1. As an educator, how would you try to incorporate the idea of embodied learning and various communication modes in the classroom in order to aid all students in engaging with learning material on a deeper level?
2. What do you think is meant when one is “learning how to learn” (reader p. 942)?
3. In what ways can you incorporate more opportunities for reflection in the classroom to understand one’s development?
-- Kathy Shen
2. I felt especially close to this article by Mira-Lisa Katz because I was a dancer myself growing up. But this whole concept of "learning how to learn" does not only pertain to dancers or athletes in general, it applies to the entire greater population because in order for anyone to learn and completely internalize new concepts, they need to learn to be able to accept and actually retain those new concepts. A part of this process is the teacher who must learn how to teach. Every student and every teacher has a different strategy that works for them whether it be in teaching or learning, it is when those two strategies are able to meet in the middle when real learning and teaching begins and makes an impact in both the student's and the teacher's lives.
ReplyDeleteOften times, this "multimodal" approach, especially in the dance arena seems to have the greatest teaching impact on students trying to learn different dance moves, such as the rond de jambe. The physical demonstration and also the verbal communication of different movements in dance or gestures is the best way for students to learn. While I was captain of my high school dance team, yelling out verbal cues was the most effective way in helping my teammates remember intricate choreography. Before muscle memory can take control over your body and seemingly help a dancer move about the room effortlessly, the choreography needs to be digested by each dancer. Each step, each count needs to be taken in for what it's worth in order for the next step, which is memorization and then muscle memory to take place.
A student must learn to be receptive through verbal cues, catch fluctuations in intonation of the voice and also to watch for the physical demonstrations. In a way, when you're learning, you need to let go and forget temporarily what you know or think you may know about a certain concept. Specifically in dance, you need to just let your body take over and allow it to learn the choreography or movement for you.
2. The idea of learning how to learn is one I can particularly identify with as an athlete. If we truly think about it, learning some things that are unfamiliar to us is difficult. The reason why adjusting or learning something new is because we must "learn how to learn" whatever is unfamiliar. Once we become familiar with the subject we are attempting to learn, we have "learned how to learn."
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, I played baseball, but once I reached high school, I wanted to learn to play basketball. Learning how to learn to play basketball was difficult because I was unfamiliar with everything that had to do with the sports. I was unfamiliar with the terms of the plays and the actions that go with it. There are many things you must learn to do before you can even learn the terminology. Once you have become familiar with what the plays are called, you can start to learn how to actually perform the tasks at hand.
This is similar to any student. A student must first learn the concepts of a subject before they learn the material. I know it is difficult to make out what exactly I mean by this, but it is like learning a whole new language. It is extremely difficult to learn until you are familiar with the subject at hand.
Learning how to learn is an interesting statement. It can easily be one of those statements that one can joke around about, like “thinking about thinking” or “writing about writing.” However, it seems to hold some truths in the sense that everyone in the world does not possess 100% true understanding of how one should theoretically learn. It may help for a person to learn how to learn in order to be a more productive, efficient and strong learner. This can in turn help the person in the future when he or she needs to learn something and there are significant time constraints or the thing that is to be learned is extremely challenging. Learning about learning is very similar to how there is the concept of majoring in education at UC Berkeley. It is not really the sense of learning about education that is emphasized but learning about the ways to conduct better education in society, be understanding of concepts such as literacy, and being mindful of how children and all people in general learn. Knowing the philosophical, socioeconomic, and theoretical concepts and learnings of education is the only way to justify making education something one can be taught in higher education. This holds true with learning. While learning and learning may seem like a fallacy, it is indeed not.
ReplyDeleteI believe “learning how to learn” mainly indicates the attitude toward new knowledge. Although the new knowledge doesn’t have to be in forms of academy, people tend to confine the meaning of new knowledge into a small box of academy. This tendency is reflected by the social belief that being smart represents other social values. Many exams such as SAT or GRE measure the level of knowledge that someone has. Accordingly, the qualification to enter higher educational institution is determined by the level of knowledge. Then, the level of education becomes the measurement of other values such as diligence, sincerity which in some way are related to the level of knowledge but not necessarily. However, the amount of knowledge is outgrowth of the skill, habit, or given situation, which are parts of “learning how to learn”. As long as it concerns only academic knowledge, there are various ways to learn. When it comes to memorization, someone might use reading and listening skill where as others might use categorize and visualizing skill. However, learning something doesn’t have to be acquiring new knowledge. In some way, the whole part of our life consists of learning custom, appropriate behavior or social norms. Then, what’s important is the constructive behavior toward the new knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Katz, “If students were given more opportunities to reflect on their development,” they would be able to better learn not only on the dance floor and in cases of out-of-school learning, but also in the classroom (940). One suggestion illustrated in the conversation between Mara and Angela is to change the school layout to be more free and accepting of risk-taking without the consequences of one’s mistakes, similar to Friere’s problem-posing model of education (Friere). While in dance and other out-of-school literacies, mistakes bring one closer to the goal of learning and improvement (943), grades and strict make-it or break-it tests in school are negative towards a child’s motivation and confidence (Ambe). This idea would be difficult to implement as tests and grades are the basis of school learning and effective in instances of learning quantification. Other solutions would be to help students in class as if school were a reflective dance class. In my high school classes, I often wondered why teachers used to give reflective assignments about assignments and projects that we had already done; I had to spend a great deal of time rethinking why I thought and did what I did. I realize now that this was to help me think about my development and my learning process. Reflective assignments such as this provide a stage of learning even more crucial than learning itself. As I am learning in my engineering class in terms of the principles of design, acting, checking, improving, and then acting again are necessary in order to “develop cognition and [to] support identity formation” (935).
