Experience and Learning

Bender writes that learning is based on experience. Thus as I am reading about Berge and Muilenberg’s hierarchy of types of thoughts, it brought to mind one of the initiatives that I am currently working on with Head Start programs, which serves children ages 3-5 from low-income families. Head Start programs are now being monitored using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), which evaluates the quality of teacher-child interactions in the classroom, particularly how those interactions promote children’s social-emotional and academic learning (for more information about the CLASS, see http://www.teachstone.org/about-the-class/). My role is to provide training and mentoring to the Education Coordinators, who supervise the teachers, on how to improve the quality of those interactions. Having not had any formal training (until now) in andragogy, I find it curious (and at times challenging) that I am teaching adults who are teaching adults who are teaching children, where the common denominator between us all is that we have had training in child development.

 One of the dimensions that the CLASS assesses is concept development and the degree to which the teacher is supporting concept development as higher-order thinking skills, not just the development of a specific concept (e.g. seasons, letters).  Similar to Berge and Muilenberg’s notion of critical thinking and higher level thinking, the CLASS measures the extent to which the teacher uses discussions and activities that encourage analysis and reasoning from the children and provides opportunities for the children to creatively problem solve through brainstorming and planning. Moreover, the CLASS measures the degree to which the teacher intentionally integrates learning for children by linking concepts and activities to one another and by mapping previously learned knowledge onto new knowledge. This is similar to the statement by the National Research Council re: long-term memory and the roles of schema and metacognition in facilitating long-term memory. Therefore, I was happily surprised to see the parallel process of adult learning with child development and learning.

So how do I make this learning happen for the Education Coordinators so that they can make it happen for the teachers who will make it happen for the children? How might I use technology to make this learning visible—to see their thought processes, to have them see their own thought processes, and to have them see each other’s thought processes? I have appreciated this exercise of blog posting and commenting. It can be a helpful medium through which the Education Coordinators can devote time and space to reflective practice and experience Berge and Muilenberg’s notion of distributive thinking, where the sharing of personal experiences brings about collaboration and “socially constructed meaning.” The Head Start programs that I support are located all over New York State, and while there can be vast differences in the program characteristics and the communities that these programs serve (from the rural and desolate regions of the Adirondacks to the ever-changing, ever-crowded streets of NYC), there can be fresh and new thinking that emerges from the sharing of these different and multiple perspectives.

I am also fascinated with this notion of nonlinear learning. I believe that I naturally think nonlinearly, but have been trained (educated) to think linearly, so I often find myself designing and delivering my trainings in a linear fashion. Yet using blogs in an asynchronous online learning environment would encourage opportunities for nonlinear thinking. How wonderful it would be to see creative lateral leaps happening among the teachers! How wonderful it would be to see it happen among the children!

Roles in Online Learning

Coming from an early childhood education background, and working now as a trainer for infant/toddler and preschool teachers, I am often reminding teaching staff that nurturing and responsive relationships provide the foundation for learning for young children. I was naturally struck then by Wegerif’s description of the online learning process as a “social experience.” That as an adult learner, it is equally important to feel a sense of belonging to a community of learners for in the process of collaboration, learning happens.

Moore states that in online education there is a notion of “transactional distance.” Reflecting on Wegerif’s point, I think that the role of the instructor in minimizing this transactional distance requires that the instructor is aware that there is more than the two-way interaction that McKeachie describes occurring in a class. Rather there is a three-way interaction (at least) between the instructor and the learner and the learner among the other learners. The role of the instructor shifts from facilitating a dialogue between the learner and herself to facilitating a conversation among the learners in the class. This is not to say that the instructor need not develop individual relationships with each learner. If anything, the depth of the individual relationships may need to be even more intensive and intentional in an online setting, so that the instructor can draw on the strengths of each learner (the class) to become the expert and authority. In so doing, the instructor is functioning as a coach to each learner by being able to provide reflective feedback, which then personalizes the instruction for the learner. Therefore, one of the primary goals for the instructor is to build a sense of community for the online class by helping the learners see how they learn best when they learn from each other.

I believe Wegerif’s point has implications for the role of the learner, as well. I think I have always thought of learning for my own gain—to learn a subject matter that interests me, to get good grades to move ahead, etc. But collaborative learning requires me to think about learning not only for my own good, but for the good of my fellow learners (the class). I learn and do my best, so that I have something to contribute from which others may learn and vice versa. For this to happen, the learner needs to be self-reflective—able to recognize her strengths and areas of challenge. Given the multiple modalities utilized in an online class, the learner should also realize her learning style and explore her multiple intelligences. Fortunately, the online learning environment is conducive to fostering self-reflection.

Having to rethink the roles of the instructor and the learner for an online class, I am curious to know what a dynamic instructor might be like. Also I wonder whether the student composition of the class affects the class’ ability to transcend to this higher point of collective learning.