Dialogue and Flexibility

When designing the instructive strategy for the TED Talk workshop, time limit was the primary problem for me. There were a lot of pints I would like to address, and it would not take me too long to address them. But if taking discussion, dialogue and debriefing into consideration, everything would be in a rush.

 In China, real discussion or dialogue is hardly seen in class. Even if we have a discussion, it won’t last more than five minutes. Students are reluctant to talk and share, since the teacher will eventually provide the right answer. Therefore, when design this workshop, I felt quite insecure to plan a relatively long time for discussion and sharing. I was afraid that no one wanted to say anything and I had to fill the awkwardness. So I decided to plan 5 minutes at most for each discussion, and fill the rest of the workshop with lecture, video and hand-on practice.

The First time when I led the workshop, I was surprised by the dialogue we had. The two girl were much more talkative than I expected. When we talk about the application of CER model, they had an “A-Ha” moment and brought their own writing experience into the discussion. Our conversation lasted much longer than I planned, so that we didn’t have enough time for another learning task. But I think it is OK. The point is not teaching, not covering all the agenda I planned, but learning. The learning tasks are designed to facilitate learning. As long as learning is transferred and the goal is reached, it is fine to change the instructional strategy according to the situation.

Another example was the fourth workshop I led, where I met with two students who were very interested in how technology had changed our way of thinking. In my original design, we were supposed to use critical thinking skills to talk about the Google’s driverless car for 5 minutes. However, they got very highly engaged when one of them led the topic to Facebook. Instead of gearing the topic back, I chose to follow their interest and incorporate critical thinking skills into the discussion of that they were passionate about. It was a not a novel topic and they had already got a lot of ideas about it. But when using critical thinking to reconsider the assumptions, evidence and argument they had before, they were brought to a new way to understand the subject.  I could tell that they were very excited about the innovative ideas resulted from critical thinking. The learning result could be much more impressive when students are highly engaged. By giving up the content I planned and following what students wanted to learn more about, we had a wonderful conversation, during which learning took place naturally.

There is also a learning happened to me in these two experiences, which is that students are smart enough to figure things out with time and a little guidance, and they are very excited about the knowledge they discovered. Dialogue is a way to show the confidence in students’ ability and provide a safe platform for them to construct knowledge. I am sharing my experience of self-directed learning and dialogue education with my professors in China, and hope that they can find a way to introduce these way of learning to more Chinese students.

Reflection(a)-Program-Dialogue Education

I had another awesome drawing class!

It is ADLT 606 Design and Deliver of Adult Learning Programs. Our topic today is the dialogue education, which is based on the reading assignment of On Teaching and Learning by Jane Vella. We were asked to discussion the concept, the meaning and the effect of Dialogue Education in groups and then visualize the ideas.

My group discussion went pretty good. Thank to the ladies in my group who brought their work and life experience to demonstrate the concept, I got a deeper understanding of it. Also, we shared our comments about what we had read. Compared with me, they focused more on the bigger picture, but not just one step or one part of it. I was very inspired. We combined our interpretation of dialogue education in the picture.

This is the picture designed by my group. Different colors are used to represent different people in the learning process, green for students and purple for the teacher.  It is a learning journey with the participation of both the students and the teacher.

First, as shown in the first picture, it’s the teacher’s responsibility of assess the learning needs and resources and create the structure of the learning according to the seven steps (Who? Why? When? Where? What? What for? How?). Then, according to the second picture, the teacher brings the structure to the students, engaging them into the learning process. But his or her role in is stage is a facilitator who provides the outside environment of learning. Once the students are involved, they should be able to ask questions, share the doubts, discuss about them, seek for the answer and finally learn what they think they should learn. The teacher need to get out of the learner’s way of questioning and exploring, and pray for doubts which lead to knowledge. When the students being spontaneous and creative, learning takes place. It is just like the students generate the electricity and power themselves on. That’s the idea in the third picture. Also, in the book, Vella mentioned a lot about Freire’s idea of “to build a world n which it is easier to love. By making the change in one’s learning experience, we hope that it may have a positive impact the general.

I like our pictures a lot, which shows the whole process of learning, from the very beginning of design to the final impact of the world. It was of great help in clarifying the concept. The picture of another group, which took a totally different approach, was equally impressive.  Here is the picture. By they way, l love the pink L so much!

Basically, this procure demonstrates 3 kinds of learning situation. In the right-top corner, the learner receives a lot from the teacher, while respond relatively less to the teacher. But still, there is a feedback. In the right-down corner, the learner enjoys an equal status and voice with the teacher in the learning process. In the left-down corner, there are many learners in one learning environment. The voice comes from the teacher, and then goes around among the students, and finally responds back to the teacher.

I feel like that this picture is an in-depth analysis of the second step of our pictures, where the teacher presents the structure, engages students in, and let them learn. My understanding of these 3 kinds of situation is not a concern of one-to-one or one-to-many situation, but the different level of dialogue education. To me, dialogue education is very similar to learning-centered education, where the learner’s active role in the learning process is emphasized.  So that the first situation is the primary stages of dialogue education, where the learner begins to have a voice, which is not very strong yet. There is still a touch of banking education in this stage, since the teacher has a dominant voice.  In the second stage, the role of the teacher and the student is balanced. It’s an equal communication. More power is entitled to the students, and less shadow of banking education is left. Then, in the third stage, the students act as the central role in learning, which the teacher just provide the structure, lead them in and learn from them. It should be the ideal dynamic that dialogue education tries to achieve.

As I perceived, dialogue educations is a great example of the humanist approach. It emphasizes on the role of the learners themselves. They should have the right to choose what they want to learn. Also, it combines the cognitive approach. In the F concepts, “Fusing” means that the new knowledge is supposed to build on the old ones. All the elements will fuse together into meaningful learning.