It was the first time she had delivered a 'real' training session with a group and it was going well - too well. She'd achieved all she wanted and the group were visibly enthusiastic. But her session had flow, the learners were keen and there was still half an hour to go before 'hometime'.
Playing for time, she asked rhetorical questions but expected answers. She gave an impromptu lecture and a white board filled up with squiggles. The group were left deflated at the last half-hour's passive-agression and feedback was *cough* mixed. Why? What went wrong?
I take a lot of notes. I use Delicious, Google Docs, Evernote and a number of wikis. I update a Posterous and Tumblr from my phone. I even subscribe to blogs aboutTaking Notes (a "Blog on the nature of note-taking and some of its practical as well as theoretical implications.") I'm a notetaking ninja.
Or, rather, an electronic notetaking ninja. My paper notes are not quite as good. This bugged me unreasonably so I set out to cure my lame notes using Root Cause Analysis and the Five Whys. Here's what I discovered:
*I'm holding the pen wrong.
Teacher knows best
Coincidentally, I was at my four-year-old son's school seeing his teachers, who said something interesting. This year, one of their main focuses will be 'pen grip'. "The way you do it when you're seven is probably the way you'll do it when you're an adult," said one of the teachers. Don't I know it. Changing my pen grip is even more difficult than giving up sucking my thumb.
This is a bit like imprinting. You've probably heard about new-born animals who decide their keepers are their mothers and that they are, therefore, human. This is one example of imprinting, but anything you learn that's 'phase-sensitive' (ie occurring at a particular stage in life) is imprinting. You could say the way we hold our pens is imprinted at school.
Other things are imprinted at school. Not least our concept of learning.
Teachers don't only teach
The problem here is that school is not about learning, it's about schooling. And schooling involves learning, education (they're not the same),health, socialisation and, crucially, child minding.
When I've asked trainers in the situation above (it's a fairly common thing, in my experience) what they were doing in that last passive-aggressive/aimless half-hour, they've all said the same thing, "I didn't know you could let them go early."
As adults, we're imprinted on school, school teachers are our 'default setting' for transferring knowledge. But, as adults, we won't get into trouble for letting the kids get out early - we're not child-minders.
Don't do as the teacher tells you
Teachers often do the things the way they do because they have to, not because they're right. Boards (inc PowerPoint), presentation, relatively low levels of interaction, timetables and seating arrangements are determined by the social construct of school as much as any pedagogical imperative.
I've called these base assumptions 'injunctions'' and I've compared it to imprinting. Another thing to call it might be social schema. Or mental models.
Up the Injunction Pt I and II were about the difficulties they can present for the unReal Trainer. But they're not always the problem of the learner and we can all fall into default 'zombie with a PowerPoint' mode.
These things - injunctions, personas, social schemata (can anybody help with a better word?) can also be harnessed. And I'll be posting more about mental models, personas and stock characters soon.
*Post-Script
This is a demonstation of how the Five Why technique works and how I arrived at the conclusion that it was my pen grip that was the problem. The Five Why technique is a fantastic way to cure yourself of zombie-like tendencies:
Why are the notes bad?
Because I'm not very good at taking notes on paper.
Why not?
Because I don't really put any effort into it.
Why not?
Because it's neither satisfying nor fun.
Why not?
Because it doesn'f feel 'creative'.
Why not?
The notes are untidy and 'unattractive'. It feels like I'm ejecting something, not 'building'.
Why are they so untidy?
I rush notes on paper.
Why do you go so fast? Lack of time?
Because my hands hurt.
Why do your hands hurt?
I'm holding the pen in the wrong way.
If you're interested, the 'correct way' to hold a pen is such that your index finger is free to move. Like holding chopsticks. And my notes are much better now, thank you.
2 comments:
It's always amazing how many things you do that you can't really explain (and if pressed, can only say "Well, I thought I was supposed to do it that way." I think we have more of those social scripts that we can ever realize.
I'd love to think that it was primarily the product of inexperience, but I know that those behaviors can calcify into permanent practices.
Teaching any sophisticated activity (and most unsophisticated ones) should include the *Why* along with the *What* if we are to have to have any hope that they will be utilized correctly.
Basically, without the Why, it becomes much more difficult for someone to appropriately adapt the behavior to the current context.
My personal favorite in training/instruction is the "You must state learning objectives at the beginning of the class" which has become so enshrined in practice that nobody really asks why anymore (except the excellent Will Thalheimer http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/06/new_taxonomy_fo.html).
The Five Whys is pure gold, too -- such a simple way to make unconscious biases visible.
Social Scripts - yes! That's an excellent way to put it. Far better than calling us all 'zombies'...
I have rather complicated views on Learning Objectives. I think it's the hardest thing in the training to get right. And you can see analogues in Project Management, Marketing, Business Planning, Logical Framework - you name it.
But given they're such an important thing, why read them out or list them as bullet points at the start of a class? There's little chance for a sense of discovery there.
In the UK, a typical training session starts with a 'housekeeping' discussion, some ground rules and a solemn reading of the Learning Objectives - it's like making people read the small print before they open the wrapper.
And eLearning? If you want to find out whether your eLearning was successful, see what the learners say the Learning Objectives were.
The best games are the ones where the gamer does something the designer didn't expect. We should expect this from learning too.
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