Editorial
This article is based on the session presented by Manolis Kontovas and Maria-Araxi Sachpazian under the same title, at the TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece conference in March 2016.
Teaching Beyond the Classroom: Teachers Influencing Students’ Attitudes to Learning.
Maria-Araxi Sachpazian and Manolis Kontovas, Greece
Maria-Araxi Sachpazian RSA dip/ TEFL (hons) is a graduate of the Department of Philosophy and Education of Artistotle University of Thessaloniki and a holder of the RSA Diploma. She works as a lecturer at CITY college, the International Faculty of the University of Sheffield and she is the owner of a business and academic support e-company, Input on Education. She is the current chairperson of TESOL Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece. E-mail: msachpazian@citycollege.sheffield.eu
Emmanuel Kontovas has graduated from the English Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has worked in a variety of environments having taught to various age groups and for different needs. He is a current board member of Tesol Macedonia-Thrace, Northern Greece. E-mail: ekontovas@gmail.com
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Introduction
A historical perspective
What can teachers do?
What is hoped for the future
References
The role of the teacher in influencing the way students perceive learning is a crucial factor for successful learning to take place. The rapport built between learners and teachers has the power to alter the learning environment significantly; therefore it needs to be taken into consideration, especially when training or mentoring novice teachers who may think that attention on form-focused practice may be more important than forming connections with their learners.
This article aims to explore the importance of creating safe learning environments, where multi-modal learning can be accommodated and in which learners can learn without being afraid to venture out of their comfort zone. The creation of such environment rests mainly on the teacher. Therefore, the teachers’ own perceptions of what constitutes learning, their own representations of how learners should participate in their own learning may influence this environment. Furthermore, the article aims to examine a number of ways in which teachers can build deeper connections with their learners.
It may be argued that teaching and learning are as old as time. People have been learning formally for a fragment of this time, but informal learning in the form of apprentiship has been developing alongside our civilization. Perhaps this informal learning has a lot to offer teachers as an example of active learning that engages learners completely and asks them to acquire personal responsibility for their own learning, if we manage to turn a blind eye to the rather cruel way that apprentices were educated. During the course of time, learning has been seen in many ways. Casting our eyes onto the past, we will notice that learning was first viewed as a passive activity for the learners, while the all-omniscient teacher was pouring knowledge into their innocent, untrained brains. This notion led to teaching seen as teacher-centered and teacher-led, since the teacher was the authority figure and the only one who possessed knowledge. This autocratic model of teaching led to the creation of a persona, fashioned by most teachers at the time. The master was supposed to be cold, sterilized, devoid of any emotions. Students were seen as a hindrance to the progression of the lesson and mistakes were not tolerated. This autocratic figure, who probably copied faithfully the equally autocratic political rulers of the time, preferred to test rather to teach, to present rather than to engage, to punish rather than to explain. Individual differences did not exist and students were merely viewed as clones of one another.
Fortunately, we now know that learning is primarily an emotional process, therefore learners need to be inherently interested in what they learn and if this is to happen, teachers need to make their subject-matter relevant to the learners’ needs and lives. The learners’ personal engagement in their own learning is now valued, since learning is seen a multi-modal, life-long process. Education has become highly interactive, since research data into how the brain learns has disproved the notion that people learn when they silently listen to the person presenting. It is also easy to notice that each learner needs to be given time, space and patience to interact with the material.
As mentioned before, learning is now seen as a combination of mental and emotional processes, it is a complicated process broken into a multitude of sub-skills and it tends to be different for different people. The idea of learning styles and multiple intelligences has helped educators of all disciplines realize that learners cannot be seen as a group. Individual presence, participation and differences matter and they play a great part in the efficacy of the lesson delivered. The emotional side of learning and what has been summarised by Steven Krashen under the term affective filter factors (Du, Xiaoyan, 2009), have the power to propel or hold learners back.