ReplyDeleteAs an educator, I would incorporate embodied learning in a number of ways. I would try to have students act out certain parts of plays instead of just reading them. In this way they will be able to express the play’s emotions in a more concrete and visible manner. Also I would try to make a game out of the learning experience whether through a board game or jeopardy-like question answering—even try to implement some of the elements in the game called Cranium in which you are not only answering questions, but playing charades, drawing, and even humming to move through the game.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of “learning how to learn” I believe is a process by which a person is actively observing how one is learning. In Angela’s case, she is observing how she is taking Nadia’s feedback and incorporating it into her dance. She then begins to understand what the best way she learns is—this may be very different from the way someone else learns in her class. Perhaps in her future classroom experiences, Angela can use similar methods (such as incorporating feedback) to help her succeed in school.
The main way of incorporating this sort of reflection would be to have students explore different types of modes and then have them try to apply this to simple learning activities like reading a passage or doing math problems. These different modes can be anything from playing a game/sport, rapping, dancing, etc. Having these different activities incorporated throughout the school day for a few days every three weeks can I believe help them routinely fine-tune their preferred learning style.
[In response to Q1 Katz]
ReplyDeleteAs an educator, I would try to incorporate the idea of embodied learning and various communication modes in the class to aid all students in engaging with learning material on a deeper level by giving them role-playing and individualized activities. For science, history, and english, I think that pretending to become the object or person one is studying and going through the process the object or person must have gone through can help students learn material on a deeper level and gain a personal bond with what they're studying. For example, when teaching the water cycle, I could tell the students to pretend they are water droplets. I can set up my classroom with fake clouds and oceans and make the process as realistic as I can. Some water droplet students could get gray stickers and fall as acid rain to teach them about pollution as well. I also think that individualized activities where a teacher gives basic directions and allows the student to respond with any medium they want is a balanced way for the students to be given set guidelines but still having the freedom to do their own thing. My class can have an in class "mural," that is actually panels attached to one wall of the classroom, where the students can go up and draw or paint their responses. I can also set up a mini stage in my classroom for students to go up and perform their responses. I liked Katz's description of embodied learning, "how we learn and know through our bodies." Sometimes at school, I felt like my body was out of sync with my mind, sitting and banking information through my head and not with the rest of me.
To better aide students in the absorption of materials covered in classrooms, I think that there ought to be more interactive (and possibly mobile) learning. As exemplified by Katz in her article, there is definite benefits of arts education, like that of “learning how to learn.” In her case study, there is examination of dance and learning. While this model may be difficult to emulate in class on a large scale, the integral elements of the model may be transmitted to the classroom. I would claim the important elements in this example is the interactive way of learning that dance provides. Rather than the Bank Model proposed by Freire, an interactive approach may counter, and better guide students in learning. Instead of having the teacher spout of information of facts and 'knowledge,' there is more for the student to learn if that student has some kind of interplay in their own education.SOme ways to actually implement this may be the reintroduction or increased duration of Physical Education, which would be the closest emulation of the Katz model. Other ways to introduce more interactivity in the classroom would be to have the students get up out of their seats during certain lesson plans, and perform certain activities. Rather than reporting on a book, it may be better to ave them act out an interpretation of the information they would like to present, be it a play or a dance, etc. Another example may be for the teacher to lower himself to the student level, as to negate the structural difference, and interact with the students on their level, so that in a science lesson the student and teacher can discover new things together. More movement ill allow the student both physical and mental space to explore beyond what the highly structured classroom allows.
