Читать книгу Future-Focused Learning - Lee Watanabe Crockett - Страница 9

Оглавление

chapter 2

Connection Through Context and Relevance

In this shift, I detail the importance of context and relevance to engaging students in their own learning. To give you a sense of why context and relevance are important to learning, I offer you an example from my own experience.

Living in Japan has been a tremendously rewarding and incredibly challenging experience for me. My language skills are fine for casual conversation, but I rely heavily on others for deeper conversations. To read and understand typical expressions and sentences in Japan, one must understand hiragana, katakana, and basic kanji.

The hiragana and katakana alphabets each contain 107 characters, which represent the sounds of Japanese and foreign words respectively. Beyond these, there are thousands of kanji, or Chinese characters. The set of kyōiku kanji, which students must learn by grade 6, alone contains 1,006 characters. Each of these can take twenty or more pen strokes to create, and learners must be able to write them with the correct stroke count, order, and direction as well as know their Japanese and Chinese readings. This is not a task most would want to undertake. It’s probably also why none of my friends want to spend an evening with me. However, I am highly motivated and committed to this process, because I find the study fascinating and enlightening. Living in Japan, having non-English-speaking family and friends, and studying traditional arts, music, and Buddhism, all of which happen in Japanese, instill a high degree of relevance and motivate me to continue studying.

In order to learn something, it must stimulate your curiosity—in other words, interest comes before learning does. Connection and relevance occur when we stimulate an emotional response. Learners can be inspired, excited, curious, happy, or outraged as the result of a provocation, which, as the word means, provokes a response. Yes, even negative emotions can inspire decisive action in our learners. As educators, however, it is often our job to take a learner’s negative energy and guide him or her toward turning it into something positive, specifically a positive action he or she can take toward solving a problem of consequence to the world.

In this chapter, I examine how emotion can create the necessary context and relevance in students, prompting engagement and interest in their own learning. I begin by thoroughly examining the scientific basis that connects emotion to learning engagement and then offer a series of microshifts of practice you can use in your classroom to connect students to their learning.

How Emotional Connections Establish Context and Relevance

Often, educators see relevance as something important for them to impart to learners. We may think limiting processed food and sugar is relevant to a teenager, but it is only our perception. If he or she does not perceive the relevance, then there is none. As educators, it is critical that we find a way to foster this connection. Students learn when they become emotionally engaged in conversations, ideas, and activities that have personal relevance to them (Immordino-Yang, 2015). The resulting emotional connection from personal relevance is what differentiates superficial, topical assimilation of material from a transformative education experience filled with mastery and deep learning, which is to say that students can apply their learning in different ways and under variable circumstances (Briggs, 2015).

Do not underestimate the connection emotion has to learning or interpret it as a trend, fad, or indulgence, which is a very human thing to do when confronted with a challenging concept or task. Creating this emotional connection might seem difficult, but research demonstrates that the investment in doing so is well worth it, resulting in significant increases in learning and academic performance (Lahey, 2014).

In “To Help Students Learn, Engage the Emotions” (Lahey, 2016), Mary Helen Immordino-Yang (2015) discusses her use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which reveals brain function in real time: “When students are emotionally engaged, we see activations all around the cortex, in regions involved in cognition, memory and meaning-making, and even all the way down into the brain stem.”

Emotion is where learning begins or, as is often the case, where it ends. In Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience, Immordino-Yang (2015) further states, “Even in academic subjects that are traditionally considered unemotional, such as physics, engineering or math, deep understanding depends on making emotional connections between concepts” (p. 18). Her most striking statement for me, though it seems like common sense, is something educators often overlook in their rush to deliver content: “It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about” (Lahey, 2016).

Simply stated, if there is no emotional connection, learning doesn’t happen. In my experience, compassion creates one of the strongest connections. When we see someone helpless, in distress from war or natural disaster, or in pain, our ego (our self) stills. In Japanese Buddhism, there is a word for this experience, sesshin , which means to cut the heart . Sesshin is the tingling sensation we feel at the tip of our heart when we become present to the suffering of another and feel his or her pain as our own pain, and it is a powerful gateway to relevance for learners. When we awaken to and selflessly respond to the needs of others, we realize our highest purpose. Service is the answer to the question, What room in my heart can I make for the suffering of others? While charity is often about collecting change, service is making change.

Finding this gateway with your students is actually pretty simple. For example, in October 2016 at Melrose High School in Canberra, my colleagues and I held the first-ever Solution Fluency Thinkfest. Five elementary schools sent grades 4 and 5 students to work with a high school student who acted as the facilitator. We tasked them with using solution fluency (Crockett & Churches, 2017) to research and develop a solution to the question, What is the most urgent problem in the world? (Note that I write much more about solution fluency in chapter 6 [page 77, Solution Fluency].)

