STUDY GROUP OUTLINE
Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue
in Educating Adults
by Jane Vella, published by Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers, c 1994.
Chapter 8 - Learners as Subjects of Their Own Learning
- If a "subject" is a decision maker, and an "object" is a person at the disposal of other people, which are you? (pg 97)
- Is the setting of your classes conducive to making or breaking educational opportunities for your students? (pg 98) Where are the classes located in relation to where the students live? Is transportation a problem for some? Are the chairs, tables, desks or whatever you are using comfortable, an appropriate size, and in sufficient numbers to accommodate all students? Is the location handicapped accessible? What about lights, heat, air conditioning, air circulation etc? If the setting creates a hindrance to learning what can you personally do about the problems? What can a group of you do about the problems?
- Do you encourage ... allow ... students to make decisions about classroom management, field trips, side trips away from the established curriculum? Do you affirm their decisions? (pgs 100-101)
- In Nepal, Ms. Vella worked with highly skilled community development fieldworkers, many of whom held professional degrees from universities and graduate programs. There was no question about their professional ability, but their communication skills sometimes suffered from too much education. (pgs 101-102) In order to share ideas - rather than give instructions - with villagers, the fieldworkers needed to learn how to listen and restate. Have you ever felt that your professional training and experience put you on a pedestal, created either by yourself or by others, that made working with peers difficult? What did you do to climb off the pedestal? Were you pushed off by someone else? At the other extreme, are you embarrassed by your lack of professional training? Do you feel that you are not as good a teacher as someone else because she has a degree and you don't?
- Do you use open questions in your classroom and small groups? (pg 106 and pg 109) Give some examples of open questions that have stimulated effective discussion.
- In Swahili, the word "perspective" is translated as "the place where one stands" and that a " person's perspective is a holy place to be honored and respected, even if it is different from another's." (pgs 106-107) How does that definition of perspective affect the way you view a list compiled by your students of things they want to learn in the next month? Six months? One year?
- "A major fact in motivation is that advice or praise from a peer carries more weight than advice, correction, or praise from an outsider or a manager." (pg 108) When have you received praise from someone whose opinion you really valued? How did that make you feel? Human beings thrive on praise. What do you do in your classroom to encourage students to praise other students? How often do you praise your students as a class? How often do you praise individual students privately? Do you ever praise individual students publicly in the classroom?
- One of the observations that Ms. Vella made about the Nepalese training program was that her students learned to become subjects - not objects - of their learning. (pg 112) As subjects, the fieldworkers had enough confidence in themselves to train others to run the programs they had previously been in charge of. As subjects (decision makers), the fieldworkers were giving away power to empower others; if they still had been objects (victims), power would have been taken away from them by putting someone else in charge. Do you think of your students as subjects or objects? Do you treat your students as subjects or objects? Do your students think of themselves as subjects or objects?
- What does this statement mean? "We have discovered that those who say they know have the least ability to learn." (pg 113)
