Learning process

Learning is extremely individual, situational and contextual! One thing is granted, though: learning involves a change. How we perceive learning depends on the learning theories we believe in. See this post for further discussion about that: The Big Picture

Each individual learning experience is different because what we each see/hear/think depends on our previous experiences and the unique filters we have. Thus, while presented with the same information we process it in diverse ways. Even in a collective learning situation we all are engaged also in our own personal learning process. Understanding that learning and teaching are not the two sides of the same coin is the beginning. Students learn all the time, but they may not be learning things we wanted them to learn.

Effective teaching is much more than just instruction. It is helping students engage with their own learning process, and thus also requires handing over the tools of learning to the students: choices, self-assessment and -regulation, metacognitive strategies, goal-setting, and much more. This doesn't mean teaching becoming obsolete - what is needed is simply just a change of focus in the practice. A step towards student centered learning. Supporting the learning process requires the teacher to become a learning facilitator instead of being the source of information. See this post why knowledge cannot be transmitted: Information is shared, knowledge is constructed.  

When students are empowered to be in charge of their own learning process, they are also accountable for their own learning. After all it IS students' job to learn, and teachers' job to help students in learning. We cannot do it for students, every student must use their own thinking to engage with the materials and learn.

When learning is perceived as a product something very valuable is lost: the open-ended curiosity that drives students to learn more than what is mandated. Many scholars have described the same curiosity in different terms depending of their frame of reference: passion, element, purpose, and of course also having the intrinsic motivation to learn.

If learning is just a product: an essay, a perfectly filled work sheet, or an objective exam with closed questions one important part of learning is excluded - creativity. Please note that I am not only talking about the artistic ability to create, but hoping for students to have opportunities to apply their critical thinking skills, because we use the same problem solving skills in different situations, starting from social conflicts in early childhood and also while being engaged in the creative process.

While following the thinking of someone else we will never create the same competence as we do while thinking it through with our own brain! The copied thinking - just like a copied product - only leads to surface learning, which doesn't have much chance to be stored permanently in students' brain. Emphasizing the product over the process can really backfire in the classroom

Please visit NotesFromNina for questions whether learning is process or a product!

Quest for better learning

Learner-centered practices have been validated with years - no, decades! - of global research in education and psychology. Why are the authoritarian practices still so widely used in classrooms? I wish I knew!

I often admit to my own students (teachers and trainers pursuing their graduate degrees) that I am on an ongoing mission and my goal is to corrupt a teacher a day into learner-centered practices.  It usually makes people laugh, but I am dead serious: the only way we can spread the use of learner-centered practices is to use them in our own design and instruction.

Learning happens everywhere, all the time, and school learning is just a specific type of learning we do. Supporting students individual interests and personal strengths makes school learning easier and more intrinsically interesting.

American Psychological Association publishes excellent materials. Please check the Top 20 Principles for K-12 and Learner-centered education!

The Big Picture for Learning Centered Education

The previous posts have discussed learning and teaching philosophy and dispositions, as these are important for the consistency and integrity of the chosen instructional methods in the classroom while beginning to emphasize learning-centered education.

Sometimes it is hard to recognize the underlying ideals in all the great resources that can be found in the internet. What has been helpful to me, is to think first what is the view of the knowledge and the learner in any given resource, and then either use it as it is or tweak it so that it better fits to my philosophy. The picture below shows an overly simplistic model of my thinking about why behaviorism shouldn't be the only learning theory used in the classroom, or while doing instructional design.

When the scientific model used in a resource only refers to the hypotetico-deductive model of reasoning, and omits all other types of inference, I know the mechanist worldview is emphasized over socio-cognitivist humanism. Examples of this are references to formulating hypotheses or following the "traditional" scientific method that is familiar from positivist or objectivist  view of reality (knowledge is measurable, objective and value free). Constructivist or subjective view of knowledge emphasizes situationality and contextuality of learning.

When education focuses on learning, the emphasis is not in arriving to the only one objectively correct learning outcome that has been defined during the instructional design phase, but in supporting students' reasoning skills and their ability to infer and support their claims with suitable references.

I think it is appropriate to note here that I am a qualitative researcher and strongly believe that qualitative and quantitative research must be conducted hand in hand in order to both create theories and test them. Students in 21st century MUST be taught both approaches, and we as educators have much work to do in getting there.

