The Polyglot classroom

A classroom is a bunch of students with different cognitive capabilities and different learning styles. While some maybe auditory learners, others would be visual learners. Some may find activity based learning useful while others may find cognitive learning useful. So how do we find which student is what kind of learner and do we really have time to cover the same content through multiple learning mechanisms?

One simple way to check the styles of learning is to expose all the students to each of the style for a month and ask their preference at the end of month. While this may be heavily biased based on peer pressure or the content, can be the first step. Then observe if the students improve their learning outcomes and switch the student to a different group based on the outcomes and interactions.

The difficult part would be time management across different learning styles and finally converging them to be effective for the evaluation which is predominantly testing cognitive retention and theoretical understanding. Some ways to do that could be – simultaneous exercises to each group for the same content introduced with one particular style each day by the teacher. Home works and worksheets tailored to different styles, class evaluation and assignments tailored for each style, digital content suitable for different styles prepared beforehand.

Have you tried such approaches? What has been your experience?

Classrooms as Maker Spaces

Maker Spaces with 3D printers, mini and macro motors, drilling machines, wooden planks and electronics labs are now cropping up in lot of places. It is a very interesting phenomena where you can go create something of what you have conceived and use it for prototyping or for your business .

An idea for the classrooms can be , what if each lesson of a subject had a maker space and time. E,g. A geometry class can have a maker period where students use cardboards, strings and glue to create the shapes, angles and measure the perimeter and area. An english class on tenses can be a simple poster creation on example words to illustrate past , present and future tenses. These are happening in schools in terms of project work where students are given ideas and the actual work is done by the parents 🙂

How about doing this at school with dedicated time? Why should labs be restricted to only chemistry, computers , physics and biology. Why can’t there be a lab for every subject where activities are performed? Why can’t the classroom be reimagined as a lab for every subject with simple lab kits for every subject instead of heavy notebooks? Will definitely try out something in this direction and update the outcomes this year….

The Sabha Learning Experience

Sabhas are Teach For India groups where the fellows, alumni and their friends get together and talk about focus areas around education, personal experience….actually anything.

In the Sabha I attended yesterday, there were 5 interesting talks focusing on very different areas and provided me with a lot of insights. I will try to summarise them here.

The first talk was around how human personality is one of continuous change based on the information fed into the brain. The information coming in, forms perceptions and gets transformed into imitation when those perceptions have a positive impact. So the perceptions formed becomes very critical for the beliefs and behaviours developed over a period of time. How we perceive and what instructions we give to the brain becomes the foundation for our development as human beings with distinct personalities. A fundamental shift in personality happens when the perceptions are challenged, new instructions are fed and takes a stronghold in the human brain.

It was an interesting analogy to compare the set of instructions we give to the brain as a method or a function in a software program. The global variables and the runtime are predetermined and can be compared to the circumstances, context and the blessings we get for free. The local variables, the logic and the behaviour of the method or a function are the circle of control where we can manipulate and ensure the method is doing something substantial and contributing to the global context. The same method or a function can slow down or be non performing in a context or a runtime where it does not belong, but when it executes in a context where it belongs the process would execute efficiently as its instructions are better executed there. So, for a personality apart from effective instructions, the execution context becomes important as well – which in our case relates to where you “belong” – The thing that makes you feel you belong to a place or you have arrived !

The next talk was on the experience on pursuing an art form(dance) over a long period of time – 18 years in this case. How art influences the personality and how art teaches some of the key values of being different, not following a pattern just for the sake of it and so on. Interesting aspect around using art as a medium of expression of emotions which otherwise becomes difficult is a worthy information to digest. Art also helps in developing empathy as you get into a character in an immersive experience. Art becomes a key contributor for developing the emotional intelligence. This clearly relates to this talk where Ken Robinson talks about how arts and humanities are critical for the classrooms. Another discussion which was insightful was art takes time to be cultivated, you do not realise from day one that this is the art form you would want to pursue, so it is not totally wrong to give repeated exposure to an art form to students over a period of time to see which flower blooms. (Can be true for subjects too ! , follow what you like right from kinder-garden may not always be the right approach)

The next talk covered an interesting aspect of how the TV shows helped the person in learning about various things about life. Understanding of personalities, knowing about social issues, how micro failures do not affect macro success (term copied from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/ by me). The best take away was how you can learn from everything around, not necessarily what we are tuned to learn from. How entertainment can also be a source of learning is something worth to be pursued further.

