Philosophy & Science of Learning
What we need to know about how we learn
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Learning from Experience: recognition of Prior Experiential Learning
Want to gain admission to a course but your qualifications do not meet the entry requirements?
You may be able to use a Recognition of Prior Experiential Learning (RPEL) process
Many people have asked for more information on Recognition of Prior Experiential Learning (RPEL). I have prepared a presentation that explains the process and how it works in National College of Ireland. Comments are welcome.
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Viktor Frankl: Man’s Quest for Meaning
If ever you think your life is miserable and you start to get downhearted then I have a book I recommend you read “Man’s Quest for Meaning” by Victor Frankl.
Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905 and even before the outbreak of World War 2 was an accomplished academic and psychotherapist. He was also a Jew and, along with his entire family, was imprisoned in a concentration camp. Man’s Quest for Meaning documents his personal experiences of Auschwitz and other camps. Only he and his sister survived everyone else who mattered to him: his wife, parents, siblings and friends were killed. A good summary of his life and work is provided by Dr. C. George Boeree here.
After the war, Frankl reestablished his career and produced this remarkable book which soon gained a substantial readership and acclaim.
I remember my reluctance to read the book – I was afraid I would find it depressing, after all, life in a concentration camp what could be uplifting about that? The opposite was the case, I was genuinely uplifted and this is is precisely the point that comes through in the text. If, even in the most forlorn circumstances, in the depths of hopelessness and the most inhumane conditions, if even there and then, people seek to bring meaning into their lives, they strive to build things, to organize, establish relationships and cling to ideas – this is surely an uplifting insight on our very existence.
Recently I found this web clip of Frankl – watch and listen to what he says here and read the book. You’ll find it difficult to moan about our own trivial challenges in the future. -
Bateson
These days this is my favorite book.
I have blogged previously on one of Bateson’s “Metalogues” – look here to review. Bateson’s metalogues are styled as father daughter conversations.
Here’s another one I would like to consider – this is a short extract from the opening:
Mealaogue: About games and being serious
Daughter: Daddy, are these conversations serious?
Father: Certainly they are.
D: They’re not a sort of game you play with me?
F: God forbid … but they are a sort of game we play together.
D: Then they’re not serious!Through this conversation Bateson goes on to introduce many ideas about how we “play” together. The core of this idea is not new – there are always unspoken rules associated with how we communicate.
For me, the most useful question is: “What’s going on here?”. Ask yourself this question when attending meetings, participating in decisions or even writing (as I am now). Frequently, we interpret a situation at an immediate and shallow level. Often, what’s really going on can only be appreciated by interpreting what’s being said along with the unspoken rules of the encounter.
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Learning and Motivation
Motivation is used as a catchall term to describe how people are moved to act in a certain manner or direction. In everyday use there is a tendency to conceptualise motivation as mono-dimensional we often seek the motive for why a person acted in a particular way.Single explanations for people’s actions or goals are often inadequate and misleading. People tend to justify past-behaviour and will report a retrospective rationale. However, models of motivation, if they are to be of use, need to provide predictions of future behaviour.
The term motivation is used in many different contexts and can mean different things in everyday language. Motivation is often used to describe a level of commitment even energy such as during half time at a football match where a manager gives a team a motivational talk to ‘lift’ the team for the second half.
In such uses of the term motivation is likened to a psychic booster; one could imagine an internal M meter reading either high or low. This meaning of motivation is not limited to physical activity – people might say “coming up to the exam I became really motivated and studied for five hours every day”. It’s even the case that certain speakers at business conferences describe themselves as ‘motivational speakers’. However important it is to be ‘psyched up’ and however interesting it might be to study motivation as degree-of-determination or drive toward a particular goal – this is not the aspect of motivation that is of interest here.
What I wish to focus on is the decision to set goals, the ‘why’ of action and in particular, decisions to learn. In order to explain most human behaviours a fuller spectrum of influences needs to be appreciated. Serious consideration of the concept of motivation leads to a realisation that motivation is both complex and multi-dimensional.
Ryan and Deci (2000) refer to motivation in terms of the ‘energy, direction, persistence and equifinality of activation and intent’. Equifinality, a term borrowed from systems theory, in this case meaning that the same result can be arrived at through many different paths or trajectories.A dictionary definition such as in Colman’s A Dictionary of Psychology (Colman, 2006), describes motivation as a driving force or forces responsible for the initiation, persistence, direction, and vigour of goal-directed behaviour. This introduces the notion of goals and goal-directedness within an individual. Where learning is the goal we may, within the framework of the above definition, regard motivation-for-learning as having a cuasal relationship with learning oriented behaviours.