Agency and ownership of learning

Learning is an important part of being a human. We couldn't survive without the ability to learn and adapt to the environment where we live, work and learn. Human development doesn't end in adolescence, but continues throughout our lives.

School learning is a special type of learning, even though we often seem to refer to schooling when we are talking about learning, and keep on emphasizing teaching over learning. This must change, because students are the ones who need to own their learning, and teachers are there to help students to learn. The goal of formal education system is to help students to obtain information and construct knowledge, but also to become capable for independent judgment. Examples of situations where this judgment is important are reading comprehension, understanding scientific principles and being able to support one's opinion with facts.

Agency in any given social situation refers to the intentionality of one's actions and the opportunities to make choices. Agency includes the aspect of time, as the continued engagement in the process of choosing combines one's actions in the past, present, and future. Our choices today often result from choices we made previously.

In the classroom environment learner agency denotes the quality of students' engagement. Agency is not something students have, it is something students do. Students may choose to engage in their own learning, or just strategically or ritually comply with the tasks and activities presented to them - and the big problem in schooling is this detachment or disengagement that results from students having no ownership over their own learning.

Learner agency requires for students voice to be heard, so that they have ownership over their own learning. The first step is to make sure that students believe that their choices and actions will make a difference in their learning process. By supporting learner agency throughout the formal education it is possible to foster life-long learning, which is crucially important in the rapidly changing world.

Biesta, G., & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement. University of Exeter School of Education and Lifelong Learning, Working Paper, 5. 

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2014). Teacher agency: what is it and why does it matter?.

Learning Strategies

Learning is such an individual experience! We all have our own way to learn, and the orientations, approaches and strategies we use for learning have been acquired during childhood and educational experiences, thus becoming quite stable by constant reinforcement and tending to last throughout our lives. However, it is possible to help students to become better learners by teaching learning strategies and metacognitive skills as byproducts of the subject matter.

We live in a world where life-long learning is a must. It doesn't have to be formal, academic learning, but being able to adapt to the new technology and the rapid changes in our lives. Where ever I teach,  I always want to support my students' self-regulated learning by engaging in process-oriented instruction and learning facilitation (as seen in Simons,1997).

Sometimes people confuse learning strategies with instructional strategies, but these are two distinctively different concepts. Instructional strategies are used by the teacher, learning strategies are in each students' own repertoire. Sometimes also learning styles are confused with learning strategies. Distance Learning Association has a good online presentation about learning styles and strategies.

Vermunt and Vermetten (2004) concluded that students' learning strategy patterns generally belong to one of the following dimensions: undirected, reproduction-directed, meaning-directed, or application-directed. TheKalaca & Gulpinar (2011) table below displays the learning components attached to each learning strategy (called learning style in the table).

Learning often gets hard for students who rely solely on undirected or reproduction-directed learning strategies. Both approaches focus strongly on memorizing the content without connecting the details to a hypernym (i.e.umbrella term). With external regulation of learning, these students aim to pass the exams, but find it hard to assess their own learning.

Meaning-directed students try to first understand the entities and then relate the details into these bigger concepts. Focusing on learning in the context, these self-regulating students try to connect the new information with their existing knowledge. They may be critical, as forming an opinion about the topic is important, and they may engage in independent search for additional material to better understand the concepts to be learned.

Application-directed students value learning about useful materials and topics, and they try to find practical applications for the content they learn. Being both externally- and self-regulating, these students reflect on their own experiences and relate their practical knowledge to the theoretical concepts to be learned.

Students in all four dimensions benefit from learning more about self-regulation and metacognitive strategies in order to become life-long learners, and able to choose from the information and misinformation that is available on every computer and handheld devise. The necessary instructional strategy for teachers - in addition to supporting learning process and teaching metacognitive strategies in various ways - is to learn how to ask non-googlable questions.







Kalaca S, Gulpinar M. A Turkish study of medical student learning styles. Educ Health [serial online] 2011 [cited 2016 Feb 12];24:459. Available from: http://www.educationforhealth.net/text.asp?2011/24/3/459/101429
Simons, P. R. J. (1997). From romanticism to practice in learning. Lifelong Learn. Europe 1:
8–15.
Vermunt, J. D., & Vermetten, Y. J. (2004). Patterns in student learning: Relationships
between learning strategies, conceptions of learning and learning orientations.
Educational Psychology Review, 16, 359–384 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10648-
004-0005-y.

