Summary of points on ‘understanding the learner’

1. Summary of points on ‘understanding the learner’

2. Introduction Developing concepts What do we know about our students ? What should we know?

3. The main point of this module is: The readings in this module offer a range of examples that, together, make a case for diversity. This diversity relates to the way our first language shapes us, teaches us what to value and how to be. The danger is that if we believe we know our students, we may well be reducing their ways to the way we see them. Being inclusive does not mean matching pedagogy to the student. Rather, it means identifying means that allow all involved (students and teachers) expand the terms which inform what they value and how they engage in the world. The aim of education is expansion, not training. We should study the meaning of diversity and our capacity as teachers to account for it in our classrooms and Teaching Plans Inclusion is relevant not because we have in classes speakers from different linguistic backgrounds, but because all students are different. Therefore, all students will benefit from inclusive practices.

4. Culture & Knowledge • A range of researchers have highlighted over the last decade that, while Indigenous students come to school with a body • of knowledge that is extensive and varied, this knowledge has little currency at school because the knowledge that is valued in school is derived principally from western society. ...those students whose skills are not recognised and legitimised begin school marginalised (Mellor, 2004). http://www.education.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/5130/ILCreport.pdf(Page 19)

5. From: Ron Brandt, URL - http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/198179/chapters/Conditions-for-Powerful-Learning.aspx People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. • This picture shows us that illiterate children (kindergarten age) do not have the link established between • communication (right hemisphere) and • the structures relevant for encoding the text into symbols (left hemisphere). • So, by the time we encounter students, what is it that they do know? • Given the above, in the context of literacy, what is it that we should teach? Writing? Reading? These are the common answers and yet they do not align with the principle stated above!

6. From: Ron Brandt, URL - http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/198179/chapters/Conditions-for-Powerful-Learning.aspx People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. To be consistent with the principle stated above, and with the MRI scan on the left, we should be teaching communication, because it is communication that they have mastered (to a degree) and can use as a reference. How is that to look like? How is that to look like with students who do not speak much English?

7. From: Ron Brandt, URL - http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/198179/chapters/Conditions-for-Powerful-Learning.aspx People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. Principle: If it is meaning and an appropriate use of language that we are after, then it is not language that we should teach, but its use. Therefore we do not teach reading and writing; instead we teach (doing) communication to maximise its impact. This involves assisting students in perceiving a need for expanding the range of contexts in which they engage. This helps them expand the frames of reference on which they draw. This means that context alone will not suffice. Teachers need to help students explore the tools of communication i.e. the frames of reference which give different power to different tools in different contexts. Once we agree that it is communication we teach, the ways in which we engage students will need to be adapted appropriately. For example, if students are to build on their current knowledge, how can teachers put this principle in practice? Next slide shows conventional, teacher-centred model.

8. The teacher is the interpreter of the students’ needs. The learning tasks do not emerge from the students’ engagement of the wider community. They are regulated by the teacher. Student No connection here Target language contexts of interaction

9. People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. In this model, the teacher is the interpreter of what students know and need to know, even if she or he does believe that their decisions are informed. This is the point, what we see is not always how things are. Inclusivity is not about imposing our interpretation on the learning student. It is about working with the student. Student

10. Student Target language contexts of interaction Here, the focus is clearly on students’ interaction with the wider community and the role of the teacher is to facilitate these interactions. It is also to offer students (comprehension/exploratory) tools which he or she creates to help students maximise the outcomes of their communicative engagement. (Model by Ania Lian)

11. People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. An exploratory model in a nutshell: In order to build on students’ current knowledge, the trick is to allow for this knowledge to regulate students’ engagement in class activities. This is not easy, because teachers do not have access to students’ minds (cognitive and social histories of each and every individual) . But what teachers can do is to create tools enabling students to explore what they know, the communicative value of what they know, and the gaps which need mending in order to achieve the desired outcome. The idea is not expose students to new knowledge. Rather, it is to create opportunities for them torearrange what they know and in so doing to build increasingly powerful connections (cognitive systems). This model facilitates exploratory learning. In this model, students are given tools that allow them to look at their texts differently, in more than one way.

12. People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. Community and the exploratory model It is imperative that teachers communicate with school staff, school community, parents and other relevant stakeholders and learn about their student population and the programs in which they are engaged. It is not to match a student to a specific learning tool or activity. Rather, it is to explore the range of learning interests and needs that may emerge and to create tools and learning resources that will allow teachers to engage those needs. These consultations must be on-going. Teachers should not feel that teaching is their own responsibility only. The meetings may engage different communities differently. For example, teachers may have a Parents Day (a happy day, not a formal day) where they may display students’ work and engage parents in discussing whatever they may wish to share. It is also important to have some questions pre-prepared, so that the consultation allows to shed light on some relevant issues. The consultations allow teachers to evaluate what they have been doing, and prepare for future. Building a community around oneself takes time but it also will save time. It will also make teachers relevant in their workplaces.

