Joao Martins
jbmartin who-is-at sercomtel.com.br
Robin
>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
>
>
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