Personalized or Customized Teaching starts; by learning from the child, what he understands and the way he understands it.
“To be a teacher does not mean to affirm such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it”
Soren Kierkegaard (Philosopher)
This simply means, that knowing the learner is very important to facilitate learning. So how do we achieve this?
Traditional vs Progressive Teaching Methods: –
Even though loaded with course completion timelines and policy pressures; passionate educators still search for innovative ways to teach and help students learn better. These searches often lead to methods that would facilitate experiential learning.
General education has three elements to it: curriculum, process of teaching (pedagogy) and assessment. But typically, traditional learning is more focused on the curriculum and assessment; the teaching process is just seen as a way to deliver information. Though the main job of the teachers is to facilitate learning, much of their time is spent feeding information and administering tests. We should remember, that this is a world of the internet and ChatGPT; where a 10-year child even in the remotest village of India could get easy access to any information in a jiffy; so, schools are not the only source for information.
As Ken Robinson puts it; a good analogy would be that of a good farmer who creates or facilitates those conditions necessary in his farmland and then those plants grow by themselves based on the conditions available; likewise, teachers only need to create the right conditions for learning, realizing well these conditions have to be subjective too and not objective alone.
Which means the tutor needs to understand the child or the learner to the extent of what they learned, what can they understand and what mode of learning are they inclined to. Just focusing on setting up a physical classroom that would help the teacher deliver a program or course material, is a very objective-oriented traditional approach to teaching.
A progressive approach to teaching has a much more subjective approach; facilitating an environment that would enable learning & self-discovery by acquiring skills that would help the child express their talents better.
There have always been discussions on which method to use to teach better and the apparent divide in these thoughts is not much; because knowingly or unknowingly teachers use different approaches to facilitate creative learning.
My take would be, that teachers should balance the art of teaching with a mix of both approaches and focus on what method helps the child learn better.
Learning Spaces:
As the experts say, to learn something means to learn something that exists somewhere. For most of us, learning space means the physical classroom environment; which is why we hear the focus on digitalizing classrooms and it’s of course important too. But the concept of learning space is much broader than we imagine and it is multidimensional too.
According to expert studies in experiential theory; learning space includes physical, cultural, institutional, social and psychological dimensions. These dimensions come into play in defining the learning experience for the learner.
Psychological – It includes goals, needs, unconscious influences, memories or past emotional experiences, beliefs, events etc. that influence the child subjectively. Setting an objective learning space without considering this psychological influence on the child will not bear fruit. To create a conducive learning environment, we would need to understand the learning style, learning skills modes and values of the child more closely.
So, in short, genetics, parental styling and the exposure the child has put up with to date are very important for creating a very effective learning environment for the child in schools.
Social, institutional & cultural – The ecology for learning/development is very nested, that encompasses:
- The immediate learning environment in a classroom;
- The institutional policies
- A campus culture which should be comfortable for kids to open up
If our school favors a much more abstract or theoretical knowledge over practical; then that too will influence the child’s learning. In the formative years, a child would easily pick up the ability to solve problems, habits, behaviours etc., from their exposed ecosystem. Because during these early years as a child, they are looking for extrinsic influences that would appeal to their mind with much fewer distractions and more excitement about what they could achieve. They will easily absorb such information in the form of patterns, sounds, emotions and concepts. Thus peers, teachers, clubs, policy, and traditions are all factors that influence and shape their ability to grasp and
transform knowledge.
So, by setting the right learning space, we will not only create a conducive learning ecosystem for the child to learn better in school but also influence the Child’s mindset and ability to learn with full potential in any situation in future. Remember the Learning Cycle & Individual Orientation to learning we discussed in another blog: –Learning Abilities and Individual Orientation to Learning.
Virtue of Slow Education or Slow Movement in Education:
As we have discussed over and over in previous articles, we all have differences in natural intelligence or aptitudes. Personalization of education means teachers take account of these differences in the way we teach our students. It could also mean we are instilling flexibility in our curriculum so that in addition to what all children need to learn in common, there is also a space for understanding individual orientations towards learning and there is also space for
creating opportunities that would help them pursue their interests or strengths that would eventually drive them to discover their true potential.