Children - natural born learners

Every child has a deep, innate curiosity about the surrounding world. This is the first learning environment we face. We all are born with a need to survive and experience the life, and to make sense of what we see, hear and feel. This is the force behind all real learning, and the reason for us to engage in the fundamental learning processes of acquisition and elaboration  (Illeris, 2009).

We use the information we gather from out everyday lives to construct our understanding about ourselves, the life, universe and everything. Children are equipped with tools for learning to make sense of their surroundings - just think what all is accomplished during the first 2-3 years after birth! This informal learning is an enormous force the formal education has chosen not to use. 

I found the following image to illustrate the differences in formal and informal learning. 

Not only are children intelligent and gifted, but they are also motivated to learn.  They are expert learners, because through purposeful play children experience the thrill of genuine achievement -- have you seen a child succeed for the first time in something they have repeatedly tried to do? Recall that triumphant smile?

Here is a list of definitions for good learners: 

1. Curiosity
2. Pursuing understanding
3. Recognizing that learning is not always fun (thinking of a two-year-old who wants to succeed, even if it is frustrating)
4. Knowing failure is beneficial 
5. Making their own knowledge 
6. Always asking questions
7. Sharing what they have learned

It looks pretty similar to the items in the image about learning, doesn't it? But this list was created for students in higher education.  You can find the original article here. I think good quality learning is universal and does not depend on the age of the learner.  To reverse the negative effects of schooling we should teach about the mindset to empower deeper learning. 

By the time children enter the formal education system they are already expert learners. Depending on the feedback children/students receive about their learning explorations, they will either continue to the direction they are headed, or venture into something else.  Why don't we use their curiosity and enthusiasm by providing meaningful learning experiences and encouraging their questions? Why does school have to promote compliance over critical thinking? 

Illeris, K. (2009). A comprehensive understanding of human learning.Contemporary theories of learning, 7-20.

#wfe2  Reflection post about intelligence and  expert learners. What future for education?

Growing Confident, Curious and Capable Learners

Choosing How to Teach and 3Cs are making a difference in the lives of teachers and students.  The feedback I have received from teachers taking the professional development courses about the philosophical and practical changes has been wonderful! 

Here is another 3Cs to think about: as teachers we should try our best to ensure that graduating students are confident, curious and capable learners, who will continue to learn on their own. These are the outcomes for using the model explained in the Choosing How to Teach - book.

We cannot think about education as a fixed 12-year long period of learning that prepares students for living in 21st century world.  It is just the beginning of the journey. Lifelong learning belongs into a large scale paradigm change in education. The way we perceive the nature of knowledge and learning, and the role of a teacher are starting to change to reflect the 21st century and the needs of information/knowledge society, where lifelong learning is a must. Growth mindset is one part of lifelong learning.

Imagine what happens if students leave the formal education system hating learning: they will be trapped in many ways because not only is the world changing faster than ever before, also employers require their employees to be willing to learn throughout the career.

So, how to help our students to become confident, curious and capable in learning? 

1. Use non-punitive assessment that emphasizes the value of learning from making mistakes and reconstructing one's own thinking.
2. Make learning meaningful for students by embedding choices to pique students cognitive interest and curiosity.
3. Lead students to understand the value of collaborative meaning-making by modeling it in the classroom.

The confidence and the positive academic self-concept grow from engaging in the learning process and refining one's own thinking. It is awesome to hear students to explain how they understood the misconceptions they had before! Using constructive practices in the classroom helps students to reflect their own thinking and learning.

Curiosity is very important for all learning, and an easy way to encourage the use of curiosity in the classroom is to embed informal learning to the formal curriculum. Does it really matter where students found the information if they can cite their source and justify using it?

Collaboration (both virtual and f2f) and being able to communicate about learned in writing or talking are big parts of being a capable learner. Students who engage in cooperative learning during their k-12 education learn to share their own ideas and pay attention to other students' ideas as well.   