ReplyDeleteIn Katz's "Growth in Motion" piece, the phrase "learning how to learn" was used to describe dance student Angela, as her instructor Nadia was teaching her how to dance. Angela is described as "monitoring her own learning process and responding intellectually and corporeally to moment-by-moment feedback," which seems to be what Katz means by this particular phrase. This means that she was actively participating in the learning process, not merely allowing the instructor to teach and robotically reiterating it. Angela observed her own learning and saw “how to learn.” I’ve experienced this throughout my years in college. When I first came as a freshman, I applied my old habits of learning from high school to my classes here, but as the first semester went by, and eventually my first year, I learned how to learn in my classes. It wasn’t about just the mere going through the motions of taking notes, doing homework and passing tests. As I realized which methods of studying worked for me and which did not, I changed my habits accordingly. Learning how to learn requires being an active participant in the subjects you are being taught. It is very much opposed to the banking model of education where you merely absorb the material and spit it back out when asked. Conversely, by learning how to learn, you become more aware of yourself as well as what you are learning.
ReplyDeleteAs a cognitive science and math major with foundational training in classical music I have long been obsessed and fascinated with the concept of embodied learning. Embodiment is the physical relation and connection that we make to a particular concept or idea in order to better understand it. I think that learning is at its most effective when there is a clear framework of embodied pedagogy: the connection of physical embodiment to pedagogy helps children and adults to connect their learning to the long line of things that they have learned before.
ReplyDeleteClassroom learning needs to have embodied learning in order to work properly. This generally means less lecturing and more collaboration in groupwork with peers in the class. I think having students work through problems together on the board, drawing concept maps and ideas out in a diagram helps to put the information in a specific physical relationship with itself, and this will help the students to remember the information later.
I know from my musical perspective that embodied learning is the single greatest tool for musical success. You can't simply deconstruct the music in your mind: you need to actually physically embody it into sound. Practicing helps to familiarize ourselves with the central physical nature of the learning. Playing the piano is the greatest teacher in this respect. If you want to see the connection, the physical embodiment of the music, you need to actually use your hands to create something beautiful.
In terms of how this would translate to my classroom pedagogy, I think that I would use metaphors of physical situations to describe certain concepts, and encourage the use of media of all forms to help people remember and own the knowledge that they are learning.
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ReplyDeleteI think “learning how to learn” stands for one’s attitude toward learning through out one’s learning process. Accepting new knowledge is hard for every one, so people need to learn how to learn and knowing how to learn would lead to better learning result.
The given dialog between Angela and Nadia shows the example of “learning how to learn.” Angela changes her attitude toward her learning. As her learning dance goes on, her learning attitude changed. First, she only followed the verbal direction, but she catches more information as instructor’s intonation changes. After that, she starts to connect new information to her existing base of knowledge, and it helped her understanding the direction.
People learn many things in their life, but learn how to learn is also important learning. Each people’s style of leaning is different, and it is hard to figure out the best learning strategy for oneself. That is why learning how to learn is important. I am the person, who learns better with pictures and memorizations. I could figure out best learning style for my self as I go through the process of learn how to learn.
As shown above, the statement “learning how to learn” indicates the one’s attitude toward accepting the new knowledge, which allow one to connect new information to base knowledge in that field.
As an educator, I believe that there are different ways in which one can incorporate the idea of embodied learning and various communication modes in the classroom. Cherrie Moraga's idea of embodiment memory comes to mind: the body as a form of language & the embodiment/enactment of ancestral and political memory. I think that this is a practice that can be true for art (dance an theater classes) as well as any type of activities that require the students to apply their bodies into it. This can be done in different ways- asking a student to perform a poem, rap or dance about the material being learned. Or simply by including their bodies into the discussion- i.e. speaking about their experiences, things relevant to them and their backgrounds I believe is could aid all students in engaging with learning material on a deeper level.
ReplyDelete“Learning how to learn” I think refers to being able to have the agency over our education and the ways in which we are taught knowledge and even the ways in which we are taught how to learn. In this case, I believe it also refers to different ways of producing and arriving at knowledge. If the body can in fact provide a language, I think that “learning how to learn” refers to being able to use our bodies as a way of engaging with the material and our ways of learning- the body becomes a tool for literacy.
What I think is meant when the author uses the phrase "learning to learn" is ones ability to take the information presented to them and figuring out how to apply it to themselves. In the article Angela is learning a dance move from the instructor that she is having a difficult time doing. Her instructor gives her different instructions as to how to do the move. She shows her the move which is visual, she walks her through the move which is physical and she also uses the beach ball metaphor in order to get her to understand the move. Angela with all these different instructions is able to chooses which of these instruction best helps her best perform the dance move correctly. She has just learned which one of this methods best helps her, which is her learning the best way that she learns.
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