Having interacted with significant numbers of teachers and learners across the entire educational sector, all I am seeing is frustration and disappointment. Teachers have been forced to go, to paraphrase Star Trek, “where few have gone before,” in engaging with online learning and specially its technological requirements. Learners though, are just “getting what we can out of it.” Worse, the sector is, in real terms, ‘asleep at the wheel,’ in failing to address the many emergent teacher and learner concerns.
Look at the sector. Whether a pupil, student, teacher, lecturer, educational administrator, institution owner, or a ministry official, the reality is that the current learner experience right now, is in freefall. The sector cannot hide behind developing blended learning and online educational opportunities within mainstream education, as neither was ever intended to be anything other than complementary to classroom teaching.
Something had to be done, quickly, but having made that decision, further options should have still been explored. Simple solutions such as socially distanced class options, morning, and afternoon shifts, paying teachers more to split shift, would have been a logistical challenge, but you don’t not do something because it’s difficult, do you? These would have left the learners with a less scarred educational experience, but no, all your eggs went into one basket, you dropped it, and now what a mess!
The entire concept of educational psychology in a 2020 pedagogical world was never predicated upon Zoom, Teams, Meet, or any other platform being a single method of learning delivery, but was of continuously enhancing the classroom learning experience, and providing more effective avenues of academic support. We cannot think that online learning is ‘the answer.’ It is nothing more than an educational sticking plaster, a McGyver duct tape solution to a short-term need, and Covid-19 is not short term!
Asking “How do we learn something we do not know anything about?” Educators have sought the answer for centuries, and the reality is that the psychology of learning is incredibly complex. Teaching has resolved that we must understand the theory, to understand the process of learning, the acquisition, retention, and recollection of knowledge, can happen. These theories never evolved in the progressive style of manned flight, or the internal combustion engine, but have emerged from research rather like a jigsaw puzzle of teaching and learning with each bringing greater clarity.
Teachers learn to teach, by learning how learners learn, by forming knowledge bases that include Benjamin Bloom’s ‘Taxonomy,’ in which he creates a cognitive roadmap for learning, and ‘domains.’ Through the behavioural stimulus of Ivan Pavlov’s dogs and their ‘conditioned reflexes,’ the cognitivism of Wolfgang Kohler’s ‘Gestalt’ psychology, and Jean Piaget’s ‘schema.’ David Kolb’s recent ‘Experiential Learning Cycle,’ encourages us to understand knowledge through experiences, while B Frederic Skinner theorised on ‘conditioned learning,’ and ‘positive reinforcement’ as elementary.
The incredible John Dewey’s ‘whole child,’ approaches to the learner and their environment is sustained through our understanding of Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs,’ while Erik Erikson’s ‘Eight Stages of Development,’ are deeply unsettling, but deeply rationalised in understanding the psychosocial experience. The effects of social education through Lev Vygotsky’s ‘Zones of Proximal Development,’ and ‘scaffolded’ learning are immense, while Robert Gagne’s framework for ‘differentiation,’ ensures all learners learn. Further, Jerome Bruner’s ‘spiral curriculum’ idea identified structural learning, and Howard Gardner’s ‘Multiple Intelligences’ affect deeply the ways we teach and learn.
Such are the elements of understanding this ‘holy grail,’ this pedagogical concoction, that where you ‘find’ them is in your recognition and response abilities, the ‘lightbulb moments,’ in a classroom. The ability to implement the theories upon which teaching has its foundations is beyond compromised. I don’t doubt the sector’s intent and will to find a Covid responsive solution, however, this society, in failing to respond to Covid-19 measures, is perpetuating it, and the blinkers must come off. To say further change is ‘difficult,’ is an understatement, and I empathise with the sector, but online classes flunk the learner test!
Ray Petersen
petersen_ray@hotmail.com
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