Learning Cycles

When talking about learning cycles we often refer to the processes that occur while  we perceive, choose, reflect, store and retrieve data and information that our surroundings provide. It is often displayed as a cycle, because the new information needs to become a part of the already existing knowledge in order for learning (i.e. acquisition and elaboration, Illeris, 2009) to be meaningful for student. There must be connections between the newly learned material and things we have already learned. If the contradiction is too big students get confused and/or disengaged. It is hard to be interested in something that doesn't make any sense, which is the main reason for me to always emphasize the importance of including choices for students in the basic design of instruction.

Instructional design aims to improve the teaching and learning processes and occurs before the actual teaching happens. Sometimes the design only focuses on individual lessons, but even then it is fairly easy to include optional activities and assignments for students, so that they can choose from a selection and find something that is personally meaningful for them.  In the teaching situation we as teachers use different strategies, teaching methods and techniques to enhance students progress in moving through these cycles of perceiving, choosing, reflecting, storing and retrieving. Some teaching methods emphasize reflection, others emotional input or maybe learning from trial and error. The cycle is still utilized either visibly or behind the scenes. My choice most often is to talk about metacognition and make the cycle visible for students, so that they have better grasp and control of their own learning process.

There are different  visuals available in the internet about the learning cycle. Most quoted or modified is probably the Kolb's (1984) experiential cycle, which has provided the prerequisites for my own thinking about learning process. 

No matter where is our preferred phase to start learning (Experiencing, Reviewing, Concluding or Planning), there are certain things to consider while we are setting the scene for learning, if we want the cycle to be rolling and support the learning process:

1. What is the role of the learner? Are they included in decisions about what and how they learn?
2. Are learners' perspectives taken into account while planning the learning experience?
3. Are individual differences accommodated and valued so that we won't have 26 identical "experiments"? (Please note: an experiment, like research, cannot have a known result before starting the experiment!)
4. Are learners co-creators of the learning process?

These questions are not new. They are based on learner-centered principles of APA Work Group in 1997. Designing instruction that supports learning is easier when we use these principles of learner-centered education, and empower students to engage in their own learning process. 

Learning is extremely individual, because what we each see/hear/think depends on our previous experiences and the unique filters we all have. Thus, while presented with the same information we process it in diverse ways. Even in a collective learning situation we all are engaged in our own personal learning process. Understanding that learning and teaching are not the two sides of the same coin is the beginning.  Students learn all the time, but they may not be learning things we wanted them to learn.

To further explore the way learning process is described within the experiential learning theory, you might want to look into the Honey and Mumford (2000) learning style questionnaire based on Kolb's cycle.

  

APA Work Group of the Board of Educational Affairs (1997, November). Learner-centered psychological principles: Guidelines for school reform and redesign. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Honey, P., & Mumford, A. (2000). The learning styles helper's guide. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Peter Honey.

Illeris, K. (2009). A comprehensive understanding of human learning.Contemporary theories of learning, 7-20.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development.

Kolb, D. A., Boyatzis, R. E., & Mainemelis, C. (2001). Experiential learning theory: Previous research and new directions. Perspectives on thinking, learning, and cognitive styles, 1, 227-247

The Future of Education?

I stumbled upon an interesting looking course in Coursera: What future for education?

Of course, I got instantly hooked on the question. Where is education going? How could we make education better? Where should it go??

The introduction is promising: In this course, our aim is to encourage you to start thinking and questioning ideas about education.

There are very few more intriguing questions than that! An invitation to think! I love open ended questions!

This is the first reflective piece, the assignment for week 1: 
Based on your experience as a learner, what do you think you will be able to get out of this course? And what ideas do you already have about the future of education?

I certainly have lots of learning experiences, both formal and informal, and I would like to think that I am quite professional in learning. My own teaching philosophy relies on collaborative meaning-making, which makes it so crucially important for me to regularly take my own advice and reflect on my thinking, learning and knowing. I am sure this course will help me in doing this. 

My expectations are for learning new insights about education, new ways for empowering learners, and new ideas for connecting with like-minded educators. I am also looking for new tools for authoring and facilitating PD courses for teachers and faculty, and one of the best ways for keeping the fresh touch as a teacher is to walk in the shoes of students and engage in somewhat formal learning experiences.

My ideas about the future of education are plentiful and diverse. I strongly believe in learner-centered education and learner agency being the future of education. Students cannot be seen as automatons producing prescribed outcomes as a result of their engagement, like puppets spewing out factoids taught by the search machines. 

