Confrontation

From UpdateNet English

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Contents 1 Evoke discussion and understanding 2 Proof of learning instead of proof of execution 3 Having our own goals and formulating them 4 Sources, resources, links

Evoke discussion and understanding

Learning aims for understanding. It is not about ‘having’ something; it is about examining it, in a pleasure oriented manner. It isn’t about giving answers, but first and foremost about asking questions. Students have to develop fun and pleasure in understanding and in dealing with obstacle and difficulties.

To follow up a question means to follow a trail and following a trail is equivalent to the etymological meaning of the word learning. When someone is curious they ask questions of themselves, others, want to know, and understand something. In other words, some sort of inner contractual relation develops, and the task to find answers and clarification starts.

‘Curiosity’, Heiko Ernst says, ‘is devotion to the world: it demands for active examinations with the world out there and it is the expression of a brain that almost ceaselessly wants to be busy, stimulated and surprised.’ (Ernst 2006) But, curiosity is not just fleeting lust for excitement and entertainment; it is much more the drive to get oneself further.

Because: ‘Nothing is as rewarding as the feeling of having understood or solved something.’ (Ernst 2006)

All knowledge starts with experience. Knowledge, skills and attitude develop from what people undertake or refrain, also in school. Therefore, students have to see that the active experience towards a willingness to understand is rewarding. Someone who understands has made something foreign theirs, and this is a good feeling. Students should experience the feeling of having found and understood something over and over.

It is the same with food for the brain as with normal food: we don’t feed from what we eat but from what we digest. Our body transforms food into energy. It is similar with learning. Learning doesn’t happen through repeated intake but through according actions. Understanding develops and shows in doing, in active examination, and the more intense and more often, the deeper is the trace it leaves in our brain.

Proof of learning instead of proof of execution

The goal of school work is a proof of learning. We prove to ourselves and others, through active actions, that we have understood something, have made something foreign something of our own. The opposite of that would be proof of execution: we ‘did’ the task or ‘had’ the subject matter.

Proof of learning manifests in activity. If we have learned French verbs we can do something with them, we can transform them into actions. The term is not new at all: ‘The students shouldn’t only know and give information about the words, but first and foremost about the sense and subject matter of what they learned; the use they have from it mustn’t only show in their brain but also when they apply it in real life; the subject matter of the new instruction has to be expressed in a hundred different ways, it has to be applicable to different objects, and only then the teacher can see if the students really gathered the essentials and made it something of their own. It is a sign of insufficient digestion if one gives the food comes out in the same way it was eaten, the stomach didn’t function if it didn’t completely change what he was given.’ Michel de Montaigne has used these words to speak about the proof of learning – 400 years ago.

Maybe that’s why prove of learning doesn’t quite fit in today’s school system, because it can’t simply be consumed. It can’t be produced with the push of a button or a mouse click. It is the result of an examination process, and that isn’t always easy. Success at work, in life and even in love isn’t usually achieved easily. The path of the least resistance leads downhill. Heiko Ernst says it clearly: ‘Success is almost always a question of endurance and with endurance develops ability, and with ability comes lust, which in turn quickens the endurance. To get this positive spiral in motion is the core of pedagogic art.’ (Ernst 2006) Therefore: school has to be a place where people learn to see resistances and obstacles as an athletic challenge. Keep in mind, it is not about clenching your teeth in desperation. Persistence is demanded as a special form of self-motivation, as a force that renews itself by doing. This is an important finding, especially today, where satisfying needs and the urge for the quick success seem to dominate.’ (Doskoch 2006)

In this respect it is nonsense to say school has to be fun, because, it’s not the school that has to be fun, the students have to develop fun and pleasure in their achievements (in school). This means: The source of fun is not from other student’s but the students themselves and their achievements. ‘Achievement’ has to be positive; we need an ‘effort culture’ and fun in dealing with resistances. It demands for the lust to do more than just ones stated duty, for the need not to take the first answer. The students have to experience ‘work’ and ‘achievement’ as a source of well-being and being proud of themselves. Effort, persistence and the willingness to perform can only sound desirable when they are based on the knowledge that it is worthwhile. The basis of all knowledge is experience, which means, positive experiences are a precondition for people to take the path which is not always smooth, into the learning terrain. And, it needs the feeling of feasibility.

One has to be able to picture feasibility; it has to be put in words, because: ‘the language enables us to put thoughts into words. It is one of the most important interpretation instruments of our brain and an important catalyst for learning.’ (Stadelmann 2005) In other words: Language is constructive for human thoughts, feelings and knowledge, or, ‘how should I know, what I think, before I hear, what I say…?

Language is a factor that determines our cognition's and our behavior. ‘The work on the language is work on our thoughts’ the NZZ says in one of their advertisements. Short: With language we give our thinking a direction. An example: If we say we want to explain something we think and act differently than if we want to name something and differently if we want to assign something.

That means students have to be able to draw a picture, with their own words and their own notional constructions, of what the result of their engagement, the learning proof, should be. They also have to be able to imagine how they can accomplish that success. The goal is the way.

The question about the HOW forms school thinking and actions. What is there to learn? French verbs. Algebra. Grammar. But, that isn’t really possible. Again: that isn’t possible. Learning is a constructive process, an activity. But, French verbs aren’t an activity, and neither is algebra. Learning on the other hand, understanding, examining, forming trails, all that is bound to an activity. Not the question about the what is in the foreground, but the question about the how. The how determines the what.

‘If the what of knowing is determined by the respective procedure, the how, then our picture of reality doesn’t depend on the outside, but on how we see the what.’ (Watzlawick 1995) In other words: The know-how factor determines success or failure. Whether it is Algebra or Grammar is totally irrelevant.

