The Conditions Under Which We Best Learn
Roland Barth presented the final session of our Leadership Institute and I thought he managed to tie up many threads in his inspired presentation.
In the course of a three hour session he managed to elicit responses from the audience which enabled him to identify the most positive conditions under which we learn. I’ll try to post later about the variety of presentation styles used in the course of the last ten days but Roland’s was a masterful display of someone who knows his business and knows how to engage an audience.
He started off by asking us to think of a time in our lives when we learned best.
The overwhelming features of our collective experiences were that we learn best:
- when we take a risk; and
- when there is a safety strap
Barth suggest that schools don’t take this approach - they play SAFE!!!
He argued that schools are information rich - but - experience poor.
He contrasted this with John Dewey’s assertion that:
We learn from our experience —if we reflect on our experience.
By collating all of the audiences reflctions upon situations when they learned best he separated them into idiosyncratic and generic conditions for learning.
The generic conditions for learning identified from the 150 people on our course were:
- Learn from mistakes
- Risk taking
- Urgency
- Self-reflction
- New experiences
- Emotional investment
- Support
- Fun/humour
- Curiosity
- Challenge
- Feeling respected
- Going into the unknown
- Given a reason for learning
He then asked us to think about how many of these conditions we meet in our schools - the answer was predictably few.
He summarised this by suggesting that learning in school can be:
Informative - (information)
or
Tranformative (changes you for ever)
He encouraged us to go for the GOLD standard which was -of course - the Transformative.
He slipped one little nugget in which I really liked but wonder how well it might go down in Scotland:
One district in the USA issued cards to all teachers and pupils which he described as a Permission to Learn card.
The card read as follows:
On one side : - this card entitles the holder to take one risk in their own learning
On the other side: - Today I took a risk - it didn’t go as well as I had planned but I learned that …………….?
The card does not give the holder the permission to place themselves or others at risk or danger.
Would it work in Scotland?????
Ewan McIntosh wrote:
It would, does, work in Scotland where the entitlement to take risks runs throughout the work/play of a class. The problem, as ever, is to get that excellent teaching shared and taken up by others.
The card could go either way in “Kailyard Scotland” - met with cynical jeers or taken up as a genuine tool to remind us to do something.
I also wonder if, when we are working collaboratively, one person taking a risk actually means the whole group is put at risk of failure, perhaps begrudgingly. How many times have we heard *after* the event: “I would never have done it that way, and now look what a mess you’ve gotten us into”? Jings, didn’t they even make films with that line…?
Posted on 30-Jul-07 at 8:33 am | Permalink
Ian Stuart wrote:
The card idea is a prompt. I, personally, feel that these rarely work and are mainly in place to ’show’ what has been done.
What needs to happen is a culture where ‘risk’ is the normal approach to learning. This would create an ethos of ‘challenge’, ‘creativity’ and a sense wonder to leaning.
One question for Ewan. “Risk of Failure”, how does the failure get defined?
Posted on 30-Jul-07 at 6:58 pm | Permalink
HIlery Williams wrote:
Surely our task as learners is to challenge ourselves to the point of failure - and make it safe to face that ‘failure’; to feel positive enough about our abilities to reflect mindfully upon the ‘mistakes’; and to work, probably with others, to find out how we can do it better next time.
And I think that demonstrating our understanding - whether with cards or another way - is important. If we can carry out actions that show that we have grasped a difficult concept, and somehow advance it if possible, it means that we can take knowledge and use it in new ways. And making this new understanding public embeds it for ourselves while perhaps enabling our mentors and peers to make their own connections.
Posted on 31-Jul-07 at 7:19 pm | Permalink
Don’s Learning Log » Blog Archive » Permission to Learn wrote:
[...] I recently came across the idea of a “permission to learn” card. [...]
Posted on 02-Aug-07 at 7:31 pm | Permalink
Don’s Learning Log » Blog Archive » Loss of the Future wrote:
[...] It was Roland Barth who asked us to think back to an incident in our life which had been our most intense learning experience. [...]
Posted on 19-Aug-07 at 10:26 am | Permalink