Learning happens in interactions, no matter what technology we use (or don't use).  In today's interconnected world the need for students to be able to choose the information they use is clearly becoming a very pressing issue for formal education: the teacher (or the university or school) cannot be seen as the main source of information or knowledge, because information and misinformation are freely available for anyone who has access to the internet. The premise of learning and measuring learning has already changed. We as teachers must know how to ask non-googlable questions - which is good, because these questions focus on understanding connections, instead of just memorizing a bunch of facts.

My big question is: we already have the necessary technology to personalize education to meet the needs of each and every student. Why don't we use technology for that?

Learning and teaching philosophy

Every teacher has a teaching (and learning) philosophy they follow, either knowingly or being unaware of the beliefs that have an impact on the daily practice. I tried to trace back the steps to the most influential points in the development of my teaching philosophy.  

It all began when I had to read Berger & Luckmann’s book about social construction of reality for my M.Ed. studies in late 1990’s. It was the hardest book I ever read – when I got to the end I couldn’t understand what I had just read, so I reread it. And then again. But, that book taught me how we actually do construct knowledge in everyday life situation (and while studying, too, of course, but learning is NOT limited to the classroom).  And as I don’t actually believe in unlearning, I became very conscious of what my kids and students are exposed to, and very, very curious to hear how they interpret what they see and hear.

Well, then there is the Hidden Curriculum (Broady, 1987).  What a gem!  What all lies behind our curricula? All our traditions and practices and words carry a huge load of unnecessary items (i.e. unnecessary or even harmful for learning) – and especially our words do that (Bernstein, 1971) because they can so easily be used to wield unnecessary power over others. And words can be interpreted in so very many ways! I should know, as a non-native speaker I have sometimes weird connotations for words… not to talk about pronouncing them weirdly!

I learned about the theories of Ziehe in nineties as well, and in 2008 he talks about normal learning problems in youth. I am so very opposed to the deficit-based educational model, because it labels and categorizes students, and at worst makes them believe in these tags attached to them. Schooling, or formal education, is just a continuation and specification of already initiated “natural” learning process.  Students should be empowered to become life-long learners! This is why I think agency is such an important thing while discussing or thinking about curriculum. 

Students' agency is seen as students intentionally influencing their own learning behaviours. Much of our self-regulation is based on the positive learning outcomes during the early childhood experiences of self-efficacy (Bandura 2006).   Students’ agency, according to Bandura (2006, p.164-165) is a construct of four different components: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness. In the classroom these components apply straightforwardly to students’ learning and academic performance. It really is a shame is a curriculum is so prescripted that there is no room for students to learn how to make good choices! This is also where my current work on my doctoral dissertation focuses: Students' perceptions of their learner agency. Very exciting!

Of course I have assimilated and accommodated all wonderful theories from Bruner, Engestrom, Ericson,,  Illeris, Kegan, Kolb, Mahler, Mezirov, Piaget, Vygotsky, Wiggins and beyond… but my core belief is in cognitive approach being combined with constructive and cooperative practices to enable effective lifelong learning.

Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on psychological science, 1(2), 164-180.

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. T.(1966). The social construction of reality.

Bernstein, B. (1971). On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. Knowledge and control, 3, 245-270.

Broady, D. (1987). Den dolda laroplanen [The hidden curriculum] (5th ed). Lund: Acupress.

Ziehe, T. (2008). ‘Normal learning problems’ in youth. Contemporary theories of learning: Learning theorists... in their own words, 184.

Knowledge as collaborative meaning-making

What is contemporary learning like? Is it just memorizing and regurgitating unrelated facts or constructing understanding?

It is crucially important for every educator to think about their own epistemological beliefs about knowledge, because it has such a huge impact in instruction. How exactly does data become information? And is it enough for an educator to transmit information or is it necessary to support students' knowledge creation and meaning-making processes?

The amount of information in the internet was in April 2014 about 4,4 trillion gigabytes, and it doubles every year (according to this LibraryJournal article). With all this information being freely at everyone's fingertips there are far too many details and facts for anyone to memorize.  And if we just aim to memorize the data, how can we connect those details into the main concepts or general idea? (See the previous post about visuals in learning process.)

