Thursday 5 July 2012

Question from Mr Peter Schwartz’s keynote session #8

Steven makes a great point about pedagogy and the way we teach our students. How do we empower our learners to learn?

1 comment:

  1. It's an interesting phrase 'empower them to learn'. It means giving them the means to learn, and the control over what and how they learn. Does it include 'motivating them to learn'? I'm not sure. If you are empowered to learn, then does someone else need to take responsibility for motivating you to learn?
    We are empowered to learn in our everyday lives by have the human capability to learn from our environment. We decide what and how we learn, and the motivation to do so is up to us. We need to have opportunities for learning, but we supply the motivation.
    In education it's a bit different - the difference between formal and informal learning begins with the curriculum - what you learn. I don't know what I need to know if I don't already know it. So I can't do the motivation for myself.
    So the key to empowering learners to learn may be to help them to see the relevance of learning something they know nothing about. I discussed this in replying to an earlier comment. Relevance is essential.
    At least that's a start. It's an intriguing, important and complex issue that every teacher has to think about.

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