View Content #28107

by Stephanie Knight, CASLS Assistant Director

            Any lived experience has the potential to result in learning. A child running with untied shoelaces may trip and come to a painful realization that said shoelaces give gravity an unfair advantage in determining his or her trajectory. A gamer may fall into a pit of lava and quickly discover that his or her character cannot overcome the smoldering heat. A L2 learner may try to apologize to a friend he or she met online and discover that the L1 conventions for apologizing do not align with those in the L2 and struggle to repair a fraught situation. In each of these instances, there is action, feedback from the environment that informs the person at hand of his or her relative success, and ideally, the individual will engage in reflection related to correcting course.

            Though each of the aforementioned situations describe informal learning scenarios, they provide an apt trajectory of learning in formal (classroom) contexts. Ideally, learners experiment, hypothesize, and explore. The teacher guides those processes by providing feedback that informs individuals of “whether I [the individuals] am on track or need to change course” (Wiggins, 2012). The learner’s actions are at the center of the class, and the teacher provides a supporting role.

            As the old adage indicates, true learner-centeredness in classroom contexts is easier said than it is done. In each of the informal learning contexts mentioned, there was a single action that inspired direct feedback to the individual. Given that most states average close to 30 secondary learners per classroom (DeGuerin, 2019), it is impossible for a teacher to provide each individual the feedback they need to register whether they are on course and the extent to which they need to correct course; the infrastructure at hand within formal learning environments is undoubtedly limiting.

            Yet, the environment itself is an amazing tool for educators; in even the informal learning contexts described, no teacher provided feedback, and only one instance even involved feedback from a human. Classrooms can replicate these feedback loops by including places to experiment and play and check-in points for leaners to evaluate their work. For example, learners can engage in close, multi-step, detail-oriented reading or listening that produces an answer to a mystery articulated by the teacher. If the answer isn’t correct, learners know immediately that they missed an important detail or two and can try again.

            Importantly, however, the aforementioned example requires that learners have the reflective and evaluative skills to examine their own work. As such, the teacher in modeling and providing practice time for those skills emerges as critical; as Wiggins (2012) discusses, the mere existence of information in an environment does not ensure that the information will be used by learners. In order to conduct classrooms in the spirit of learner-centeredness, all learners must be empowered to examine the information at hand and relate it to their work and the work of their fellow learners. As such, teachers must carve out and protect time for developing these skills. If they do, learners can truly take charge of their own outcomes.

References

DeGuerin, M. (2019). Many public school classrooms are overcrowded, but some states fare worse than others. Here’s the average class size for every US state. Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.insider.com/states-with-the-best-and-worst-public-education-systems-2019-8.

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Feedback for learning. 70(1). Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx?utm_source=zapier.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zapier