Data (or a collection of facts) is just a building block of knowledge, and we need to move past both emphasizing the recollection of some data and information and thinking that transmitting it is teaching. We must support collaborative meaning-making in the classroom, because this provides the opportunities for students to learn from each other. Scardamalia & Bereiter (2006) express it very well:  "(in knowledge creating organizations) People are not honored for what is in their minds but for the contributions they make to the organization’s or the community’s knowledge" (p.101). Why should students' experience in classroom context be any different? Aren't schools and universities supposed to be exactly that: knowledge creating organizations??

Teaching as transmitting information is very unproductive, because it doesn't engage students or stimulate their need to learn, or feed their curiosity to understand and know more.  We must stop focusing on  this ineffective practice as the goal of instruction and focus instead in knowledge creation and management of collaborative meaning-making. This requires the acknowledgement of students' existing competencies, acquired either at school or outside of the formal education.

Does it really matter where and how my student learned something, if s/he is competent? I am aware that this will make textbook publishers to go out of business at some point, but I think it is far more important for students to learn how to find the relevant data and information, and make well informed choices about using it to guide their thinking, than regurgitating a chapter from a text book.

Furthermore, in learner-centered learning environment teachers should change the focus from universal delivery of information (i.e. traditional teacher-centered educational model) to learner-centered or personalized learning approach (i.e. learning facilitation) and:

(a) include learners in decisions about how and what they learn and how that learning is assessed

(b) value each learner’s unique perspectives

(c) respect and accommodate individual differences in learners’ backgrounds, interests, abilities, and experiences, and

(d) treat learners as co-creators and partners in the teaching and learning process.

These  learner-centered principles (APA task group, 1997) are very applicable for collaborative meaning-making and supporting students' knowledge creation.  After all, in order have students to contribute to the discussion, and to bring some external information to the learning situation, they must be empowered to do so and encouraged to think outside of the box.

Also, the learner-centered principles are very applicable for various e-learning environments (McCombs & Vakili, 2005). Technology should be used as means for promoting collaborative meaning-making - not as a tool to make student jump hoops and do busywork in regurgitating content provided by the instructors, or means for spying on students whether they have checked all the boxes and taken all the quizzes.

I know the interactions for learning take more instructors' time than simply checking boxes to verify that students have finished all their activities, but think how different contemporary learning could be:

Imagine what kind of learning occurs in a learning environment (virtual or classroom) where students are deeply interested about the subject matter and curious to learn more, because it is so applicable for their life or profession -- and the instructor is encouraging the discussions and has built room for innovation into the syllabus in order to learn with the students! Imagine the knowledge gained from this interaction!

It seems to me that we still have a loooooong way to go....

- - - - - - - - - -

APA Work Group of the Board of Educational Affairs. (1997). Learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for school reform and redesign. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

McCombs, B., & Vakili, D. (2005). A learner-centered framework for e-learning.The Teachers College Record, 107(8), 1582-1600.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology (pp. 97-115). 

Supporting learning process with visual organizers

I was re-re-re-reading about concept-based design for learning and decided to create an image for my students - and anybody else - to use in their teaching and design.

One important part of teachers' work is to show the interrelations of topics in their subject matter, or in the elementary classroom to provide an inclusive view for students and make learning more meaningful. It often seems self clear for us as education professionals how different things  are related to each other, but at that point we forget that we have studied the phenomenon for years, and our students may be exposed to it for the first time in their lives.

Sometimes students struggle because they try to start learning from facts and details - and often their chosen learning strategy for this is memorizing. It is really hard to build your way up to the general idea or theory, when you don't know what is the main concept, and how to chunk all details together. Visual organizers like mindmaps and concept maps are very handy tools for this. Sometime students find them hard, because there is not one correct answer for building a mindmap, as it is a visual representation of one's own thoughts, and thus a very open-ended task. For this reason I would not grade students' mindmaps even if creating one was an assignment. Applying unnecessary power over learning process can be detrimental for good learning quality.

More about engaging students in their learning process can be read at NotesFromNina.

Open and honest communication

We teachers are actually communication professionals, we live in dialogue. We try to transmit the message about important information to our students in many different ways: speaking, writing, showing, and of course also via electronic media. We also try to convey ideas, perspectives, ideologies and concepts, and yet it is up to students to choose whether they want to learn all that, or not.

Communication in education must be reciprocal. This also presents the need for open and honest interpersonal relations between teachers and students, because that builds trust and helps students choose to become involved in their own learning. I have often joked about best teachers being the master manipulators. Now how does that fit together with the open and honest communication?