Having our own goals and formulating them

School learning, amongst other things, has the claim to be goal-oriented. That connects to the demand for school to be an anticipative system. ‘You have to hear the tiger, because when you see him, it’s too late’ is an Indian saying.

Learning, with its resistances in dealing with questions and following-up, is always an individual construction process. The attempt to give this process a direction is based on a way of thinking and acting in goals. Now, it makes a significant difference whose goals it is about. Of course, if someone is not able or willing to develop their own goals will have to adapt to other peoples goals, like the teachers. By doing so a dependency develops, power and powerlessness, but, learning should lead from dependency to independency.

Therefore students have to learn to have goals (in school). To take students and their concerns serious is not social fallacy, it is cleverness: because people basically always/only do what they want to do, and the only goal we don’t resist is our own. Therefore, students have to learn to be aware of their goals and ideas and to formulate and verbalize them. By verbalizing them they are able to develop an inner picture of what should develop. It is, in the words of Kleist, a ‘compression of thoughts through language.’ It is thinking on paper, and a self-declaration after the motto: How should I know, what I think, before I see, what I write?

Our brain weighs a bit more than one kilo. It is made up of about a hundred billion brain cells. Every one of these nerve cells is permanently connected with about ten to twenty thousand other cells. What happens in our brain is mostly beyond us. With language we bring a certain amount of these processes into our perception, and with language we lead our thinking, when we formulate it we give it a form.

In accounting we differ between investments and expenses. If we want to achieve something we have to invest, time for example. It takes time to formulate goals, but the time and energy invested in the beginning is well invested. The notional examination in the ‘before’ therefore promises a higher return on investment.

Consequently, for young people, in regards to later self-management, it is important to take responsibility and to formulate their goals and put them into practice. To set achievement goals and follow them is an ability meaningful in all subject matters and therefore needs be taught systematically. (Hartmann/Mayr/Schratz 2007)

Like so many, these demands are not new. The Gesta Romanorum (the doings of the Romans) contains exemplary tales with an added moralizing interpretation. ‘Whatever you do, do it thoughtful and consider the end’ can be read in the late middle-age collection. It still works today and especially for work in school.

Self-regulation and self-organization are universal architectural and functional legalities of nature. School arrangements must have intrinsic rewarding activities as their goal. The international PISA officer demands: ‘Students have to be put in a situation where they can determine their own goals, organize their own learning, assess learning progress and adjust their learning strategies to the changing requirements.’ (Schleicher 2002) Because, the thought is ahead of the action, like the lightning is ahead of the thunder.

‘Goals contain what people try to achieve, based on an assumption or outside influence. They give our actions a direction, direct the selection and assignment of physical and psychological achievement requirements necessary to reach the goal, influence the endurance when tracking the goal and are therefore also responsible for the moment of change in an action.’, the lexicon of psychology describes the modern understanding of a goal. (Kleinbeck 2002)

‘I want to smoke less.’ Nice. ‘I want to study harder in French.’ Very nice. ‘Somebody should do something.’ Even better. Such diffuse resolutions serve first and foremost the self-conciliation. Goals, in order to lead to success promising actions, need the (inner) verbalization of what the result, the learning proof for example, should be. Learning proof isn’t only a what, they are bound to activities, to the how. That means, depending how versatile the many possibilities on how to proceed and act is an integral part of the theoretical preparation of learning. That already includes the formulation of a goal. To notionally examine a goal is not only preparation to work; it is a part of it, a very important part indeed.

If we formulate a goal we draw the inner picture of a desired future. Already the thought of what we expect activates the corresponding regions in our brain. The more desired we can describe the goal the higher the likeliness it is to occur. This quote from the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach sums it up: ‘you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Sources, resources, links

Doskoch, Peter: Das Geheimnis des Erfolgs: der lange Atem. In: Psychologie heute. Mai 2006
Ernst, Heiko: Nur die Harten kommen in den Garten. In: Psychologie heute. Mai 2006
Ernst, Heiko: „Überrasch mich!“, sagt das Gehirn. In: Psychologie heute. Juli 2006
Hartmann, Martin/Mayr, Kerstin/Schratz, Michael: Starke Lernumgebungen schaffen. Neun Methoden zur Unterrichtsentwicklung. In: Friedrich Jahresheft. 2007
Kleinbeck, Uwe: Ziele. In Wenniger, G. (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Psychologie. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag. Heidelberg. 2002
Müller, Andreas: Mehr ausbrüten, weniger gackern. Denn Lernen heisst: Freude am Umgang mit Widerständen. Oder kurz: vom Was zum Wie. hep-Verlag. Bern. 2008
Schleicher, Andreas: Nach PISA: Hat das mehrgliedrige Schulwesen ausgedient? In: Universitas. Orientierung in der Wissenswelt. Nr. 674/August 2002
Stadelmann, Willy: Frühe Förderung und lebensbegleitendes Lernen im Lichte neuropsychologischer Erkenntnisse. In: Lanthaler, E.M./Meraner, R.: Neue Lernkultur in Kindergarten und Schule. Pädagogisches Institut. Bozen. 2005

Links

http://www.lpm.uni-sb.de/SE/Materialien/Gelingensbedingungen.htm
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_%28Psychologie%29
http://www.psychologie-seiten.de/?Motivation:Volition_%3A_Realisieren_von_Intentionen
http://www.pfm.ehb-schweiz1.ch/fileadmin/Projekte/FI2_Fredi/Texte_fredi_01.pdf
http://www.allesgelingt.de/schnelleslesen/schnelleslesengrundlagen/terminologie.php
http://pz.bildung-rp.de/pn/pn2_98/s08-10.htm