Learning and Teaching
My Failure to Learn!!!
To feel and understand like a student, often, I would like to make myself a student such as preparing and taking an exam (e.g., PE licensing exam in 2021, Quality Certification exam in 2020, and Ergonomic Certification exam in 2017). Nevertheless, I have never felt like a struggling and frustrating student until I have tried Freestyle (Front Crawl) swimming in the summer of 2021! While I was struggling to learn this supposed to be easy–as it is called freestyle swimming–to learn, I had a lot of time to think/ponder about my students, teaching, learning, me as a student, teacher, learner, my triathlon racing, and so many other weird things as well!
I grew up in a swamp area in my early childhood. Swimming is a survival skill there. And I knew/know floating and surviving hours in the water. However, in a long-distance race situation (over a couple of miles), freestyle is more efficient as compared to the other styles (e.g., swamp swimming techniques–head is always above the water to watch out for a venomous snake like cobra!). So, I have determined to learn the Freestyle swimming as I am thinking about racing triathlons, especially the long-distance ones! I have started with watching a lot of YouTube videos on how to do a freestyle swimming – got all the techniques – and jump into the pool! After swallowing some pool water, I was able to make/swim freestyle. However, 5-8 hours a week for a month of practice, I was still getting out of breath after about 100 to 200 yards! It feels like I was stuck somewhere, and I was not improving at all. So, I hired a swimming coach for some lessons. After he watched me swimming freestyle, the look in his eyes told me that I was doing everything wrong! First, he noticed that I was not kicking right – and my kicks are too weak for freestyle swimming!!! Nothing could be as surprising as when a cyclist (80 miles/week) and a runner (20 miles/week) finds that his kicks are too weak/inefficient for swimming. And the hand movement, head position, body position, and body rotation are as bad as it can get for a good freestyle swimming. Following his plan, now I am getting better at Freestyle swimming.
Is it useful in a race?
Is it challenging enough to explore weaknesses?
Does it utilize the existing strengths to address the weaknesses?
Does it explore new weakness?
Does it strengthen both strengths and weaknesses?
Is this a continual process of improvement?
Does it aim for lifelong learning?
What Have I Learned from my Failure to Learn?
This freestyle learning provided me with a great perspective/explanation for my teaching philosophy and theory that I have been believing for over two decades of teaching and learning. I have realized again and again that:
What is taught must be useful in a race situation at that time and place, as everything in life, in fact, is a race!
It must be challenging enough. If it’s not challenging, it’s probably not worthy to learn to be useful in a race situation.
Students bring many strengths that are needed to be utilized to make them learn the new challenge!
A strong cyclist and runner probably has a very strong set of legs that can be used to develop efficient kicks that can eventually help going long distance swimming easily.
Students should be coached rather than lectured/lessoned
Over 500 YouTube videos that I have produced will probably help them to make just a couple of 100 yards. However, to prepare them to win a race, they need coaching!
Students must be challenged enough so that their weaknesses are visible to us – the coaches.
We, the coach must also know their strengths so that it could be strengthened as well as utilized to strengthen their weaknesses.
Once a weakness is addressed, a new challenge must be created to discover more weaknesses for improvements.
And the process continues.
Coaching must aim for a continual lifelong learning process that is sustainable for years to come.
What are Some Facts on Learning and Teaching?
Students are naturally curious, but not naturally good thinkers
Factual knowledge must precede skill
Memory is the residue of thought
Students understand new things within the context of what they already know
Students are more alike than different in terms of learning
Intelligence can be changed through hard work
Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill must be practiced to be improved
(Willingham (2009 p. 163))
What Have I Learned from School?
Have I really forgotten everything learned from school?
Not exactly!
I may have forgotten the Newton’s second law of motion
Lower-order learning
Facts, figures, numbers, parameters
Significantly low retention time
I have forgotten mostly everything immediately after the final exam of the course; even the name of the course in some cases!!! Have I really taken that course? I don’t know! Probably! Probably Not!
What have I learned then?
Higher-order learning (probably)
Connecting dots!
Critical thinking and reasoning skills
Higher-order learning is forever!
Now I know that some kind of force is needed to move things!
I believe my understanding level has improved over the years in school; most facts and figures have been forgotten though!
What Should I Learn from School?
What do students mean by learning? What do they really want or need from us, the educators? Do they really want or need to get “their meaning of learning” from their valuable time in school?
Not exactly!
Whenever, Dr. Ahmed has asked students the $1M question
What is learning? Or How do you learn?
Learning by repetition is the most common answer!
What types of learning they are referring to?
Higher-order learning? Or
Lower-order learning?
Nobody answers learning by thinking!
Of course few students like thinking!
Because brain hurts!
Think about the body builders. How do they get that shape?
How Do I Get the Best from My Lazy Brain?
While many instructors believe in various learning styles, many assume that students are more alike in terms of learning. Nevertheless, the Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) theory in the following figure is same for whether there are learning styles or not.
How Do I Get the Best from My Lazy Brain?
Yerkes-Dodson Law visualized in the following figure states that human brains need a certain amount of arousal to be able to process information effectively and efficiently.
How Do I Get the Best from My Lazy Brain?
Humans do not perform well in underload or overload situations (Young & Stanton, 2002). Effective coaching or teaching should match the students’ capacity with the demand imposed by the instructor to achieve the desired level of learning.
How Do I Get the Best from My Lazy Brain?
How do I create the flow state? How do I put my students in the zone of being fully energized, aroused, involved, absorbed, and delighted?
Mental state in terms of challenge level and skill level, according to Csikszentmihalyi's flow model.
How Do I Achieve my Goal as an Educator?
Reference
Ahmed, S., (2017). Theory of Sustained Optimal Challenge in Teaching and Learning. Proceedings of the 2017 International Annual meeting of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Austin, TX, USA, October 9-13.
Svinicki, M. D., McKeachie, W. J., & McKeachie, W. J. (2011). McKeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Young, M. S., & Stanton, N. A. (2002). Attention and automation: new perspectives on mental underload and performance. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 3(2), 178-194.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975), Flow (psychology). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) on December 2021