My 5th ABLA 2016 Learned Lesson

Taken from http://www.relacionesculturales.edu.mx/abla-2016/

My 5 th ABLA 2016 Learned Lesson: Changing Teaching Paradigms by Maximizing Metacognition and Implementing Student Empowerment

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Sunday, September 4, 2016 Post 289

While attending dos Santos & Salazar’s (2016) talk during the ABLA 2016 Convention in the month of August, their session sparked a lot interest among many of us participants who continued to talk this over among ourselves after the session was over. Both presenters showed us “how to promote student and teacher metacognition to improve learning and teaching” [ CITATION dos16 \l 1033 ] by providing us with very relevant information for our academic planning and training.

Listening to them and reflecting upon their words, one gets to realize that a paradigm shift is needed to cater for more metacognitive strategies for both

instructors and learners. Metacognition is a great alternative to work with all sorts of students in our binational centers or in higher education settings.

Dos Santos have us participants watch a video entitled Schema (2008) by John Medina, author of Brain Rules, 12 Principiles for Surviving and Thriving at

Work, Home, and School,. The reason for them to have us participants analyze the video was to demonstrate the importance of schema activation when it comes to teaching and learning. The absence of this kind of activation can simply lead to zero learning in spite of the fact that students can be fully entertained in a classroom.

https://youtu.be/mzbRpMlEHzM

Following dos Santos and Salazar’s (2016) instructions, which are pretty much the same ones suggested by Medina in his video, the act of learning can be severely affected or positively enhanced by providing learners with a frame of reference.

However, when one listens to Medina and his assistant, Dr. Whitehead, in the video, with no contextualization of what is being explained, it is plainly useless for anyone to try to decipher what is being said by Medina and Whitehead. The importance of having a frame of reference to understand what it is being explained to us is crucial and that is called schema activation. The absence of such frame means we have no idea whatsoever of what is being demonstrated or disclosed to us. When this is transferred to the classroom, you can anticipate a lot of problems after explanations

and when the class is about to start a series of exercises based on those explanations.

Why do we –when watching Medina’s (2008) video or trying to teach something new to our learners- miserably fail while trying to complete the task?

Reynolds (2008), in his summary of the three most important brain rules published

by Medina, insists on Rule #4 that states that “we don’t pay attention to boring things.” As explained by dos Santos & Salazar (2016) in their ABLA talk, 90% of the time last century teachers were delivering content in class, and students’ voices were silent, and this silence could perfectly be interpreted as boredom. Then one starts to think whether this 90% of content delivery has changed that much in classrooms in higher education, language schools, binational centers, and so on.

Dos Santos & Salazar (2016) insited on the encouragement of student voice to provoke self-direction in their learning, but when an instructor is silencing their students with “non-engaging stuff,” learning will not be present at all and we will continue to fail miserably.

Dos Santos & Salazar (2016) also used a quite nice metaphor to refer to what may be happening in our classrooms: How do we soccer fans react when we talk about a game and when we are watching a match? Will our students demonstrate the same kind of engagement when they talk about the last game our national team played compared to what they were “learning” the last time they were in English class? Johnson (2012) posits the difference between entertaining and engaging quite nicely by saying that “entertainment’s primary purpose is to create an enjoyable experience; engagement’s primary purpose is to focus attention so learning occurs.” Based on Johnson’s words, no learning is taking place while we are engaged in a soccer discussion or game viewing. “Entertainment is ephemeral, often frivoulus; engagement creates long-lasting results and deals with important issues” [

CITATION Joh12 \l 1033 ]. Then, if the right class environment is created, “longlasting” effects can be seen in our students’ knowledge, language command and mastery.

Based on dos Santos & Salazar (2016), metacognition can be learned and taught. There needs to be a steady shift in the metacognitive balance that exists today in education, whether that is language or content learning. And this balance should be on the side of the learner; the teacher needs to be a guide and provide that guidance towards student learning. We need to make learners work rather than having us teachers always do the work for them. A class needs to be focused on the student not on the instructor; classes need to be student-oriented and learnercentered. As a consequence, teachers need to be trained to become metacognitive in their kind of teaching practices, which means that they need to re-focus what they do in the classroom to provoke a self-direction in student engagement, making them responsible for what needs to be learned and how much they want to continue learning beyond the classroom. Once instructors have the right training on metacognition, they can teach their students how to become metacognitive in their learning and really be engaged in class to maximize learning and their empowerment when it come to their education.

Finally, understanding that “entertainment needs have little relevance to the reader / watcher / listener” [ CITATION Joh12 \l 1033 ] and the student, and that “engaging experiences most often relate directly to the learner” [ CITATION Joh12 \l 1033 ], it is time to start using more metacognition in language learning. What about the flipped classrooms for our adult target audience? A sample practice in metacognition in the hands of learners is the flipped classroom, which is now a change in our teaching paradigms where learners work rather than having their teachers do everything for them. In language instruction we want autonomous

learners responsible for what they want to learn in and outside the classroom; some sort of flipped work can do the trick for all these learners. But, remember, students need to be given the frame of reference (schema activation), and instructors need to work on this provision of context to propitiate learning, “By learning how to be metacognitive, students become more conscious, reflective and aware of their progress along the learning path” [ CITATION dos16 \l 1033 ]. Don’t we all teachers want learners who are really responsible for their learning and who can come to class to demonstrate what they are learning on their own and with our guidance? I guess all of us teachers will be more than s atisfied seeing the result of our metacognitive teaching and our leaners’ metacognitive practices. And “while students take charge of their learning, teachers can shift the focus to them and their learning and just be guides” [ CITATION dos16 \l 1033 ] who can lead them to the expected language proficiency.

References Dos Santos, L., & Salazar, L. (2016, August 16-19). Changing Teaching Paradigms

by Maximizing Metacognition and Implementing Student Empowerment. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program . Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.

Johnson, D. (2012, April 16). Engage or Entertain? Retrieved from Education World: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson026.shtml Medina, J. (2008, February 5). Schema. Retrieved from YouTube.Com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbRpMlEHzM Reynolds, G. (2008, May 19). Brain Rules for Presenters. Retrieved from SlideShare.Com: http://www.slideshare.net/garr/brain-rules-for-presenters/1