Ahl (2006) summaries different theoretical orientations gleaned from her extensive literature review of learning motivation. Ahl argues that the concept of motivation is itself questionable and she challenges three assumptions that are often implicit in many of the theories: first that such an entity as motivation exists; second, that it resides with the individual; and third, that motivation causes behaviour (Ahl, 2006). Ahl argues the large variety of definitions of motivation from the literature contribute to the questionability of the motivation construct.Wlodkowski (1999) seems to support this:
We have invented a word to label this elusive topic –motivation- but even its definition continues to baffle the most scholarly of minds.(Wlodkowski, 1999: 1)Ahl also points out that motivation is socially and psychologically construed and that operational measures such as self-report surveys are mearly reinforcing research-generated concepts. For example, to ask people to report on their need for achievement is to create the notion of a ‘need for achievement’.The importance of learning decisions cannot be over-emphasised; almost all learning theorists make a seemingly obvious point that adults learn what they choose to learn. Time and again the capacity to make one’s own decisions and to self-initiate and self-manage learning is identified as a key characteristic of adult learning – see for example Knowles (1978), Cyr (1999) and Merriam, Cafferella and Baumgartner (2007).
Learning decisions are therefore important sites of investigation and can provide powerful insights for educators and policy makers on the development of skills and competence in future populations.
References
Ahl, H. (2006). Motivation in adult education: a problem solver or a euphemism for direction and control? International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(4), 385 – 405
Colman, A. M. (2006). A Dictionary of Psychology: Oxford University Press.
Cyr, A. V. (1999). Overview of Theories and Principles Relating to Characteristics of Adult Learners: 1970s-1999. Access ERIC: FullText (070 Information Analyses). Florida.
Knowles, M. S. (1978). The adult learner : a neglected species (2d ed.). Houston: Gulf Pub. Co., Book Division.
Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. (2007). Learning in adulthood : a comprehensive guide (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being, American Psychologist (Vol. 55, pp. 68-78).
Wlodkowski, R. J. (1999). Enhancing adult motivation to learn : a comprehensive guide for teaching all adults. The Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series.
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My Philosophical Development by Bertrand Russell
I am reading a wonderful book called My Philosophical Development by Bertrand Russell – I picked up a 1959 first edition in a wonderful second hand bookshop, Trinity Books in Carrick On Shannon. This is like a beginners guide to Russell by himself and, in it he traces his thinking down through the years.
There is a particularly poignant section where Russell reproduces copies of his notes from his teenage years. He writes (p280): Just before and just after my 16th birthday, I wrote down my beliefs and unbeliefs, using Greek letters and phonetic spelling for the purposes of concealment.
What Russell was at pains to conceal at this young age were his doubts about religion and the existence of God. What troubled him was not necessarily the social consequences but rather, the intellectual consequences.
Here is is entry of April 29th 1988:In all things I have made a vow to follow reason, not the instincts inherited partly from my ancestors and gained gradually by selection and partly due to my education. How absurd it would be to follow these in the questions of right and wrong. For as I observed before, the inherited part can only be principles leading to the preservation of the species, or of that particular section of the species to which I belong. The part due to education is good or bad according to the individual education. Yet this inner voice, this God-given conscience which made Bloody Mary burn the Protestants, this is what we reasonable beings are to follow. I think this idea mad, and I endeavour to go by reason as far as possible. What I take as my ideal is that which ultimately produces greatest happiness of greatest number. Then I can apply reason to find out the course more conducive to this…
Not bad for a sixteen year old.
Seventy one years later, in 1959 the following occurred: Allen and Unwin published the book, Russell recorded a television interview included below and (of no relevance to Russell) I was born.
Fifty years after that, as a consequence of my bookshop brousing in Leitrim, I reproduce the thoughts of a teenager writing in a personal blog: I have made a vow to follow reason.
Yes you did Bertrand, yes indeed! -
Problem Based Learning
Students from the Post Graduate Diploma and Masters in Learning and Teaching participating in a Problem Based Learning Workshop in the Centre for Research and Innovation in Learning and Teaching at National College of IrelandThis year we are running a new course at National College of Ireland – the Post-Graduate Diploma and MA in Learning and Teaching. I am course director for this course and I present a module on Theories of Learning and Cognition.We have a core of sixteen students with some additional attendees from the PhD course and faculty development. The students come from a wide variety of backgrounds with one thing in common – a passion and commitment for learning and education.We used an instructional approach know as Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as a means of integrating the three semester one modules on Theories of Learning, Research Methods and Philosophy of Education.PBL was structured around a series of workshops on Tuesday evenings and Saturdays. My colleague Rachel Doherty from the School of Business organised the students in groups to complete a series of authentic tasks.In the first exercise the group tasks were to compose and present a series of student induction presentations – the kind that would be presented to new students starting a college course.
