Teaching, learning and unlearning

Well here's a thing. I don't feel too bad now about not being the erudite, educated genius I sometimes feel I ought to be.

Turns out the way I was taught was one of the least effective of all : by relentless dictation from teachers who seemed as bored witless as every one of their students and who couldn't wait for the whole torturous forty minutes to be brought to a merciful end by the bell.*

It was, I now know, a Pedagogical approach. The kind of one way, sausage factory style that looks on learning as a way of hammering facts into young heads and nothing more.

Which has led to another realisation; that the way you taught has a direct influence on the way you teach.

Not in the way you'd expect, by making you determined that the learners in your charge should on no account suffer the same drab experience. But in an subconscious repetition of the past.

It explains why, on occasion, I've felt as though I've short changed a class for 'only' speaking to them for the first twenty minutes of a three hour session!

Because, in my experience, that was what teaching was..

So note to self... out with the blather, in with the interactive engagement, visual stimulus material and all round Androgogicalness. (I'm really getting to grips with the jargon, too!)

It's only week three and I've learned a lot of things - and unlearned one very important thing - already...

* With the exception of Mr Seaton, of whom more in subsequent posts