzlements, and this way
attempt to get closer to the meaning that your experience has for you.
No one
learns significantly from conclusions. The goal of education is the
facilitation of change and learning. The only person who is educated is the
person who has learned how to learn, how to adapt and change; a person who has
realised that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking
knowledge, not the ‘possession of’ static knowledge gives a basis for security.
The purpose of the
facilitation of learning is to transform the members of the group, including
the facilitator, into a community of learners: to free their curiosity, to
permit individuals to go in new directions dictated by their own interests, to
unleash their sense of inquiry, to open everything to questioning and
exploration, to recognise that everything is in process of change.
Out of such group experience
arise true students, real learners, creative scientists and scholars, and
practitioners, the kind of individuals who can live in a delicate but ever
changing balance between what is presently known and the flowing, moving,
altering problems and facts of the future. In this way we can learn to live as
individuals in process.
What conditions encourage
self-initiated, significant, experiential, “gut-level” learning by the whole
person? These conditions are revolutionary and do not rest upon the teaching
skills of the leader, upon his/her specialised knowledge, upon the learning
programme, lectures, books and presentations, which are all useful resources.
The facilitation of learning rests upon certain attitudinal qualities that
exist in the personal relationship between the facilitator and the learner.
Qualities or Attitudes that Facilitate Learning
•Realness of
the facilitator
His or her
genuineness, without facade, being able to experience his/her own feelings and
being able to communicate them if and when appropriate. The facilitator needs
the ability to enter into a direct personal encounter with the learner, meeting
her on a person-to-person basis.
Realness means
being enthusiastic, or bored, interested in students, angry, sensitive and
sympathetic; accepting those feelings as our own and not imposing them on
students. The facilitator of learning possesses attitudes of passionate
realness, vitality, conviction; giving her students a great deal of responsible
freedom; using a sense of humour, conducting the class on a personal level,
being a ‘sharer’; being perceptive and sensitive to students’ thoughts and
feelings. Students grow by being in contact with a facilitator who really and
openly is.
•Prizing, Acceptance and Trust
Is
another attitude that facilitates learning; prizing the learner, her feelings,
her opinions, her person. It is caring for the learner in a non possessive way.
It is an acceptance of the other individual as a separate person, having worth
in her own night. It is a basic trust, a belief that this other person is
somehow fundamentally trustworthy.
A
facilitator possessing this kind of attitude can fully accept students’ fears
and hesitations with which they approach new problems. He or she can also
accept students’ satisfaction when they have achieved their desired goals, as
well as their occasional apathy or desire to explore byroads of knowledge. The
facilitator accepts personal feelings of students both those that promote
learning and those that disturb the learning process, such as rivalry, problems
with authority or feelings about personal adequacy. It is crucial to see the
students as persons with real feelings and needs, as individuals who want to
think for themselves.
The
student-centred teaching method provides an ideal framework for learning, not
just for the accumulation of facts, but more important, for learning about
themselves in relation to others. The facilitator who cares, who prizes, who
trusts the learner creates a climate of mutual respect.
•Empathic Understanding
A
further element, which creates a climate for self-initiated experiential
learning, is empathic understanding. When the teacher has the ability to
understand students’ reactions from the inside, and when he/she has a sensitive
awareness of the way the process of education and learning is experienced by
each student, than the likelihood of significant learning is increased.
Students
feel appreciative when they are not evaluated, not judged, but understood from
their own point of view, not the tutor’s.
Realness is the most important
attitude. It is more constructive to be real than to put on a facade of caring.
To be genuine, congruent, or real, means to be this way about oneself. I cannot
be real about another because I do not know what is real for him. I can only
tell, if I wish to be truly honest, what is going on in me.
When we make judgments, they
are almost never fully accurate and hence cause resentment and anger as well as
guilt and apprehension.
The achievement of realness is
most difficult. Only slowly do we learn to be truly real. First we must be
close to our own feelings, to be aware of them and then we must be willing to
take the risk of sharing them as they are inside, not disguising them as
judgments, or attributing them to other people.
It is not possible to hold
these three attitudes of realness, prizing and empathic understanding and to
commit yourself to becoming a facilitator of learning unless you achieve a
profound trust in the human organism and its potential. If I distrust the human
being, then I must cram her/him with information of my own choosing lest they
go their own mistaken way. But if I trust the capacity of human individuals for
developing their own potential, then I can provide them with many opportunities
and permit them to choose their own way and their own direction in their
learning.
The true facilitators of
learning rely on their students’ tendency towards fulfilment, towards
actualisation. They believe that the students who are in real contact with
problems that are relevant to them wish to learn, want to grow, seek to
discover, endeavour to master, desire to create, and move towards
self-discipline. The facilitator’s role is to develop a quality of climate in
the classroom and a quality of personal relationship with the students that
will permit these natural tendencies to come to their fruition.
These facilitating attitudes
come about through taking risks, through acting on tentative hypotheses.