Each group was given a different profile for the entry cohort. In one case the students were adult returners with no previous formal education, another had to prepare for recent graduates continuing to a post-graduate course and still another had to present to a group of busy professionals attending a career oriented course.Organised in this way students had to draw on theory, research and underlying philosophy to prepare their solutions to the problems. This is PBL in action.Afterwards, students were asked to write a reflection – on the whole PBL was very enthusiastically endorsed.From a teachers perspective there is a lot of work involved in preparing the workshops – thanks to Rachel for doing this – and we needed to work out a fairly detailed assessment matrix to make sure that individual and group participation was recognised. Most of the marks go for the process rather than the outcome – this is characteristic PBL. -
Learning Identity and Learning Italian
In previous posts I spoke about learning identity.
I emphasised that we all carry many (often unquestioned) assumptions about who we are and who we can be as learners. The notion of learning identity is proposed as a component of one’s overall self-identity. I argued that learning identity is often framed in one’s school years and can remain fixed through life especially for non-participants in further formal learning.
In my own research on participation in the digital world I came accross learning identity as an important influence on people’s decisions to enroll on basic computer courses. The recurrent theme is captured in the phrase “I was no good in school”.
Well, I decided to turn the spotlight inwards and direct my scrutiny at my own learning identity. I have always believed that I am no good at language learning. My French is dreadful despite struggeling through six years of it in school. I can speak a bit of German because I lived in Munich for a time after college but here’s the thing about German – outside of Germany no one wants to speak it!
So I’m going to learn Italian.
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TED Talks Arthur Benjamin does “Mathemagic”
Have a look at this – Arthur Benjamen calls himself a math magician but there’s no magic involved just a great level of skill with numbers.
Now have a look at what Arthur Benjamen says about teaching mathematics:
Does he have a point?
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Course Entry Requirements – Recognising Learning from Experience
If you are thinking about taking a course, for example any of the NCI courses in the prospectus, you may see in the entry requirements that it is necessary for students to have a specific level of degree (e.g. honours degree) or a certificate or diploma to gain entry.
These conditions are necessary so that all students are able to participate effectively and teaching staff can make certain assumptions about the level of prior knowledge people will have.
However, there is a down side to this in that sometimes very good potential students miss out because on paper they are not deemed to meet the entry level requirements.
We’ve all come across examples in our work where people with significant experience and competence in a particular field are not necessarily the most qualified in the formal academic sense.Not many people know this but there is a mechanism whereby anyone can obtain a formal academic credit (yes I mean a degree, diploma or certificate) by means of providing evidence that they have achieved the learning outcomes equivalent to a recognised qualification.No this is not some e-mail scam to give people cheap meaningless degrees from a little known US private college – this is the policy of our own Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) and it is enshrined in the legislation used to establish this national awarding authority.
Here is where you apply to HETAC for this process.
It is now accepted that there are three contexts in which learning occurs:
formal learning – this is when you undertake a course of study usually with a view to obtaining a formal award or qualification;
non-formal learning that takes place sometimes in the workplace (e.g. training courses) or community or voluntary sectors – although often assessed it does not normally lead to formal certification
and informal learning – sometimes referred to as experiential learning and takes place through life and is often not recognised a s learning by the individual concerned. Experience is the key driver for new knowledge and the development of competence.Educators now recognise that all three of these contexts are important sites for learning. The challenge is that accreditation bodies need formal systems to measure learning outcomes and understandably they require that potential candidates produce a portfolio of evidence which is accessed and verified by an academic panel.
To go back to the entry requirements for courses – did you know that it is possible to make a case that your extensive experience should be taken into account when apply for a course where, on paper you do not appear to meet the entry requirements.
All colleges operate such a scheme – this is especially the case in NCI where wider access to learning is our core mission.
The process requires that the applicant undergo some form of appraisal to demonstrate that they have achieved the equivalent learning outcomes as those with formal qualifications.
This may involve preparing a portfolio of experience or writing an essay or assignment to demonstrate your competence – in all events it will be evidence based.
If you really want to do the course and feel that you know more about the area through experience – you can prove your case through accreditation by prior experiential learning (APEL) – its more straightforward than you think.
So go on! What are you waiting for.
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