My Reflection On The Importance of Experience In My Learning and

Teaching.

Learning can happen from anywhere because experiences are everywhere.

 Experience is what is happening to us all the time as we long we exist. So we constantly learn because we constantly go through experiences and these makes us lean towards a certain direction. I went through a traditionalist approach to learning which made me basically a traditionalist teacher too. We looked at the teacher as the sole source of knowledge and we had to cram the facts from the texts. Applying the content to our environment where we have experiences daily was not part of the system. I learnt many facts in Physics, passed exams but still some facts I am just realizing their application in the real world. What a shame!  Learning according to Dewey, does not simply happen out of the book but all learning is experiential.

If you notice, scientific  theories in books where developed by people who first went through an experience, for example in physics we have Isaac Newton, most of the things he discovered was a result of him going through an experience. For example Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree , when the apple fell on his head, from there he discovered gravitational force. After seeing it , experiencing it.  No wonder these theories where even named after their names, why? It is them that went through that experience, and here we come and just teach it without taking  our students through some experience, that is why  something will still lack in the products of the traditionalist approaches and that is failing to apply the content to the real world.

I have been practicing traditionalist approaches to a greater extent but now having been introduced to different approaches and I have seen it personally very interesting in learning given the fact that in this CCTI course, our tutors are behind us, giving us instructions and then encouraging us as we constantly learn new things on our own and after every lesson you feel like moving on to see what is next, I feel now it is high time I adopted some of the progressive approaches and I have already started trying it out. The approaches of progressive learning are worth integrating.     

Because children learn more, and enjoy learning more when they are actively involved, rather than passive listeners.

By grounding learning activities in an authentic, real-world context, constructivism stimulates and engages students. Students in constructivist classrooms learn to question things and to apply their natural curiosity to the world. So progressive education;

Develops thinking skills.

• Problem solving teaches students to consider multiple perspectives on a given situation or phenomenon.

Develops communication and social skills. Students must learn how to clearly articulate their ideas as well as to collaborate on tasks effectively by sharing the burden of group projects. Students must therefore exchange ideas and so must learn to "negotiate" with others and to evaluate their contributions in a socially acceptable manner. This is essential to success in the real world, since they will always be exposed to a variety of experiences in which they will have to navigate among others' ideas. Encourages alternative methods of assessment. Traditional assessment is based on pen-and-paper tests whereby students demonstrate or reproduce knowledge in the form of short responses and multiple-choice selection, which often inspire little personal engagement. Constructivist assessment engages the students' initiative and personal investment through research reports, physical models, and artistic representations. Engaging the creative instincts develops a student's ability to express knowledge through a variety of ways. The student is also more likely to retain and transfer the new knowledge to real life. Helps students transfer skills to the real world. Students adapt learning to the real world, gaining problem-solving skills and ability to do a critical analysis of a given set of data. These skills enable the student to adapt to a constantly changing real-world environment. Thus, classroom learning does not result in (only) acquisition of a canon of absolute "truth"; it also results in a resource of personal knowledge. Promotes intrinsic motivation to learn. Constructivism recognizes and validates the student's point of view, so that rather than being "wrong" or "right," the student re-evaluates and readjusts his knowledge and understanding. Such an emphasis generates confidence and self-esteem, which, in turn, motivate the student to tackle more complex problems and themes. However with progressive approaches  I have some hurdles and some  of these are Ø  The current curriculum is more exams oriented, and so the system is we have to make sure we finish the syllabus with progressive it requires time to apply it which may slow down the syllabus coverage as they set it. Ø  The students lack computers, internet, which I feel is very important in the progressive education. Because students need to do research on their own even when they are not at school. So it somehow stills a challenge to me. But it is temporary. Ø  Follow up, some students tends to hide in the group when actually they have done nothing in the given tasks. Ø  It’s mode of assessment does not apply to the current curriculum. However I am bound for progressive approaches and I have tried so far to talk to the academic committee to try to re-arrange my lessons and for my colleagues that are doing CCTI on the timetable in such a way that it can give us chance to try out these approaches. I have started to preach it to my students to see its importance since they have been used to traditional teaching and learning.    In this 21st we need to know that learning is not static but it is on-going as we continue to experience the world we live in.