Given the elementary students’ young ages, I naively expected to hear concerns that they aren’t allowed to play video games when they want or that they have too much homework. Figures 2.1 through 2.4 (pages 23–25) briefly list what is on the minds of these learners.

Figure 2.1: An elementary student lists vital issues facing Australia.

Figure 2.2: An elementary student lists vital issues facing the world.

Figure 2.3: An elementary student uses cloud bubbles to visualize vital issues facing Australia.

Figure 2.4: An elementary student illustrates problems Australia needs to resolve.

When we gave these students the freedom to express their true feelings, their responses shocked us all; and we are worried about literacy and numeracy and getting through the curriculum? Upon seeing the responses, we quickly met as a team and instead of panicking, which we were doing on the inside, calmly agreed that these were problems and that we shared their concerns. Note that our anxiety came not from what the learners were feeling, but strictly our own concern about how we were going to have this level of conversation with these learners and how we could realistically help them arrive at a solution to such concerns. It seemed impossible. But we reminded the team that solution fluency is what you do when you don’t know what to do, and so to begin by defining the problem clearly.

The work the learners did that day inspired all of us. Once they were able to clearly state the problem, which is the define phase of solution fluency, they moved on to the second phase, discover. This phase is about researching, considering what one needs to know and to be able to do, and understanding what might have occurred in the past to cause this problem to exist. It also involves understanding what solutions, if applied in the past, might have prevented this from occurring and reflecting on whether those solutions are still applicable. The learners were so engaged in their conversation and research that we couldn’t get them to stop for lunch. They presented potential solutions to many of these issues and demonstrated to me once again that we dramatically underestimate what our learners can do. For example, one group chose to develop a solution to war. Think about that for a moment. As adults, which of us would sit down in a group and actively try to understand the problem of war and develop a solution for it (in four hours, no less)? In the end, the group's solution was to develop and evenly distribute a single global currency so that there would be financial equality among all nations. They presented solid arguments as to how this would solve the problem. Whether their solution was viable or not is immaterial. What matters is that because they found the questions relevant and were able to contextualize them, they demonstrated a deep understanding of and insights into many real-world issues and channeled these into considerable critical, analytical, and creative thinking.

If we had the courage to do so, we could expand this one conversation into an entire year’s worth of learning, and we could find many opportunities to apply the curriculum to the inquiry. Many of the schools I work with are doing just that, but it starts small, one lesson at a time, connecting the curriculum with relevance to the learner. Consider the problems the students listed in figures 2.1–2.4, and ask your students, as we did, what they feel are the most urgent problems in the world. Next, ask yourself how you can apply the answers you receive to your existing curriculum. The answers you develop could be your next unit of future-focused learning.

Microshifts of Practice: Context and Relevance Foster Connection

Using emotion to provide students with enhanced context and relevance for their learning is something you can easily do within the bounds of your existing curriculum. In this section, I describe three methods: (1) search the heart, (2) teach with technology, and (3) use student-designed assignments. Each section includes a specific activity you can use with students and reflective questions you can ask yourself about how your students responded.

Search the Heart

In this chapter, we discussed the elementary students who participated in an exercise at Melrose High School and the responses they had to what they felt were the most urgent problems in their country or the world that need immediate attention. This is proof positive that students care deeply about issues beyond what we may often assume to be their capabilities and concerns. What might your own learners be able to do?

For this microshift, you want to engage students in searching their hearts to increase their understanding of a problem and how to solve it. In so doing, your learners will establish the contextual understanding they need to make the content relevant to them.

Activity

Part of both understanding and solving a problem is having a deep awareness of why it is a problem in the first place. Pick a few topics concerning the world in general for the students to share in groups. Have them investigate the history of one or more global issues that humanity struggles with, and use the following questions to pinpoint why society has never been able to solve this problem. This entails students using both the define and discover stages of solution fluency, which you can read about in chapter 6 (page 75), as well as in Mindful Assessment (Crockett & Churches, 2017).

• Why do you feel we still suffer from these issues affecting our entire world stage?

• What actions have people and societies taken in the past, if any? Why have they not been successful?

• Who has responded primarily, and what have they been most vocal about?

• Who is in the strongest position to manage this issue most effectively and why?

• If left unchecked, what will this problem mean for us as individuals? For the community? For the world?

Next, have learners define one suggestion for a starting point to begin a change. They should be able to justify this choice either as a written response or orally to the whole class, whichever they think is best. Encourage them to explore what is possible as a best-case scenario by assuming that every resource they require to proceed is in place. This is a time for them to use the dream phase of solution fluency (Crockett & Churches, 2017) and imagine an outcome without restrictions or borders. The final stage is for students to work together to produce a theoretical timeline of events that begins at their starting point and continues to the fruition of their visualized outcome, highlighting all key points along the way.

