My 5th ABLA 2016 Learned Lesson: Changing Teaching Paradigms by Maximizing Metacognition and Implementing Student Empowerment
My
5th ABLA 2016 Learned Lesson:
Changing Teaching Paradigms by Maximizing Metacognition
and Implementing Student Empowerment
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Post 289
While attending dos Santos &
Salazar’s (2016) talk during the ABLA 2016 Convention
in the month of August, their session sparked a lot interest among many of us
participants who continued to talk this over among ourselves after the session
was over. Both presenters showed us “how to promote student and teacher
metacognition to improve learning and teaching” (dos Santos &
Salazar, 2016)
by providing us with very relevant information for our academic planning and
training. Listening to them and reflecting upon their words, one gets to
realize that a paradigm shift is needed to cater for more metacognitive
strategies for both instructors and learners. Metacognition is a great
alternative to work with all sorts of students in our binational centers or in
higher education settings.
Dos Santos
have us participants watch a video entitled Schema
(2008) by John Medina, author of Brain
Rules, 12 Principiles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School,.
The reason for them to have us participants analyze the video was to
demonstrate the importance of schema activation when it comes to teaching and
learning. The absence of this kind of activation can simply lead to zero
learning in spite of the fact that students can be fully entertained in a
classroom.
Following
dos Santos and Salazar’s (2016) instructions, which are pretty much the same
ones suggested by Medina in his video, the act of learning can be severely
affected or positively enhanced by providing learners with a frame of reference. However, when one
listens to Medina and his assistant, Dr. Whitehead, in the video, with no
contextualization of what is being explained, it is plainly useless for anyone
to try to decipher what is being said by Medina and Whitehead. The importance
of having a frame of reference to understand what it is being explained to us
is crucial and that is called schema
activation. The absence of such frame means we have no idea whatsoever of
what is being demonstrated or disclosed to us. When this is transferred to the
classroom, you can anticipate a lot of problems after explanations and when the
class is about to start a series of exercises based on those explanations.
Why do we –when watching Medina’s
(2008) video or trying to teach something new to our learners- miserably fail
while trying to complete the task? Reynolds (2008),
in his summary of the three most important brain rules published by Medina,
insists on Rule #4 that states that “we don’t pay attention to boring things.”
As explained by dos Santos & Salazar (2016) in their ABLA talk, 90% of the
time last century teachers were delivering content in class, and students’
voices were silent, and this silence could perfectly be interpreted as boredom.
Then one starts to think whether this 90% of content delivery has changed that
much in classrooms in higher education, language schools, binational centers,
and so on. Dos Santos & Salazar (2016) insited on the encouragement of
student voice to provoke self-direction in their learning, but when an
instructor is silencing their students with “non-engaging stuff,” learning will
not be present at all and we will continue to fail miserably.
Dos Santos
& Salazar (2016) also used a quite nice metaphor to refer to what may be
happening in our classrooms: How do we soccer fans react when we talk about a
game and when we are watching a match? Will our students demonstrate the same
kind of engagement when they talk about the last game our national team played
compared to what they were “learning” the last time they were in English class?
Johnson (2012) posits the difference between entertaining and engaging quite
nicely by saying that “entertainment’s primary purpose is to create an
enjoyable experience; engagement’s primary purpose is to focus attention so
learning occurs.” Based on Johnson’s words, no learning is taking place while
we are engaged in a soccer discussion or game viewing. “Entertainment is
ephemeral, often frivoulus; engagement creates long-lasting results and deals
with important issues” (Johnson,
2012) .
Then, if the right class environment is created, “long-lasting” effects can be
seen in our students’ knowledge, language command and mastery.
Based on dos
Santos & Salazar (2016), metacognition can be learned and taught. There
needs to be a steady shift in the metacognitive balance that exists today in
education, whether that is language or content learning. And this balance
should be on the side of the learner; the teacher needs to be a guide and
provide that guidance towards student learning. We need to make learners work
rather than having us teachers always do the work for them. A class needs to be
focused on the student not on the instructor; classes need to be
student-oriented and learner-centered. As a consequence, teachers need to be
trained to become metacognitive in their kind of teaching practices, which
means that they need to re-focus what they do in the classroom to provoke a self-direction
in student engagement, making them responsible for what needs to be learned and
how much they want to continue learning beyond the classroom. Once instructors
have the right training on metacognition, they can teach their students how to
become metacognitive in their learning and really be engaged in class to
maximize learning and their empowerment when it come to their education.
Finally,
understanding that “entertainment needs have little relevance to the reader /
watcher / listener” (Johnson,
2012)
and the student, and that “engaging experiences most often relate directly to
the learner” (Johnson,
2012) ,
it is time to start using more metacognition in language learning. What about
the flipped classrooms for our adult target audience? A sample practice in
metacognition in the hands of learners is the flipped classroom, which is now a
change in our teaching paradigms where learners work rather than having their
teachers do everything for them. In language instruction we want autonomous
learners responsible for what they want to learn in and outside the classroom;
some sort of flipped work can do the trick for all these learners. But, remember, students need to be given the
frame of reference (schema activation), and instructors need to work on this
provision of context to propitiate learning,
“By learning
how to be metacognitive, students become more conscious, reflective and aware
of their progress along the learning path” (dos
Santos & Salazar, 2016) . Don’t we all teachers want learners
who are really responsible for their learning and who can come to class to
demonstrate what they are learning on their own and with our guidance? I guess
all of us teachers will be more than satisfied seeing the result of our
metacognitive teaching and our leaners’ metacognitive practices. And “while
students take charge of their learning, teachers can shift the focus to them
and their learning and just be guides” (dos
Santos & Salazar, 2016) who can lead them to the expected
language proficiency.
References
Dos Santos, L., & Salazar, L.
(2016, August 16-19). Changing Teaching Paradigms by Maximizing Metacognition and
Implementing Student Empowerment. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program . Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico:
Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.
Johnson, D. (2012, April 16). Engage or Entertain?
Retrieved from Education World:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson026.shtml
Medina, J. (2008, February 5). Schema. Retrieved
from YouTube.Com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbRpMlEHzM
Reynolds, G. (2008, May 19). Brain Rules for Presenters.
Retrieved from SlideShare.Com:
http://www.slideshare.net/garr/brain-rules-for-presenters/1
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