A learning environment in which individual differences are accepted and personal thinking time is factored in when planning, allows learners to be themselves, therefore they can realize a greater potential than they may have initially shown. Contrary to that, an environment which is test-oriented, in which teachers tend to zero in on mistakes and lack of accomplishment, lack of confidence is expected to render learners incapable and unwilling of making much progress (Weimer, 2002). Individual reasons and intrinsic motivation also play a significant role in the way the learners progress, but as educators we need to consider the duration of motivation and the learners’ ability to self-motivate for a prolonged period of time (e.g. in Greece it takes learners about seven years to take their B2 level exams, which is very long time for any child to sustain motivation). This highlights even more the significance of the role played by teachers as they can sustain learner motivation or find clever ways of rekindling it.
The emotional side of learning also affects the way learners process incoming knowledge and form connections or associations between with what they already knew and what they are now learning. Ideally, every previous knowledge is the bedrock on which to anchor every future knowledge. Learning in an interactive way, in non-threatening environments, offers the opportunity to learners to ask questions, without being labeled negatively or bullied and they also have the time to connect incoming knowledge with what they already know. In fact this connection forms the basis of their learning. Therefore, their past knowledge helps them understand, assimilate and later apply what they are learning. This has been described as positive transfer (Sousa, 2006). Unfortunately, when learners are rushed or when teaching takes place in a lockstep fashion, during which all learners are expected to learn at the same pace, ill-acquired new knowledge cannot be properly understood, therefore no connections are formed and the material is not learned or it is learnt superficially and it is easily forgotten later on. To make matters worse, this hastily acquired knowledge can become a hindrance to the learners’ ability to acquire more knowledge, which is described as negative transfer (Sousa, 2006).
Teachers have a number of tools at their disposal in order to create cohesive, all-inclusive and highly interactive learning environments. In this article we are going to focus on three: the use of technology, with an emphasis on gaming, the use of humour in teaching and the sharing of emotion and the idea of decentralizing our teaching. We will finish by looking at the actual environment where learning takes place and our hopes for the future.
1. Gaming
The first way to connect with our learners is to take them seriously into consideration. Although it may sound basic and self-evident, getting to know learners, which can be both time-consuming and problematic in some cases, is not self-explanatory in all teaching settings. In fact, getting to know the learners is simply the tip of the iceberg. Getting to share their culture and their passions and having teachers show respect for the students’ pastimes and their idols, is what puts forward the idea of equality and opens the channels for true and honest interaction between the teachers and the learners. Music, the digital world (apps, games and even gadgets), sports and fashion are great vehicles that allow teachers and learners to come closer and use language to communicate in a setting which is a purposeful and authentic.
Another effective way to build bridges with learners is through the use of technology and especially video games. One example that easily stands out is Minecraft (https://minecraft.net/en-us/) created by Microsoft is one of the best simulated environments where gaming and teaching can be combined. Students can be asked to work together on building a virtual world or a virtual structure like for example Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. They can be asked to read about it, work collaboratively and then present it, talk about it and even prepare a play performed in the theatre.
2. Using humour in education & the sharing of emotions
The use of humour can help teachers create a more relaxed learning environment which significantly lowers affective filter factor, thus allowing quality learning to take place. The idea of using humour in education goes far beyond cracking jokes or pleasing the crowds by turning the teacher into a caricature. Our sense of humour, when put into good use, can bring us closer to our learners and also defuse tension. Attention is needed, though, as what constitutes a joke differs greatly between people of different cultures. Also, teenagers tend to be a hard audience to please, when it comes to jokes or any kind of sense of humour delivered by grown-ups. This is particularly important in the training or mentoring of budding teachers who need to remember that they do not use their sense of humour to get the class’s seal of approval, but rather in a self-deprecating fashion.
Sharing a laugh with students in class is part of sharing positivity with them. The teachers’ ability to see the ridiculous side in serious issues has the power to make learners stress less over tests or exams. This also tends to make learners less afraid of their mistakes. Sharing emotions creates a sense of belonging, so that all the students in the class feel they are members of the same team. The additional bonus is that empathy is created, because students learn how to express their feelings and how to share their feelings with others in a healthy way. Finally, a sense of shared purpose is achieved which helps in achieving the learning goals as well as having fewer discipline problems.