It actually does. Being a non-native speaker of English I frequently need to visit dictionary pages to gain more understanding about words. Often I seem to have a different connotation to a certain word - like manipulation, which doesn't sound malicious to me, but obviously is that for most people. Dictionary suggests alternative words for the verb manipulate: influence, control, direct, guide, conduct, negotiate, exploit, steer. To me these seem acceptable descriptions for teaching as a profession. It is okay to guide students towards the right direction, that is what teaching is about. Forcing students to obey obscure rules is just bad management.

Shared responsibility to reach the mutual goal is the first step in open communication. As a learning facilitator, or mentor, I practice open manipulation: I tell my students that I am purposefully attempting on changing their perception about something. Grown up students find it funny, but also tend to think about it and then discuss or ask questions about it later, after they have had time to reflect upon it. Children get excited, because they sense the honesty behind the statement. They also feel empowered as they recognize the opportunity to choose, instead of doing something an adult just tells them to do. Cooperative learning can be as easy as this.

Negotiating meaning is the second step of being open and honest in classroom communication. We certainly have different connotations to words and we also have different understanding about concepts we teach and learn, so negotiating what a word actually means is important in order to improve the classroom communications. And, no, it cannot be just the teacher who gives the definition of the word, because how would students then have any ownership over the subject? Those times are long gone (or at least they should be gone) where teachers possessed the one and only correct answer or definition. (I can imagine math and science teachers disagreeing with this, but please bear with me.) Negotiating the meaning of a simple concept can just be facilitated by students explaining to each other in their own words what they think the word means, and then creating a mindmap showing the thoughts of each group. Of course the teacher can (and should) guide students towards the correct understanding by asking questions while groups are working, but the definitions are still students' own production. Constructing their understanding together helps students master the concept, as each student needs to explain to their group how they understand it. This is also the way how bilingual brain works: creating more connections and having several words to describe a concept or a word.

The third step in open and honest communication is the cognitive part: knowing what I learned and how I did it. Often teacher's help is invaluable here, because it is hard to see beyond one's own frame of reference.  Being aware about the choices I made in order to plan my future actions helps the goal setting.  Monitoring and guiding  my own actions, and regulating my own behaviour and learning to be successful. The umbrella term for these is executive functions. Being able to communicate in an open and honest way the reasons for success or the need for revising work makes assessment very non-punitive and it becomes a part of the individual learning process.

Non-threatening feedback immensely improves learning and goal setting. I haven't found any other way to provide that, but by communicating in an open and honest way. Have you?

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Teaching How to Choose

Making good choices seems to come naturally for some students while others need some coaching in order to become successful learners and be able to navigate with more ease within the educational systems. By allowing choices we also communicate our confidence in our students as learners – it is about letting them know we believe they can do it, without necessarily saying it aloud.

There are things in the classroom that must be done without getting into negotiations about how and why, and we truly cannot let students rule and do whatever they please in the classroom. However, allowing certain amount of choosing makes it emotionally easier for students to agree with the mandatory things. But this is not the only benefit of teaching how to choose. Only through our own choices we create accountability for our own learning and also train our executive functioning. Learning to make good choices is a skill to learn and it highly contributes to our higher level thinking. We should not deny that opportunity from our students by having too rigid rules that allow no choices.

How to add more choices into your classroom? During a regular day we have many opportunities to allow choices, starting from choosing whom to work with. By asking students to choose a partner who can help them in this assignment you are also encouraging students to recognize the good study habits of others. Giving younger students a package of content to be learned by the end of this week communicates your trust in their ability to choose the best pace for their own learning, and providing a timeline about how big fraction of the content should be finished by each day helps them understand the percentages, too. By letting students choose which assignment they want to start with helps them understand their personal preferences. Also, having a strong structure in the assignments allows the content to be more individualized. I think the ways of introducing more choices in learning environments are virtually infinite, if there is the will to make the change to happen.

My personal credo about best teacher being the one who makes herself unnecessary by empowering students become autonomous learners carries my values within it. I believe, that only by allowing students practice making good choices in an emotionally safe learning environment where their opinions or beliefs are never ridiculed, we can help the next generation reach their full potential and become critical thinkers. There is no shortcut to wisdom.