In a Position to Learn?

Some of you will know that besides teaching, I coach rugby. I was coaching scrummaging recently to two groups. One group consisted of fairly experienced scrummagers who had played regularly for both the school team and their rugby club for a number of years. The other group were complete scrummaging novices.  I went through the absolute basics with both groups, mainly concerning achieving the correct body positions. It was interesting that at the end of the session, all the novices had better technique than all the experienced players.  It was clear that the experienced players had got away with poor technique and had been fairly successful with it and they were not very receptive to having their technique questioned and making an effort to improve it.

For me, there are several lessons for the classroom here. First, people who have no preconceptions can often progress fastest as there is nothing to unlearn, providing that the learner wants to learn the new skill. The learner's mind must be opened up to learning and then rapid progress is possible. This emphasises the importance of high quality first teaching. If the skill is taught rigorously and robustly then a new skill can be established quickly.  On the other hand, if the skill is taught poorly and a less than optimal technique is taught, then the learner can be at a permanent disadvantage.

Second, if the basics are not practised then the skill will deteriorate and bringing the skill back up to scratch can be difficult.  The learner may well think that they can perform the skill sufficiently well, let's face it, their experience tells them that they are right.  This shows that basics must not be taken for granted and that they need emphasising and making explicit especially when more advanced skills are being worked on. It is important that previous work is revisited and key points brought out before more advanced ideas are introduced.  This can lead to people moaning that they've done this before.  The trick is to dress up old ideas in new clothes so that learners don't necessarily recognise that they are doing the same thing again.  Changing context can work well here.  We have already seen that a skill can be established quickly with high quality first teaching, but it can only become embedded if it is revisited.

Third, people who think that they know what they are doing can be reluctant learners. Perhaps these people believe that they are expert because there experience tells then that they are doing well.  They are often unaware that another level of learning exists and, because they do not believe that another level exists they are unable to access it. These people simply rehearse their own tried and tested method without really engaging with a more expert mode. Perhaps they need to be put in a situation where their method no longer works and they are forced to confront the shortcomings in their method.  The challenge is to get these people to realise that their own method can be improved upon and that a more refined method may be more efficient and require less effort on their part.

Finally, I really do believe that teachers who get out of the classroom and do other things become better teachers.  I often find it interesting when inspiration strikes.  So, get outside the classroom and keep your eyes and ears open, you never know when you might get a deeper insight into your teaching.