Rogers admitted: “I started my
career with the firm view that individuals must be manipulated for their own
good. I only came to the attitudes of realness, acceptance and empathy and the
trust in the individual that is implicit in them, because I found that these
attitudes were so much more potent in producing learning and constructive
change”.
In summary he said: I believe
that it is only by risking oneself in these new ways that the teachers can
discover, whether or not they are effective, whether or not they are for them.
When the facilitators create,
even to a modest degree, a classroom climate characterised by all that they can
achieve of realness, prizing and empathy; when they trust the constructive
tendency of the individual and the group, then they discover that they have
inaugurated an educational revolution. Learning of a different quality,
proceeding at a different pace, with a greater degree of pervasiveness occurs.
Feelings - positive, negative, confused become a part of the classroom
experience. Learning becomes life and a very vital life at that. The students are
on the way, sometimes excitedly, sometimes reluctantly, to becoming learning,
changing beings.
Respect for the students is
communicated by:
• the tutor’s availability for
the training needs of students
• the tutor’s personal engagement
in the work towards the achievement of the course outcomes
• regard for the individuality of
the students, their specific abilities and learning styles
• monitoring the boundaries of
confidentiality and training relationship
• allowing students freely to
express their opinions on the theoretical concepts which may challenge their
existing values and beliefs
• setting and maintaining clear
learning contracts regarding times of assessments
• providing quality feedback on students’
practical and written work
• maintaining high, but realistic,
expectations
• being trustworthy, reliable and
consistent and providing a role model of appropriate behaviour with clients,
colleagues and students
• regard for the student’s
vulnerability and the individual process of becoming a person and a citizen
• providing clear pre-course
information on the course structure
• encouraging students to take
responsibility for their own learning
The tutor’s intention enables
the tutor and the students to be aware that every step of the learning process
leads to the intended outcomes. Intention includes:
• presentation of clear course
objectives at the beginning of the course, and before each learning module
• specific expectations for
attendance and participation in all course activities
• information about dates for
assessment and procedures regarding referrals, extensions and appeals
• clear understanding of all
assessment criteria
• information about standards for
the assessment and moderation system
• expected codes of practice within
the course and in the placements
• expectation on the regularity of submission
of work for feedback
• expectation of ongoing professional
development through reading and personal study
• awareness of the student being at the heart
of all the learning processes
Intention offers psychological
holding through achievement of clarity of purpose, but it must not limit
learning or attempt to control the students.
Flexibility leaves room for discussion, some
negotiation and compromise in order to help the students meet the course
requirements. It is achieved by:
• non-defensive listening to the students’ concerns
• engaging students in problem-solving when appropriate
• presenting each session with clarity and enthusiasm, to provide
a relatively stress-free and enjoyable learning environment
Guidelines for Trio
Work
You may find these notes useful when preparing your
students for exercises and role plays within the course sessions.
This is to enhance the
relevance of the material studied to real life experiences.
Working in 3’s (as expert, Client and Observer).
Others design the trio work on the course to offer opportunities for skills
practice, and to observe the use of skills.
As Client: it is useful if you can use the outlined
role-play and develop a sense of the client’s feelings in the given situation.
Your function is to assist the expert in practising skills. It is not useful if
you deliberately block the session or simply talk all the time.
• be prepared to respond to interventions made by your expert
• be congruent with your responses i.e., if your expert makes you
feel like explaining further, do. If the expert makes you irritated or angry,
respond accordingly
• respond to verbal and non-verbal communications where
appropriate. (This will help your client to explore the role allocated in more
depth).
• use skills to encourage greater exploration
of the role being presented
As Observer your role is to
note the specific skills being used by the expert
·
what
was said?
·
how
did it influence the client?
·
what
was going on in the session?
Syllabus
Time 10am – 5pm
Day 1.
10am – 11:30am
Experiential exercise to become our of my social place in life.
This is useful to help young people integrate into the group.
Followed by discussion and practical applications into the classroom life.
11:30 am – 11:45am
Tea brake
11:45am – 1pm
enhancing team work and cooperation true art work.
Discussion
Practical applications.
(material needed, A1 papers and colours – crayons)
1pm – 2pm
Lunch break
2pm – 3:30pm
creative applications to learning and teaching.
Using imaginary, guided visualisations, role play,
Followed by discussion and practical applications.
3:30pm – 3:45pm
Tea brake.
3:45pm – 5pm
Working with feelings.
Helping young people to identify their feelings and expressing their needs.
Followed by discussion and practical applications.
Day 2
10am -11:30am
Ten object exercise, to develop awareness about my perception of life.
11:30 am – 11:45am
Tea brake
11:45am – 1pm
10 objects continued
1pm – 2pm
Lunch break
2pm – 3:30pm
Jo – Harry window.
develop a method to become aware of the interaction dynamics which
occur between self and other.
Self is as you see yourself. It is sometimes easier to ask
people to think of’ self as ‘me’.
Other is the other person in the interaction.
3:30pm – 3:45pm
Tea brake.
3:45pm – 5pm
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a tool for motivation.
Enhancing Mission, Passion and compassion.
Course summary.