This month's columns include:

• Series: The Learning Process Methodology
• Step 2: Orientation
• Something to Think About: Teachers Who Inspire
• We Must have a Plan to Deal with the Serious Negative Hits of Life
• Monthly Self-Growth Tip: Letting Cognition Manage Affect
• Thinking About Persistence
• Contextualizing Learning Skills: Recording

It should not come as a surprise that the Learning Process Methodology is ALSO a sort of blueprint for designing LEARNING activities. The LPM is a proven FORM without specific CONTENT, after all. Once you determine what that content should be, then you can use the LPM to design a specific learning activity.

The ORIENTATION step of the LPM correlates to the FOCUS of a learning activity, and functions as a concept map or table of contents.

In The Learning Process Methodology: A Universal Model of the Learning Process and Activity Design, educator and author Matthew Watts explains the importance of this step:

A systematic overview is developed to identify what is to be learned and how it relates to other knowledge. It has been shown by Hicks and Klimoski (1987) that a proper preview of the learning activity results in a greater commitment to and satisfaction with the subsequent learning. A discovery activity supports the Orientation step of the LPM as it sets the context and area of knowledge prior to dispensing information. Dewey (1944) argued long ago that new ideas should be introduced with “something to do, not something to learn”, comparing each learning activity to an act of experimentation performed by a scientist in a laboratory. To best encourage learners to explore the essential content’s core, an interesting, intriguing, and fun activity is advised for inclusion into the learning experience. An interactive discovery activity agrees well with the first step in Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle – concrete experience. Thus by exploring and experimenting a successful learning environment is established (Bransford, Brown, & Pellegrino, 2000).

Thus motivation doesn't end with Step 1: Why, but continues through Step 2: Orientation. Think of it this way: When we're hungry, we eat. It's a necessity and hunger itself is motivating. But think of how awesome it can be to browse a menu at a nice restaurant. Each dish is described in ways that orient us what our eating experience could consist of and the more mouth-watering the description, the more we look forward to eating. It isn't a perfect analogy but it does get to the heart of how important orientation can be to the anticipated experience of learning.

Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Pellegrino, J. (Eds.) (2000). How people learn: Brain mind, experience, and school (Expanded ed.) (p. 209). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Dewey, J. (1944). Democracy and education. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Hicks, W., & Klimoski, R. (1987). Entry into training programs and its effects on training outcomes: a field experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 30(3), 542-552.

Kolb, David A. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.



There is an old adage that says “Into each life, some rain must fall,” or, putting it another way, “Stuff happens.” Taking negative hits is a part of growth. It does not matter how many blows or hits we receive; what does matter is how we respond to them. The best way is by picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off, and continuing on. Making a commitment to dealing with the negative hits life brings can mean the difference between destructive and constructive behaviors in our moments of distress.

The strength of our affective skill set (our grit and how we cope and respond, emotionally), the strength of our identities, and our belief in our own ability to make a difference (our efficacy) are, to a very great degree, what determine the quality of our life, now as well as in the future.

“Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

—Viktor Frankl

In our first-year course book Learn to Learn for Success, Chapter 3 “My Past Doesn’t Define My Future” challenges students to closely examine a past or present experience, issue, or relationship and then find a way to leverage it so that it can contribute productively to the way they approach the future. Students first select one of two scenarios where the main character has suffered a serious setback or circumstances that negatively impact their life. They are then asked to complete a Learning and then Moving On: Analyzing an Experience, Issue, or Relationship worksheet as if they were the main character. This gives them practice in thinking through these difficult setbacks without also needing to sort through their own feelings.

And now we offer it to you in your choice of formats: a pdf form that can be printed or an online interactive "worksheet". Simply respond to the prompts and when you're finished, you can download the prompts and responses. We save absolutely nothing; your work is your own. Click the image below for your preferred version.

pdf

online

Monthly Self-Growth Tip:

Letting Cognition Manage Affect

When Lisa is too sad to play dodge ball, Marge tells her:

“It doesn't matter how you feel inside, you know. It's what shows up on the outside that counts. Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down past your knees, until you're almost walking on them. And then you'll fit in, and you'll be invited to parties, and boys will like you.”

Psychology tells us this strategy can maybe work for a little while. But it’s like filling a hole with dirt by digging a new hole. There’s still a hole. Dealing with the hole of sadness (or any strong emotion) doesn’t mean climbing into the hole and living there. It means thinking through (or alongside) the feelings to figure out what we need to DO. Being thoughtfully aware of and managing our emotions keeps us from being sabotaged by them. That’s what self-growth is, after all. And there are lots of learning skills that can help us do that:

• Being metacognitive: stepping back to better understand one’s thinking, affective, and social learning skills
• Gaining perspective: navigating among multiple vantage points to obtain true understanding
• Being philosophical: gaining deeper understanding of the nature of life and its meaning
• Maintaining objectivity: focusing on reporting the feedback, not responding to personal reactions
• Being non-judgmental: withholding or avoiding using one’s personal standards or opinions
• Being patient: waiting with equanimity when timing, conditions, and readiness are not right
• Changing reactions: purposefully trying out new or alternative reactions to specific feelings
• Trusting self: knowing that your values and capabilities are the most relevant to your situation
• Controlling overreactions: striving for moderation in responses
• Disengaging emotionally: taking a time out when feelings dominate rational thought
• Sensing emotional confusion: realizing that unclear feelings must be dealt with
• Being stoic: accepting that life situations often create discomfort for a time
• Seeking help: accepting that you need outside assistance and asking for it
• Responding to loss: adjusting to ongoing feelings related to disappointments and grief
• Perceiving emotions: recognizing and identifying your own affective responses



Thinking About Persistence...

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary,

persist: to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning

Consider the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was punished by Zeus for his hubris (daring to think himself more crafty than the gods). He was required to push a heavy boulder up a hill for eternity. Each time Sisyphus neared the top, the boulder would roll back down, forcing him to start again. Sisyphus was persistent — whether by choice or requirement; he went resolutely on pushing that boulder up the hill. Sisyphus is always seen as a tragic figure, doomed to never get the boulder to the top.

With all this in mind, let's review the rubric for “Persistence”:

It is possible that the very act of persisting matters.

Novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett wrote

"I must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

He also wrote

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Maybe the boulder we're pushing gets a little nearer the top each time. Or maybe we're getting stronger, the longer we push. Perhaps others see us persisting and are inspired by our commitment and maybe even the grace we show when the boulder rolls back down and we start again. Or, as philosopher Albert Camus wrote,

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."



This feature is from the International Academy of Process Educators.

For more fun and useful content, consider joining the Academy!

Recording: capturing information and representing it some medium

A nice way to work with journaling before a child can write is having the child tell about their day, each day, and you record it. Ways to explore recording might include trips to places like a zoo, park, or farmer’s market and then encouraging the child to draw what they saw. Other media work well too, including clay, Legos, matchsticks, and so forth. A sketch book and colored pencils makes for a terrific gift for grade school children, especially if you take them places and encourage them to capture and represent things they see.



Comm students might study sub-titles and transcripts for what was captured and what wasn’t. History courses might use Civil War journals, memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies to grapple with the same issue. Philosophy students can deal with the difference between a thing and its representation. All students need to learn to be skeptical about representing information for specific purposes and with an agenda.



Work with math students and ask why we prefer that students in math show their work (record it). Introduce “math as a representation of ideas” and number theory. For all STEM, “What are models?” is well worth asking and having students deal with. Try to build sensitivity to representation and how we choose to capture and represent information; why don’t we trust statistics? The topic of reverse engineering is rich; with it, we take a representation and try to recover the information within or represented by it.