The next talk covered experiences around how life gives second chances to you and with the help of these how you can find where you fit in the larger scheme of things. The person giving the talk was into a family business and then decided to pursue the fellowship and how the context switch came with a world of difference and finally led to the realization of where you actually belong and would want to contribute going forward. One thing which clicked on my mind is the question of whether the second chance is really the second chance or is it the first time you get mature enough to make a choice without the influence of the constraints which we are pulled with in different directions – society, finance, stability, social status etc.  May be this is the first chance you take where you rise beyond the constraints and decide on the direction or the next step which you want to take – it can happen to you when you are at 20, 50, or 70 !

The concluding talk was on effective teaching methods based on neuroscience. How students get things into the short-term memory but many a times miss to put them into the long-term memory and the methods to try to move the subjects you teach into the long term memory of the students in the classrooms. The talk covered areas which I read in an article talking about cognitive load and how one particular type of cognitive load -> https://cognitiontoday.com/2019/02/cognitive-load-theory-definition-types-and-applications-for-learning-guest-post/ , called the germane cognitive load relates to the methods and techniques used to create long-lasting knowledge schema. The speaker covered similar techniques where he used analogies and mnemonics which the students can relate to, to push information smoothly into the long-term memory of the students in the classroom.

Lot of interesting perspectives, lot of interesting people, time well spent.

 

 

 

Education with Money

We have been talking about under-resourced schools and helping them out. Does that mean the schools which charge money and can afford educational resources are performing much better in terms of achieving the right outcomes from education?

I have my doubts here. Like any commodity, education through schools also follow the law of marginal utility https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp . While the basic social connections and know-how of basic math, science and languages are extremely useful and these opportunities to learn if missed creates a big void in the development of a child – beyond this, if the minds are not nurtured to enable the children to pursue their interests and unleash their creativity, the classrooms becomes useless with mere physical existence.

And here is where the so called well to do private schools become irrelevant and useless. Some of them advertise about the child’s all round development with horse-riding , swimming facilities etc but they do not focus on coaching and making it a creative experience and enabling learning, wonder and emotional growth of the child’s mind.

We need to rethink and go back to the philosophical aspects of education, need for learning, purpose and going beyond skill development as the focus in all of our schools.

Test Driven Classrooms

We are all aware that our entire system of education is driven by tests and examinations. The notes by our teachers, question banks for board exams, IIT/IIM coaching institutes giving 100s of mock tests for students to tune their brains to be able to face the exams are all fallout of relying totally on exams. Exams are the only yardstick for an individual’s competence.

While the above topic has been debated, written and talked to the point of being a cliche, the reality has not changed. Now I want to take a different look at this, yes consider the exams as a reality – can learning to develop expertise in the subject , retain the interest and become competent to answer the exams coexist?

Is it possible for the teachers to incorporate mechanisms which will make the subject enjoyable and understandable while at the same time equip the students to ace their exams? Why are the two viewed exclusively in many of the arguments? Is it really hard? One argument is exam syllabus is vast and the time to make a student truly develop the appreciation and expertise in the subject is not enough for us to achieve the dual objective. I would want to probe into the question of how much have we tried? Can technology help in speeding up things? Is there any other mechanism to achieve this objective? How much of creative energy has been put into this without getting into the argument of exams being a bane and no exams being too light on the students?

What is to be learned?

I have always wondered, how the syllabus and subjects to be taught in schools are decided? What is the basis? In the modern systems of education, math and science have a high emphasis due to the influence of industrial revolution, medicine and research and development being prestigious skill destinations with high demand.

