February 18th, 2006: I tested in the martial art Taekwon-Do for my first-degree of black belt. I had been training for five years to get to that point, and upon reaching it, I thought to myself, “now what?” In good fashion, I took on the opportunity to begin teaching the martial art, thinking that that would take my learning to the next level. In those first months, and years, of teaching the art, I realized that a lot of what we did was based on tradition and not necessarily on evidence of efficacy. I often wondered to myself, is there a better way to learn?
May 9th, 2014: I graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. After doing an internship in an open enrollment ESL class for two years, spending a summer in Beijing teaching English for a practicum, and generally going through the necessary rigors to learn what it is to teach English as a language, I walked across that stage and again wondered “what have I learned?”
Personally, I struggled after both of these events to understand how I learn, what I have learned, and what it is therefore to teach. My current studies are my pursuit of the answer to those questions. In a digital age, learning is changing. I believe that learning takes place through both situated practice and earnest studying. With my martial arts as a prime example, telling me how to form a first and execute a punch only ever gets so far: at some point you just have to show me and let me do it, expecting corrections to follow. The trial and error component of learning is often forgotten in the wake of standardized tests and meeting performance objectives. I know fourth-degree black belts that still cannot execute certain kicks correctly, but they at the least comprehend the reasons behind that. Compare that to students in twelfth grade who still do not understand algebra or why it is important. Learning is made perfect when it has just the right blend of the invested teacher, the collaborative classroom, the situated practices, the necessary standards to meet, and a little bit of elbow grease. Learning does not necessitate ease, though I do believe we need to adjust to using better methods that allow for more learning overall.
If I were to claim a specific epistemology, I’d say that I am a pseudo-cognitive, behavioral, social constructivist with a bent towards active learning and lecture. Tongue in cheek aside, I do recognize value in techniques that have been used over the ages. Frankly, how are we to say that the lecture fails to teach if there were learners over the centuries who must have suffered lecture after lecture and yet came out all right? Now, while we see an evolution of learning techniques and tools, I think we must also acknowledge an ontological change in learners. Our society has changed from an industrial one to a technological one. You can go from your first teenage job to your retirement only ever holding a computer-based job in this century. Never before has that been possible. Most of us started out at 13 with our lawn mower and rake or a snow shovel in the winter, walking from house to house trying to get any dollars we could. Today, young people are coding in elementary school, vlogging reviews about tech products, and building multimillion dollar products out of college projects.
Therefore, I think that we are in the midst of a shift in roles of teacher and learner. Teachers must learn to be adaptive to learners’ needs, while learners must healthily accept the skill of being information gathers and still maintain a regard for the value of information. If there’s something that teachers can continue to do for learners, it is to help guard learners from going too far. Oftentimes, I think we might try to swing the pendulum in reaction to new research or methodologies, but teachers are those who have had more years of practice behind them. Allow and encourage teachers to maintain a hedge of guidance that will keep students from forsaking history, become consumed by art, or fail to learn about STEM. Learning is a dynamic art-science, and so I am not sure if we can yet appropriately and accurately measure how someone learns. I have taught in a system that allowed me to track my learning objectives as best as I possibly could, and I still do not believe that at the end of the semester it reflected my students’ understanding of course content. So, what then must we do to quantify learning? Research is making headway in that area, and the fact that we do not live in a cognitive, educational environment anymore is a reflection of that effort. However, I think that we need to capitalize on the technologies that are available to push education into its next era.
What technology does for us while we go through this change is it keeps us locked into systems that can be evaluated, upgraded, and redirected. If we become married to a technology that eventually fails current research, then we can either abandon or redefine the technology. The benefit there is that all people using the technology must fall in line or jump ship: and I think both reactions are healthy and necessary. Growth is painful, and we must accept that as we continue to push the boundaries and find out whether learning will someday be like the Matrix.
Excelsior!
WVHI