Walter Geerts & René van Kralingen - The Teachers' Handbook

1  How do students learn?

■■ Make sure you involve the whole class when you ask an individual student a question. Address the whole group again as soon as the student’s turn is over. An individual student’s questions can be put to the group as a whole as well: in that case, guide the whole group towards a consensus. Autonomy: making choices with Kolb and Gardner Learning will be more successful when a student can influence his own learning process. Thus, it is important to allow the student some leeway for his own learn ing behaviour and to let him make his own choices. Stevens (1997) applies the term autonomy to this process. Teachers can achieve this by incorporating freedom of choice into their teaching. Give students options in what they want to do or how they want to go about it. All students need to attain certain basic objectives, but not all of them need to take the same route. Teachers need to be able to differentiate: offer extra challenges to students who can handle it. Moreover, make them co-responsible for their own learning progress: students should be proactive to achieve their learning targets. This is not always easy in a full classroom. On the one hand, there should be clear limits to students’ freedom: individual freedom can only go as far as anoth er person’s limits. However, initiatives should be rewarded as much as possible within those given freedoms. A learning environment is all the more powerful when it satisfies the individual’s needs (see section 2.2). Each student is unique, after all. They all have differ ent social and cultural backgrounds, taste in music, hobbies and interests and so on (see section 2.4). Students have different ways of learning and different ap titudes. All of these can greatly affect the learning process and the way in which initiatives are undertaken, as well as their approach to tackling issues and solving problems. In a powerful learning environment the teacher’s approach is adjusted to the different learning styles of individual students. Kolb: different learning styles The best-known learning styles model was set out by American social psycholo gist David Kolb (1984). He differentiates among: ■■ doers; ■■ observers; 1.1.5

■■ thinkers; ■■ deciders.

In addition, Kolb sees the complete learning cycle as consisting of four phases: ■■ concrete experience; ■■ reflective observation;

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