New Learning Landscapes

New Learning Landscapes

Today is the first working day of the new academic year for my kids. Of course, it's still online. The day started with an inspiring speech by the school Principal addressing the parents. One interesting observation the Principal shared was how the students have picked up new words and new ways of thinking from their parents in the last year. Too much exposure to parents thanks to the lockdown you see.

The students have learned many things offline observing their parents than the teachers online. They have also learned from their siblings, from youtube and other digital sources. The practical classes of computer basics for primary school is a big joke in today's world. What will you teach a kid about connecting to the internet, someone who has done that already to join that class? When a teacher uses a youtube video to teach something, the students jump to advance topics by clicking the related topics on youtube.

The same is happening in adult (non-academic) learning in corporate and non-corporate set-ups. There is no dearth of information in today's digital world. The journey from information to knowledge and knowledge to wisdom is a function of your Learning Eco-system and your PLN(Personal Learning Network).

Didactic and Reflexive Pedagogy :

Monastic Tradition: "It belongeth to the master to speak and to teach; it becometh the disciple to be silent and to listen".

Across different cultures and different eras, it was Didactic Pedagogy which was in practice. John Grimes and others point out that, in general, Vedic teachers divide their literature into shruti and smriti. Shruti (that which is heard) is a class of Sanskrit texts regarded as a revelation. Smriti (literally ‘recollection’) is a class of texts based on memory, therefore traditions. Its role has been to elaborate upon, explain, interpret, and clarify primary revelation. In the western world, the learning approach during the times of Plato and Socrates was also rhetorical and argumentative. So the central idea of didactic pedagogy is based on the teacher to student flow of knowledge. When the advent of the printing press, the text moved from memory to books. This was just a change of form, but there wasn't a pedagogical change.

In the twentieth century, as explained by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis on Learning environments, educational thinkers like John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Rabindranath Tagore offered systematic critiques and practical alternatives didactic pedagogy. This caused a shift in the balance of agency between an instructor and a learner. The learner had a considerable scope and responsibility to explore different knowledge sources and validate them with personal first-hand experiences. It also added new dimensions of students to students learning. This is called reflexive pedagogy.

The learning approach in the new digital world has to combine both didactic and reflexive pedagogies. Some elements of today's Learning Ecosystem are as below :

1. Instructor-led Programs: These can be offline or virtual, or a combination of both. The pedagogy here is didactic. The content comes from the instructor to the participant. These instructor-led sessions can be supported with notes/textbooks given by the instructor. There can be recorded videos and whitepapers etc., which are created by the expert leading the sessions.

2. Active Knowledge Making: Once the participant is introduced to the topic and the expert's context, the next step is for the student to research the topic. It can form anywhere in the digital world, a youtube video, a MOOC course, an e-book or audible book, a podcast or a newsletter. After the research, the participants come with their own artefacts. This is a process of knowledge creation, thus called Active Knowledge Making.

3. Feedback loop: Many students go through motions when in the classroom (both online and offline) . How do we know if the participant has learned. In a didactic approach, it is to look at the test results. But in a reflexive method, it will be a combination of projects delivered, assignments completed, and the artefacts created. Feedback from the expert and other students is very critical for deliberate practice which is required to master a new skill.

4. Social Learning: Last but not least is allow community formation around the topics. It is an excellent way for information sharing, getting feedback from peers, supporting projects, and, most importantly, co-creating things with collaboration. The new-age tools of social collaboration can be very effective to set up a conducive social learning eco-system.

These are just a few ideas to start with creating a Learning landscape for the digital age. Many aspects need detail conversations. Untill then, keep learning and have fun. 

Divya Gupta

Consultant | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Lawyer

3y

So glad I came across this article, the way you have differentiated the learning approaches and pedagogy, it's quite critical and each method could be important for skilling. I think in this "new normal" it's crucial now to focus more on people over processes and ensure that the learning journey of up-skilling, re-skilling, and re-learning (at times) never ends! Loved it - thanks for sharing this! Shashiprabha Gupta thought this would interest you as well.

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