Another week is almost over. As you look around and focus on other people, you notice that everyone is unique and has their own way of doing things. However, unfortunately for a long time education was based on the idea that everyone learned in the same way and the same teaching methods should work for everyone. Poor students couldn't learn because they weren't meant to learn, they were less intelligent than necessary. I was less intelligent than necessary in my Chemistry classes at high school. Or, I thought so until I watched a BBC documentary "the wonders of the universe". The visualizations of how "elements" were formed, along with the explanations helped me grasp the idea in an instant. I wish my teacher at high school would have used a similar visual other than mere text and speech to teach my chemistry! Now it seems that I was actually no less intelligent. I am a visual learner. Now with the help of technology, web technologies in particular, it is much easier to enrich our courses with various multimedia resources, both inside and outside the class.
Other sources on learning styles and technology:
http://time2learn.wikispaces.com/Pedagogy+2.0+re-shaping+assessments
Hi Abdullah,
ReplyDeleteAs you said, each and everyone is unique in the sense that they have their styles of doing things and strategies of getting information however, for a long time, the paradigm of education was centralized with the view that everyone learns in the same way and individuals are the multiples of same mechanism that is 100% transmitted to their thoughts, styles of thinking and learning. It was mistaken to view that the same way of teaching methods should work for everyone. I 100% agree with you in this point. Your illustration is very interesting that your perception about yourself is changed from past to present. You were not less intelligent, you were visual/ spatial learners, however I have different view for your next point- ‘poor students couldn’t learn because they weren’t meant to learn, they were less intelligent than necessary. Here, the term ‘poor’ is confusing from the angle of multiple intelligence theory. Without rigorous experiment we can’t say that someone is poor. Someone might be poor in a particular area but ‘less intelligent’ can’t only be the reason. It might be because of lack of comprehensible input they are exposed, the lack way of teaching that suits the learners’ learning strategies. In the past it seemed that scholars were not so much aware and did not try to explore the pattern of multiple intelligences within individuals, instead they tagged someone as talented and dull in terms of their performance in language related works, mathematics and sciences. They fully ignored other intelligences. They dominantly used the methods that were more beneficial to limited numbers of learners and ignored the rests. So you were not poor in chemistry at high schools but you were not taught in the way that visual/spatial learners could learn best.
Yours
Harimaya!
Hi Abdullah,
ReplyDeleteI hope we, as educators, have come to a better way in accommodating the Ss learning styles. No one-size-fits-all teaching anymore in our classes.
as to your schooling experience, I understand how it felt like when considered "poor". I was struggling in Mathematics in my senior high school years. I met an excellent teacher in my last year, I excelled in Math because the teacher knew how to teach me math with my styles (less abstract words - explanation, more action - exercise.
cheers
susi
Susi
Hello Abdullah
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that everone is unique, makes me remember an article I read a time before about Individuals and Individualism.
I can say that there is no one person in this wonderful world that is less intelligent than other. The key factor is that we are individuals and it means that we are all different with different learning styles, motivation and abilities.
And for sure, multimedia resources enriches our courses both inside and outside the class, as you said.
I totally agree with you.
Dalton