Reflection

After you complete this activity with your students, take some time to reflect on and answer the following questions.

• What did students discover about these seemingly insurmountable issues in their research?

• How has the nature of these problems changed over time?

• How did they go about visualizing and designing their proposed outcomes?

• What did they learn about themselves and their ability to work together in this exercise?

Teach With Technology

Since the world has become interconnected through technology, and because technology is such a ubiquitous and highly integrated presence in our children’s lives, it’s increasingly necessary to involve technology in curricula by taking advantage of its abilities to foster collaboration, locate useful media and information, and develop creative solutions. We call technology we use in this way edtech, or educational technology (“Educational Technology,” n.d.); the term encompasses both hardware (devices) and software (applications and other programs).

It’s important to understand that integrating technology into your instruction doesn’t mean that technology is going to supplant you. It is simply a means to enhance your practice. As a teacher, you are still a classroom’s greatest resource, and having your students use digital devices in your classroom can provide you and your learners with an excellent teaching supplement that makes the learning more relevant for students while allowing you to spend more time on individual instruction.

To help you get started when considering ways to implement edtech in your school or classroom, consider the following three important strategies. Note that these strategies reflect both teacher and administrator concerns and represent only the beginning of the process when it comes to integrating technology with curricula.

1. Scaffolding (incremental introduction of skills): If you’re interested in teaching with edtech, you’ve likely discovered a variety of tools that you want to share. But trying to do too much and introducing too many tools can stress you out, causing analysis paralysis and frightening off students and parents. To avoid this, begin by thoroughly researching and introducing one tool at a time. For example, administrators could have teachers become familiar with using Twitter (https://twitter.com) as a way to expand their personal learning networks. Teachers could have students use it as an avenue for quick quiz answers. (Similar to many social media and other digital platforms, Twitter requires all users to be at least age thirteen.)

Before you begin, try establishing an online support team to keep you motivated and connected to learners and colleagues. Another great tool for making this happen comes from my own venture, Wabisabi (https://wabisabilearning.com), and my Solution Fluency Activity Planner (Global Digital Citizen Foundation, n.d.b). With the highly collaborative nature of this system, educators can find support from peers around the world who are doing great things. In addition, educators can use it to connect to other classes around the world so learners can learn from, with, and, more importantly, about each other.

2. Clarity of purpose (how this applies to real-world practice): For teachers, this means clarifying goals and being explicit in how you want to use the tools for your own subjects. In other words, how is this tool relevant to you and what and how you are teaching with it? Take a look at the specific edtech tool, application, hardware, or online service you have your eye on and visualize how it can enhance your classroom and the learning that happens within it.

For administrators adopting schoolwide edtech or bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, you must remember that teachers and students alike need support, especially when something is changing their routine. They must come away with a clear answer to the question, How does this new tool, application, hardware, or online service help me with learning or solve a problem within the class?

3. Support (feedback and formative assessment): Sometimes administrators work tirelessly raising funds to acquire the most expensive edtech tools and start the school year off using them regularly, only to let them gather dust for the rest of the year. Once you’re in, you should be all in. Regular training sessions are a must. Beware the trap of offering only one professional development session at the beginning of the school year. Teachers will get really busy really quickly. If you can implement training so that it is unobtrusive, such as in the form of a formative assessment tool, all the better.

These three simple strategies mirror everything that educators and students need to successfully use edtech in the classroom. With them in place, you can begin to focus on specific technology-driven activities that help drive context and relevancy in students’ learning.

Activity

Some specific activities for teaching with edtech can include using Twitter for quick quizzes and polls, using Facebook (https://facebook.com) for group-project management, and using LinkedIn (https://linkedin.com) to connect with industry professionals in the students’ chosen field of interest. Decide which tools will enhance learning through direct experience for your learners. Here are six examples.

1. Digital portfolios (Evernote, https://evernote.com; Pinterest, https://pinterest.com; and Wabisabi, https://wabisabizen.com)

2. Assessment online (Socrative, https://socrative.com; Plickers, https://plickers.com; and Kahoot, https://kahoot.it)

3. Flipped lessons (Khan Academy, https://khanacademy.org; YouTube, https://youtube.com; and TED-Ed, https://ed.ted.com)

4. Blogging sites for students (Weebly, https://weebly.com; Wix, https://wix.com; and WordPress, https://wordpress.com)

5. Cloud storage (Google Drive, https://google.com/drive; Microsoft OneDrive, https://onedrive.live.com/about; and Dropbox, www.dropbox.com)

6. Gamification (Minecraft, https://minecraft.net/en-us; Classcraft, https://classcraft.com; and Gamestar Mechanic, https://gamestarmechanic.com)

Technology will always be a part of students’ lives and of their learning, but it need not be something educators fear or revile. After all, the greatest piece of technology we’ll ever have in our classrooms is a teacher with a passion for learning. However, by using edtech tools like these, you can provide students with modes of learning that connect with a digital world they are already familiar with, creating more relevance for them.