3.Decentralizing our lesson
It may be thought that removing the teacher from the centre of the action, requires less effort on the part of the educators, less planning and is, in general, less exhausting. Contrary to this, learner-centred teaching requires a lot of meticulous planning, so that learners are actually working and their class time is not wasted. In fact, decentralizing the lesson requires more experience and more confidence from the teacher which is also an important factor to be taken into consideration when educating or training the teachers of the future. The gains are obvious and they are all very important. By using blended learning (Tomlinson, 2013), project-based teaching methods or Task-based teaching, teachers get learners to work to generate knowledge. In this way, learners are not simply participants in their learning, but they themselves become active agents. Needless to say, class management issues hardly arise in such learning environments as learners work on what they like, how they like and, more or less, at their own pace which is the hardest aspect to accomplish. An example of such learning can be seen in this issue of Humanizing Language Teaching, in the article by Dimitris Primalis entitled, Far and beyond the classroom routine: Reimagining famous paintings
Classrooms or learning spaces?
This type of decentralized learning cannot be accommodated in the classrooms as they are traditionally seen, though. The way the classroom is organized tells us a lot about the kind of learning that takes place there. These days, the term classroom is being replaced by the term learning spaces. Several factors are taken into consideration for the design and construction of those spaces. First of all, we need learners to feel comfortable. There is enough discomfort that comes with education (Weimer, 2002), let us try to limit it. Secondly, emerging learning environments need to accommodate models of blended teaching during which students of the same class are not necessarily working on the same material or even in the same way (e.g. B1 learners are preparing presentations on a topic and some use computers, while others are working with cardboard and sticking pictures). Finally, these learning spaces should be places where both the teacher and the learners can make progress and accomplish a lot (Weimer, 2002). This means that teachers need their own space to move, store and organise their materials. Classrooms need to look and feel like places where teachers are meant, not only to teach, but also to work.
We started this article by taking a historical view of learning and examining how these views have altered. One of the key changes is that now we view the formal part of learning, which has a natural end, as only a fragment of life-long learning. Life-long learning does not happen in classrooms, though. It tends to take place in self-sustaining learning environments and it is successful when regulated and monitored by the learners themselves who identify their own needs and decide on the teaching/learning course of action. In order for people to be able to do that in the future, they need to have initial positive experiences of what constitutes learning. They also need to be taught in a de-centralised way so as not to depend on the teacher to identify their needs (Weimer, 2002). They also need teachers who will be positive role models and who will develop emotional and mental bonds with the.
People do not learn because they have to. They learn, and they learn better, when they want to. By teaching in a way that affects our students’ lives we can create schools where students want to go and learning spaces in which both learners and teachers engage in reflective practice (Weimer, 2002). Hopefully, this is more than a utopia.
Du, Xiaoyan. (2009) The affective filter in second language teaching. Asian Social Journal [online] Vol 5, No 8, August 2009. Available at www.ccsenet.org [Accessed 22nd December 2017]
Griffith, A. & Burns, M. (2012), Engaging Learners, Osiris, USA.
Hattie, J. & Yates, G. (2014), Visible learning and the Science of How we Learn, Routledge, New York.
Monahan, T. (2002). Flexible space and Built Pedagogy: Emerging IT embodiments. [online]. Available from: www.torinmonahan.com [Accessed 21st Dec. 2017].
Primalis, D. (2017). Reimagining famous paintings: Stimulating creative and critical thinking in the EFL class through an art project. A different side of EFL. Retrieved from: http://differentefl.blogspot.gr/2017/08/reimagining-famous-paintings.html
Sousa. D. A. (20063). How the Brain Learns. USA. Corwin Press
Tomlinson B. (ed.) (2013). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. 2nd edition. London, Bloomsbury.
Weimer, M. (2002), Learner-centered teaching: five key changes to practice, Jossey-
Bass, San Fransisco.
Whitaker, T. (2004), What Great Teachers do Differently: 14 things that matter most, Eye on Education, New York.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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