Now if we re-look at the social structure and skill demand – Information Technology, Research, Medicine are large-scale employment providers. The jump to focus on logic, discrete math, data processing has not yet happened enough in the schools. While science and other mathematical areas are still focussing on facts which can be searched and retrieved rather than experimented and understood for enabling new applications and research.

There is a serious need to re-structure our school curriculum after the internet era. Lack of emphasis on social aspects have resulted in identity crisis, social unrest, jingoism and false pride more prevalent in the current generation. Also art being totally relegated to a favourite pass-time has resulted in lower emotional intelligence, lower creativity levels and lower collaborative and expressive skills.

More I look at this, more I see the importance of curriculum design, academic reforms and determining the evaluation criteria for schools and colleges. It is a very critical situation and as a country and perhaps all over the world, we need to rethink on these aspects and make immediate and lasting changes.

Education System – Finland

Was reading this article from the World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/10-reasons-why-finlands-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world

While talking about the education system of China and Singapore it interestingly describes the education system there with the following words

• Hard Working
• Myopic Tunnel Vision
• Rote Memorisation

Interestingly our Indian system is also on the similar lines but while China and Japan manage to get to the number 1 spot with the system we are not able to get there. That is a separate discussion. Let us get back to Finland. What do they do differently. The article talks about 10 things – what stood out for me were the following:

• No standard grading system – wonder how they manage this. But that seems to be the norm. Individual grades which is devised by the teacher are used
• Teachers need to be highly qualified with a Masters Degree. It is a coveted post. This singlehandedly can make a world of difference for India if adopted. Our prestigious IITs and IIMs already follow this which makes them powerhouses but unfortunately their selection mechanism is completely flawed (another blog post on this later)
• Counselling, free meals, focus on basics are part of the school and is the core emphasis
• Compulsory education starts at 7 and ends at 16 years of age. Talk about we starting at 3 and ending at 17 although officially until 14 is the bare minimum but these do not yield any opportunity – actual unwritten completion age is 20 to get some basic job opportunities.
• Vocational and Graduate pursuits are equally available and there is no major class divide between them post school
• School timings are between 10 to 2:00 with breaks in between !
• A teacher typically stays with a students journey in school for 6 years with individual attention developing a close relationship with the student and their family.
• Zero additional tuitions and minimal homework outside class !

Even if we incorporate one of the above reforms in our policy, life would be much better for the students and for our country.

The beautiful Minds

What do you think the students studying in the under-privileged government schools think like?
Before teaching such a classroom, I was of the opinion that the students will take time to grasp, will be mostly quiet and will need repetitive instructions to get them to do something.

My assumptions were fundamentally shaken once I entered the classroom. Their problem is the system and not anything else. They are a mix of smiling, jumping, naughty and shy like any classroom in the world. They grasp things as fast (perhaps faster) than the high end school classrooms. They understand a language not regularly spoken (I speak English with bit of Kannada in a fully Kannada medium school) and teach me Kannada translation for common terms.

The students are self reliant, they share their food and clean the school themselves. They work on computers , participate in plays and dances and enjoy their school time like any other student. So if you by any chance have the opinion that students in under-resourced schools are group of low morale and sad children please remove that assumption from your minds.

 

 

 

The Schooling dichotomy

Again cannot be without posting on the dichotomy in education scenario in our country.

We have schools which provide midday meals to students for them to come to school and we have schools which need admissions to be blocked when you are pregnant.

We have schools where kids do not see a teacher for the entire day and schools where there are two teachers and three assistants in a class of 20

We have schools where kids have three computers for 50 odd students and schools where lego programming and tabs are normal for every student.

We have schools where parents drop their kids in cars and GPS tracker buses and schools where children need to walk miles without slippers on.

No fault of the kids, no difference in their intelligence , no difference in their abilities, just a random occurence of their birth in a particular circumstance. I am not sure if any other living species consciously creates such level of dichotomy in their social structure and do nothing or very little about it.