How do YOU learn? Curriculum Development

Think about this question. How do you learn? Be ready with your response and don't cheat by looking ahead! How do you learn? If it helps for me to use my best "teacher voice", then imagine that.

Lead trainer John posed this question to our group of trainers this morning. Many of my generation might respond, "Well...the teacher stood at the front of the room by a blackboard and lectured." My son's generation would more likely say, "The professor projected his notes via PowerPoint then emailed them to the class."

BUZZ! Wrong answer. The question is not how are you taught, but how do you learn? There is a difference. What John wanted to emphasize is that the way we are taught is not necessarily the way we learn. He then asked us a series of questions such as: "How did you become good at something? (e.g. driving or cooking)"; "How do you know you can do something well?"; "What went wrong in your learning when it failed?"; "When learning failed, whose fault was it?"; "What kept you going?"

To facilitate LEARNING with the participants of our training classes week after next, we have been encouraged to consider 5 foundations that underpin effective learning (Philip Race's book Making Learning Happen). These must be present for learning to occur.

1. Wanting to learn
2. Needing to learn
3. Learning by doing
4. Making sense of what we've learned
5. Feedback

For our training of participants coming from different cultural backgrounds with different expectations and reasons for attending "Operating Partnerships", we as trainers were encouraged to keep this in the forefront. We are not to merely dump information because we might be perceived as the authorities. We are to facilitate learning. Therefore it will be important early on in the training to ask them "why are you here?" so that it can be determined whether or not they WANT to learn and whether or not they NEED to learn.

Okay. Enough said about training notes for today. Several of us spent an entire day attempting to develop curriculum around these principles. More work tomorrow then church on Sunday. I'm really excited about attending an Afrikaans service, but not about the visiting preacher from Ohio. I've come all the way to South Africa to hear an American preach?! Stay posted. More to follow...