One of the greatest advocates of the Slow School Movement Maurice Holt says that slow education emphasizes better understanding instead of just maximum information feed; which means we have more intellectual space for scrutiny, argument and resolution. Countries like Estonia are already moving in this direction; as Estonian education is light on assessment and heavy on teacher autonomy that allows the freedom to teach accommodating the learners pace. This also sees a greater emphasis on learning habits and oriental differences in the modes of learning; as opposed to an education process that values high-stakes testing.
Schooling Should Not Kill Creativity:
Teachers need to be mentors or for that reason, inspirational mentors for children, thereby facilitating an ecosystem that would nurture and guide the kids’ progress; no matter how slow the learning curve could be, is vital. Therefore, we need to explore possibilities that would keep away obsessive quantitative analysis of our children and encourage a process that would celebrate character traits and their unique intelligence.
Thus, we wouldn’t just have toppers in a particular curriculum that encompasses just a few skills; instead, we will have a winner story in each child within an institution celebrating their discovery of unique talents and how they successfully acquire more skills that would complement their natural aptitude and have transformed their minds to be ready for the journey ahead.
Does Schools Need to Reform the Way They Educate?
Schools and institutions need to look at the success of their schools differently too and not the number of A grades their students fetch in Academics. If our way of schooling was right then the blight of unemployment wouldn’t have affected those who have done everything, we expected of them till their graduation. There was a time when a degree would guarantee you a job; but no more.
Studies show, that approximately 15% per cent of the total youth population is long-term unemployed, which should be in the millions. A degree in college used to be valuable earlier as only a few had them; so, we need to have other forms of distinctions that will give a sense of purpose when they graduate.
Our education should be focused on holistic growth as it should develop the whole person. It means the goal of education is not just cognitive knowledge but also should include development of such faculties that would bring in social and emotional maturity in the child. So according to studies in experiential theory, this means facilitating integrated development in perceptive, cognitive, imaginative, experience (emotional) and other behavioral realms. And we could also use methods in the Oriental psychology of children, that would help us understand the stronger elements and higher faculties in a child which would help them unfold.
Teachers need to be trained around these and allowed to play different roles that would enable teaching around the learning cycle and to different modes of learning or learning styles of the child. Please refer to – Article on Flexible Learning styles.
Teaching Styles Focused on the Transformation of the Learner:
If a teacher needs to teach around the learning cycle, then they need to take on different educator roles.
Facilitator OR Mediator Role: This is the phase when a teacher creates the right relationship with the learner. In this phase, the teacher plays the role of mediating between students and the content they need to learn. A phase where slow education is very critical; as this is the phase where the educator bonds with the learner; allowing the learner to open up about their interests, and their imagination, closely observe how they relate to their experience and understand their intrinsic motivations. This is usually possible by creating smaller focus groups. In this role, generally, teachers would help the learners reflect on the concrete experience they hold to date. Here the individual learning orientation is closely studied for later.
SME or Specialized Knowhow: This is a phase where the teacher connects the knowledge on a particular subject area with concepts or theories and thereby makes the children organize the information in a way they can relate. Based on the mode of reception or learning style of the child the SME can present information using lectures texts or even visual patterns. In this phase, the individual learning orientation is very assimilative and generally only focused on understanding something closely.
The Role of an Examiner: In this role, the teacher is just training the child to apply their knowledge acquired through close assessments, exercises & projects. The gauging system should be objective, subjective and result-oriented. This system should only be used to understand the interest, curiosity and unique skills of the child towards that particular subject and if it’s common knowledge which is important for survival in a community; then the gauging should be used to help the child understand the gaps and areas to improve through regular feedback.
The Coach: In this role, the teacher is already well versed on the strengths of the child and hence would guide the child personally through active projects or experimentations where they could apply the knowledge grasped for personal transformation. This role also involves helping the child steer through psychological or emotional fallouts. In senior school, a coach or mentor could help the child to look closely at failures and analyze them for better results in future. A coach should be the guiding force, who could encourage a child to pursue a passion or direct them to focus on finding the right passion that would complement their natural traits; instead of worrying about acquiring skills that don’t augur well for their transformation.
Conclusion: –
Teachers have their personal preference when it comes to the roles they want to play as tutors and this also depends on their educational philosophy. As we have mentioned in the case of learning style in children, achieving flexibility in teaching style is also important to achieve holistic education for your students. Irrespective of the situation of the learner a tutor should be able to drive interest & passion in the learner to progress and focus on learning to transform themselves.