Although you addressed Jay, I find your questions very challenging!
You wrote:
>
> So, I'm back to my original questions, perhaps better
>formulated: How do we best engage students in meaningful
>learning activities? What constitutes a meaningful learning
>activity? How do we know whether or not our students are so
>engaged? How do these questions relate to traditional forms
>of teaching (lecture courses) and traditional modes of evaluating
>student progress (tests)?
So let me try to answer some of these the way I remeber meaningful learning
experiences as a student, as a teacher and as a colleague:
If meaningful learning activity is, in essence, a social activity - it must
be a meaningful social activity: an activity within a meaningful social
relationship, or an activity which constructs a meaningful social
relationship. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that as students we feel
that the most important teachers are those with who we have a "special"
relationship. And vice-versa, that as teachers we feel the best students are
those who seem to be "special" to us. Learning/teaching, then, is a means of
relating - of creating a social closeness to someone who is important to us
and we feel we are important to them. This relationship is a threeway
relationship: between the teacher and the subject matter (the subject matter
has to be meanigful, significant to the teacher!); between the teacher and
the student (they have a meaningful human relationship, there is some sort
of interest of the teacher for the student and the student for the teacher,
a genuine interest, not just a default relationship of the student-teacher
roles); and between the student and the subject matter (the student has an
interest in the subject). In this threeway relationship, the teacher has a
greater opportunity to influence all three relationships, then the student
does, because of her/his position of authority (not just beaurocratic
authority, but an expert-novice authority, too). In fact a teacher can
create a meaningful relationship between the student and the subject matter
- but only through (re)-creating the other two components of this threeway
relationship: her/his relationship to the student and her/his relationship
to the subject matter. The student, too has an opportunity to influence
these relationships, and it is not unusuall that "having good students"
wakes up tired and resigned teachers and reignites their passions for the
subject matter.
Learning is not just "assimilating", "appropirating" something, it is in
fact a restructuring of our relationship to this something. Therefore, it is
not a purely cognitive process, a mere rational process, but a full
experience. Therefore, we can know, as teachers, that somebody is or is not
engaged in a meaningful learning by the way of being in a meaningful
relationship with that person and being a participant as well as a witness
to the changes in all three relationships.
How does this relate to "traditional forms of teaching (lecture courses)
and traditional modes of evaluating student progress (tests)?" Obviously,
these "traditional" forms are a product of mass education - they were not
historically in existence before the mass education phenomena. Teaching and
learning (academic and practical) had much more personal forms throughout
the history then they have today for the majority of students. However, I
think that even within the mass educational system, teachers still sometimes
create special relationships to some of the students and that some students
may have meaningful learning experiences. But our modern day school systems
are anti-learning systems because they are not about teaching/learning but
about managing great numbers of kids/students with a small number of
teachers who are required to treat students in the most impersonal ways ("to
be objective"). A good friend and a colleague of mine used to say that in
fact it is a miracle that students learn anything in school, since they are
learning in spite of the school system.
Ana
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. Office of Mental Health and
Philadelphia, PA 19144 Mental Retardation
(215) 843-2909 [voice] 1101 Market St. 7th Floor
(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 685-4767 [v]
(215) 685-5581 [fax]
E-mail: pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------