13. Interactions with the wider community means doing anything that draws its purpose from being part of the world, not part of the teacher's world. Since all action is goal-oriented, then it makes sense that communicative/literacy activities need to relate students to the outside world. It is a very different activity when students engage in singing songs because they all recognise it as a thing that kids do. Now – if reading is introduced as a means of engaging with the world, that is one thing. It is another thing to use text as an excuse to do grammar or vocabulary. The difference is in the exploration of what different texts do, how and for what purpose. This can be explored with a single text, across texts and across cultures. It is important for all students to expand beyond their immediate context and values. In this way, all children feel valued and they also learn to value.

14. Student Activity: e.g. I love singing, do you? This activity can emerge when new teacher talks about her own hobbies. Or when students talk about what they like doing, what they do at home etc. Can you start with an Aboriginal song in a class with 90% students who speak English? Probably not. I can think of better inclusive activities in early grades, like creating a Class Book, engaging children to create drawings and text about ourselves and our families and close ones. Again, we could not ask students to write their names. If communication is the focus at all times, we can ask students how we could tell others this is Bob and this is his mum? You can engage students in writing each letter with a different colour pen and then ask then what colour they used for what letter and why. This emphasis on why helps students relate the activity to its outcome. In other words, we show students that in a text , everything has a purpose, even if it is just fun.

15. Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools Tools After students played and sang the song displayed on the SmartBoard (even for those who cannot read as yet), teachers can engage students in looking at the song in more than one way. To do this, teachers have tools prepared that will break down the song to smaller elements and students can explore those. But the aim is for students to continue evaluating the relevance of those smaller activity to the main one , which is to sing the song. So after students engage on an exploratory path of sorts (e.g. here red), they need to relate it back to the song before they start on the new path, green or blue here. So the objective here is not to do small exercises for students to learn spelling etc, but to do them in order to do the song better (write it to a friend, or learn to sing it for the sake of singing, or other. Song Student

16. In an exploratory approach, students are allowed to follow their questions and use as many cognitive and sensory systems, as the tools allow for, in order to enhance their communicative activity (note: on purpose I do not say to “make meaning” – this is just too general – we need to keep the eye on communication as the objective of literacy classes). In conventional approaches, the objective is not to communicate but to do activities that teachers see relevant. There, students do not approach their learning from the perspective of their need to communicate (be it to create an entry to the Class Book, or to sing), but from that of the teacher. Not able to relate the small activities to the big picture, they activate only isolated systems of perceptions. We need “time-on-task” and, in literacy, this task will need to be focusing on communication.

17. To summarise So in an exploratory model, inclusive teaching does not make students from different language backgrounds a problem. Rather, the assumption is that all students are different, and all students will benefit from exploratory activities differently. The success of this approach depends on teachers having resources. An exploratory learning is also known as resource-based learning. Having databases of electronic resources is paramount. They must be planned for, and further developed in line with the needs that school and community consultations will show to be relevant. One more point: when negotiating an activity, students from non-English background cannot participate in the discussion in the same way as other students can. It is therefore highly important for teachers to prepare for the negotiation process. This means, bringing resources which will assist the teacher in engaging students in an activity that challenges them and, in so doing, opens a space for them to shape according to their questions and their answers. Once teachers create a series of such resources, they are for life. Some may also be possible to re-purposed by teachers of other subjects.

18. People learn what is personally meaningful to them. Learning is meaningful if the objective of the activity engages students with the community. People learn when they accept challenging but achievable goals. Goals are achievable if students part-take in their construction. An activity should make room for students to break down the tasks according to their own questions, not teachers’ beliefs about those questions. Students must be able to follow their own paths – Even if hard to accomplish, this should guide teachers as a principle of learner-centred environments. Learning is developmental. See above. Individuals learn differently. See above. People construct new knowledge by building on their current knowledge. So we do not teach new content. We provide tools that allow students to perceive their own questions and needs (as above) and allow them to follow them up. We should allow them to tap into a multitude of systems of perception, to organise and re-organise their understandings. So learning is not additive, it involves re-organsation of what already is. Very counter-intuitive.

19. Much learning occurs through social interaction. Those interactions are social only when their purpose originates in students and when the “learning” (supporting) activities are identified by the student as relevant to that purpose. Teachers’ goal is not to empower students. Rather, it is to provide students with a multitude of tools that allow them to explore and build up their own sense of power (sense of can-do). People need feedback to learn. Feedback is what feeds back to the student. Our actions often do not. Hence the more opportunities we create for students to engage their diverse sensory and cognitive systems, the more chance we have that the students will be able to utilise the tools (and activities) meaningfully. Successful learning involves use of strategies—which themselves are learned. They are learnt only when enabled by a creative teaching community willing to explore the needs and address them through a multitude of resources that teachers can then make available to students to increase students’ dialogue with themselves about their effectiveness. Interactivity is not people talking (ICT is interactivity too). Interactivity means creating opportunities to engage internal dialogue (thinking, if you like). A positive emotional climate strengthens learning. Positive means enabling students to feel good about having questions and having the capacity to follow them up. Learning is influenced by the total environment. - as per this PPT