Creating Learning Minds

Creating Learning Minds : 

PCV 1 Creating Learning Minds

The Learning : 

PCV 2 The Learning Learning process is a natural but complex process. Creating learning minds involves: Designing powerful learning contexts; Providing safe, collaborative , dialogical and cooperative environments; Recognizing that social and emotional factors impact on student learning.

The Need : 

PCV 3 The Need This phenomenon, if not prevalent, can inhibit economic,academic, and personal growth across levels. A nation’s performance in a highly competitive global economy depends on its educated and trained professionals. The shortages: Our nation is confronted with a large section of population with the lowest incomes, the weakest skills,and the greatest risk of academic failure. Research has established (Mangino and Griggs-2003) that when instruction was congruent with college students’ learning style preferences, , they achieved significantly higher scores than when mismatched. The issues that have emerged are to create learning minds within the varied educational and theoretical contexts.

Skills Required to Create Learning : 

PCV 4 Skills Required to Create Learning We have to change from a focus on “what we know” to an emphasis on “how we come to know.” The habits of mind,values, or ground rules of a particular discipline provide a unique perspective to learning. When something increases in value it appreciates.Efforts towards creating a learning mind focuses on generative and life giving forces in the system, the things we want to increase. A teacher’s role is to provide learning experience in an environment that will promote student behavior desired by the objectives of education. If we want to explain and predict student’s response, we have to look at how people learn , and how we can facilitate their learning, and that is the first step towards creating learning minds.

Inquisitiveness : 

PCV 5 Inquisitiveness Inquisitiveness is precursor to the process of enquiry that begins with gathering information and data through applying the human senses--- seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. These processes are steered by the mind.When we invoke the mental faculties to drive the learning we create questions.These imply a ‘need or want to know’. For teachers and educators, it implies emphasis on the development of inquiry skills and the nurturing of inquiring attitudes or habits of mind that will enable students to continue the quest for knowledge throughout life.

The Process of Learning : 

PCV 6 The Process of Learning

Igniting and Effective Transmission of Knowledge : 

PCV 7 Igniting and Effective Transmission of Knowledge

The Art of Questioning : 

PCV 8 In the traditional classroom, the teacher is frequently the questioner. Questions are usually intended to provoke feedback about a reading or activity assignment. In an inquiry classroom, the teacher asks questions that are more open and reflective in nature. Habits of mind are nurtured through questioning and reflection. Questions like: How do you (I) know? Can we (I) ever know that? What is the evidence? How did you (I) arrive at that decision? Questions, whether self-initiated or "owned," are at the heart of inquiry learning. While questions are also a part of the traditional classroom, the sources, purposes, and levels of questioning are quite different The Art of Questioning

Questioning : 

PCV 9 Appropriate questioning techniques are important in an inquiry-based classroom, especially in the lower grades where they become a foundation for self-initiated questioning. Dennie Palmer Wolf, suggests that there are four major types of questions: inference questions, interpretation questions, transfer questions, and questions about hypotheses. Questioning

Questioning : 

PCV 10 Questioning Questioning and searching are essential but effectively generating knowledge from it is greatly aided by the conceptual context of learning. In the traditional classroom , the teacher is frequently the questioner.Questions are usually intended to provoke feedback about a reading or activity assignment.In a classroom ,the teacher asks questions that are more open and reflective in nature. But self-initiated or ‘owned’ questions are the outcome when the questioning mind is in quest of learning. Sources,purposes and levels of questioning are quite different when they are ‘owned’ by the questioner.

The Essence : 

PCV 11 Content of subjects; Content in a larger conceptual framework; Information Processing skills; and, Nurtured habits of mind are the four things to be kept in mind while developing plans for learning creatively. These four outcomes are the essence of inquiry learning and should be the "essence outcomes" for modern standards of education. The Essence

Create a Visual Factory : 

PCV 12 Create a Visual Factory According to Markem Mallis one way to create a vibrant mutual learning environment is with what ‘s called , a visual factory. Teams post their Pareto charts, bar charts, and other data so that colleagues can find out what they’re doing and learn from their work the failures and the successes. ‘Because an increasingly large number of persons are learning the common language and tools, they can read the charts and get the information they need to apply to their own work.’That avoids ‘reinventing the wheel’ , has a powerful impact on the people reading the charts, and helps spread the excitement for mutual learning.

MUTUAL LEARNING : 

PCV 13 MUTUAL LEARNING Mutual learning and sharing knowledge is growing as competitive strategy. The hallmark is that people learn together and from each other rather than solely from an instructor or a computer program. Mutual learning can be internal-within and across functions and geographic locations. Mutual learning environment isn’t just a classroom ; it can be almost any environment such as a meeting or website that enables people to share and learn from each other in a very powerful way.It involves getting together to learn new methodologies,share experience, and learn from each other’s success and failures, ideally on ongoing basis.

Concept and Context : 

PCV 14 Concept and Context Within a conceptual framework, questioning and active learner involvement can lead to important outcomes in the classroom. Students who actively make observations, collect , analyze, and synthesize information and draw conclusions go about developing useful problem solving skills. These skills can be applied to “future need to know” situations that are encountered by a learner ,both, at school and work. Another benefit it offers is the development of habits of mind that can last a lifetime and guide learning and creative thinking.

Constructivism as a Theory of Learning : 

PCV 15 Constructivism as a Theory of Learning Key principles of Constructivism entail concepts of Fitting,of Reality,of Learning, and of the Subjectivity-Objectivity dialectic – that emerge from the efforts to adapt, assimilate, or apply this theory within varied educational or theoretical contexts. The perspective that then emerges that constructivism is not theory of teaching , but a theory of learning. Piaget’s constructivism says the learner adopts himself or herself to the ‘new knowledge' and modifies it in relation to his or her own ever-evolving structure of thinking. “Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself.” Learning minds are constructivists and repose a lot of significance in individual’s construal of knowledge.

Aims and Foci of Constructivism : 

PCV 16 Aims and Foci of Constructivism It is an unconventional approach to the problem of knowledge and knowing. It starts from the assumption that knowledge, no matter how it is defined, is in the heads of persons, and that the thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows on the basis of his or her experience. Knowledge is an individual, personal construal that is shaped by our own experiences as learners in this world– knowledge is seen as something dependent on the learner.

Taboos that inhibit creation of learning minds : 

PCV 17 Taboos that inhibit creation of learning minds Taboos are the actions that inhibit learning minds if a teacher resorts to them.They represent acting forces in the school reality and are prominently influencing educational practices. Don’t Tell. Learner cannot be wrong Knowledge is already inside a person at birth Never tell to the student what he can find by himself. Being active does not imply that they have to construct a model physically with their hands, instead that they develop their knowledge by reflecting, analyzing, questioning themselves, working on problems, and so on.

Slide 18: 

PCV 18 My mind to me a Kingdom is Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind: Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. Edward Dyer Thank You !