My Belief about Learning

As I continue to ask questions about the nature of our students learning ─ on what is important for them to learn, about who can learn well and why and about effective strategies for enhancing my own learning and that of helping our students, I will attempt to articulate my own brief about learning.

My beliefs – or rather my expectations of learning stems from my personal experience. As a parent, I look at how my newborn, from birth with the ability to learn how to walk. I watched with a big smile but yet no great surprise as my baby maneuvered successfully around an obstacle for the first time. As they grow, the child becomes more confident and gradually becomes a stable and confident walker and runner. So happily, my child goes to school with me knowing that he can walk and run. With opportunity and carefully training in schools, some of the walkers and runners become hurdles, dancers, basketball players and gymnast while others still trip over their own feet.

Similarly, I believe that each newborn also has the ability to think. But why does this matter? From my outside working experience, I came to see that the problems of the world are complex and that solutions need to be subtle. Therefore, there is a need to know how to be creative, how to analyze problems and have a wide range of approaches to problem solving and collaborating to succeed. Otherwise, those of us who have stumbled through our lives, making bad decisions and choices, with misunderstanding know the importance of thinking – of good thinking. As such, there is a need to provide opportunities for our students to become skilled good thinkers.

How do I unpack the meaning of skilled thinkers? In my learning days, 80’s and 90’s, the focus was on acquisition of skills like reading, writing and calculating. I noted the change in skills demands nowadays – example knowing has shifted from being able to remember and repeating of information to being able to find and use the information. Nowadays, we are all expected to think critically, express ourselves clearly and persuasively and solve complex problems.

As such, I see the goal of teaching should be to help our students develop their intellectual tools and learning strategies that allows them to think about their lives (both inside and outside school). So, the focus must be on fundamental understanding which will add value and contribute to our students’ more basic understanding so that they will become the self-sustaining lifelong learner.