Reflection

After you complete this activity with your students, take some time to reflect on and answer the following questions.

• How much more engaged are students when you allow them to use personal technology and social networks to assist their learning?

• How else can learning continue to happen both inside and outside school when students are using familiar technologies?

Use Student-Designed Assignments

Often, one of the most effective ways to ensure connection and relevance for learners is to employ a personalized learning method whereby students design the assignments themselves. We delve more fully into this kind of shift in chapter 3 (page 35), but it’s important to get that ball rolling here because when learners have a say in how teachers design their lessons, the personal connection is almost instantaneous and the stake they have in their learning is considerably higher. They gain a more emotional investment and a better attachment to the learning outcomes once they have a full understanding of the criteria you are assessing them on, since they personally have helped set them. Seek student input on your next lesson design, and work with your learners as a class to agree on projects, assessment criteria, timelines, milestones, ongoing assessment activities, and more.

Activity

Students learn best when they are interested, inquisitive, or inspired. Consequently, student learning and performance can potentially suffer when students are bored or disengaged. Concepts, mandated curriculum, and state standards may be set in your school, and you may feel like your hands are tied sometimes; nevertheless, you can still influence the delivery of the material and provide lessons that speak to your learners’ interests and learning styles. Here are four ideas to involve students in the design process for your upcoming lessons.

1. Allow students guided options in how they would like to learn the material: Give them more say in choosing a topic to investigate and write about. For example, let them collaborate on Pinterest boards to organize, comment, and share materials.

2. Let them choose how to demonstrate what they learn: Multimedia presentations, such as using audio and video applications, can help with engaging students through their creativity. Let them demonstrate concepts by tying technology in the classroom to content and lessons in ways that are relevant and interesting to them.

3. Let them self- and peer assess: Self- and peer-assessment support comes from both students and teachers. Encouraging reflection and self-assessment can be a powerful dimension to learning because I have found it fosters a sense of personal responsibility in students for their learning. In addition, it reduces a teacher’s workload and lets students effectively demonstrate understanding. Students are honest in their assessment of their performance and that of their peers and value each other’s insights because it helps them understand the process of their own learning. It also reinforces the importance of collaboration. I write more about self- and peer assessment in chapter 10 (page 121).

4. Let them teach for a week: Assign each student a week where he or she gets to act as the teacher for a set amount of time on a concept or idea of his or her choice. Students’ teaching time doesn’t have to be very long, maybe fifteen minutes per day for a week. Because they will need time to plan their lessons in advance and prepare for their teaching week, get them involved well in advance so they can effectively explore an idea or concept. You can prepare them for each day’s lesson beforehand in perhaps an hour or even less, but you’ll have to gauge how much time it will take to prepare them for multiple days in advance. Use your best judgment and be on hand to offer them insights on how best to conduct their instruction.

Using strategies like these to personalize learning engages students’ creativity and gives them broader context and relevance for learning topics.

Reflection

After you complete this activity with your students, take some time to reflect on and answer the following questions.

• How much deeper was your learners’ connection to the lesson when they had input in creating it?

• How did the outcomes change?

• What was their most meaningful discovery when designing their own learning?

Summary

Teachers and students are both human, and humans are emotional beings. Indeed, learning itself is an emotionally charged experience. Think back to a time when you were young and had an aha moment in one of your own classroom learning experiences. How did you feel when you realized you finally had a complete understanding of a concept? Did you feel joy, elation, and a personal sense of accomplishment? How did the adventure of learning and discovery feel to you then? It’s through this emotional conduit that learning resonates with us and becomes meaningful, and the same is true for the learners in our classrooms. It’s those moments we strive to provide for them as teachers.

The type of learning that sparks emotion and connection by association and relevance is far and away the most powerful learning we can experience, both as teachers and as students. Because as a teacher your learning never ends, you are in a prime position to positively model a mindset of being a lifelong learner to every student you encounter. The more we connect students with learning at a contextual level that is relevant to their lives, the more we transform learning into a deeply personal experience. Your students can experience some of that through the microshifts in this chapter, but the next shift (the next step) is to truly embrace personalized learning even beyond what we explored here.

Guiding Questions

As you reflect on this chapter, consider the following five guiding questions.

1. Why are connection and relevance so vital to successful learning?

2. How do emotional connections fit into the learning process?

3. What kinds of heartfelt questions can you ask students to emotionally engage them in the learning for your curriculum?

4. In what ways can you use edtech to connect students with learning topics?

5. What else can you do beyond the microshifts in this chapter to make learning relevant to your learners?

Подняться наверх