LEARNING PATTERNS

Classroom situations cater to multiple scenarios in learning.  It is passive for many and active for some.  Teachers find understanding and sorting towards student learning difficult.  

What makes learning difficult?

It is not a definite process.  Human brain has the capacity to modify and modulate.  Each individual’s learning pattern is different and unique.  What works and what does not work in learning is cannot be decided by the factor of teaching.  It depends on various other processing factors like

-          Interest

-          Confidence

-          Motivation

-          Language

-          Coordination etc.,

These factors are both internal as well as external.  Inculcating and developing internal learning factors must be given the top most priority in setting learning patterns.  Research has already proved that the intelligence and creativity of students reduce with age and the culprit for this decrease are the ways in which schooling has evolved.

Learning patterns – identifying learning order among individual students is the most challenging task for an educator.

Students learn only they feel and want but when do they feel and want?

Recognizing the change in the attitude towards learning is most important for the teaching community.  It is this attitude that helps grow a timid and non-involved student to a great performer.  These attitudinal changes do not happen regularly.  They are often random instances where the spark for learning gets ignited among students.  The occasion for such spark is also not always the same.  The learning pattern generally develops when it involves

• Play
• Challenges
• Research
• Thought process
• Ample time

In the fast-evolving education scale, these have become a rare commodity.  It is important for the learner that the educator is patient, provides clues not answers and guides when struck.  Frankly, no one has the time to wait for a learner to think and solve.  Many a time, the guiding person reveals the answer rather than providing the clue to guide the student team towards answers.  The students’ who are able to catch-up with the spin survive while others lag. 

Building a learning pattern includes a lot of frustration, anger and failures.  Support at each and every stage provides students with lots of confidence not only in facing the subject challenges but also the more complicated counter part called life.  Acceptance of larger failures in life as a stepping stone develops only when small failures are promoted as learning process.  Schools fail to demonstrate these aspects among their students. 

Developing lessons on patterns for learning takes time and collaborative thinking process. 

•  Do teacher organisations work towards achieving this? 
•  What fraction of time do these organisations have to design this?
•  What training do teachers have on designing such patterns for learning?

Can external support work in providing these towards learning?

The sane saying is that the learning process applicable for students is also applicable for teacher educators.  ‘Until we think and process, we will not be able to execute’.  This is the reason why many external organisations which support school are not successful in the long run.  Individual educators when they define learning change and accept them on their levels, teaching-learning process have become hugely successful.  To develop the pattern in learning, individual teacher becomes more responsible than the cumulative effort of schools. 

Learning patterns are crucial for most problems of 21^st century – be it sustainable development, or creative-innovative technology, or work-life balance.  Developing the attitude may look simple, but the process of building the habit is more complex than its design.  Together we can, Together we must…. walk towards a more ‘e-friendly’ future.