Academic
Great learning – and proud of it Frances Mwale goes back to school Getting and giving back marked work is fraught with difficulty. Do you single out the best for recognition and praise, or those who have made most improvement or those who have been really original? Should those who have done well be allowed to crow, or should modesty prevail as they learn not to boast? If we have a sense of pride in a job well done, do we also need the external affirmation of an A Grade or a high percentage mark? Is the learning in itself enough? Last academic year I joined an adult education evening class to study a subject about which, initially, I knew next to nothing. I rapidly fell in love with learning and decided to go all the way to sitting AS exams, along with other adult learners and some of Farlington’s Lower Sixth, back in May. Deciding even before taking the papers that, if I did badly, I would simply keep quiet about it, I knew secretly that if I did well, I would be more than happy to tell. Yet, when the time came, my position on this altered: having done better than I had even dared hope, I wondered whether I should share my success lest it might seem rather immodest. To share only great news might skew perceptions of me: friends and colleagues might see me as some huge intellect, but only because I never confessed to the failures. What effect would this have? Would I be seen as somebody so accomplished that, when I did fail at things, I would be quite a let-down? Conversely, in keeping quiet, what am I hiding? Genuinely sharing success is a difficult idea for me and perhaps for many, so I have always defaulted to the preferred satisfaction of knowing that I have done a good job for myself, rather than feeding off the praise of others. Anyway, after many such deliberations, I have decided to tell you that I am genuinely pleased with myself and can look back on the year as one of ‘great learning’! What exactly was this great learning and how did it come about? The process was certainly worthy of reflection and exploration in a professional capacity, and it has left me with insights that I can surely pass on to our younger learners. It all started with great teaching – not just great, but amazing. To say that the teacher had a passion for her subject would be a gross understatement. Her enthusiasm for the topics spilled over into an outpouring of self into the lessons. Deep-rooted values, opinions, humour, emotion and thoughtful debate were ever present – I can only hope some of these qualities are in my lessons, too. The teacher’s subject knowledge was vast, but there was a preparedness on her part, too, to learn more: as students, we were allowed to question or even to challenge. At the end of the first lesson it came as a surprise to find that there was homework. Was I really ready to undertake a piece of independent work so early on? But the task was matched to the skills I had acquired at that stage – some rote learning of essential vocabulary. Over the weeks, the complexity and demands of the homework increased but the level of challenge always suited where I had reached in my studies. 38
Spring 2017
Marking of my essays and tasks was so helpful – regular, thorough and constructively critical. Comments really celebrated any good and original points made, but also raised questions to provoke my thinking. Anything that was wrong was gently corrected, with phrases such as, ‘I wonder whether this is the case…’ or ‘I think you are confusing this with...’, so that I never felt ashamed to have had a try. The same was definitely true when in class. All comments were encouraged and built upon, no matter how tenuous the thought. There was no ‘hands up’ regime, but a lively debate where every person listened to one another, occasionally policed by the teacher. Going off at a tangent was not only acceptable, but encouraged, to get the grey matter whirring. Great learning! Exam preparation was interesting. As a scientist, many of my previous exams had involved interpretation and analysis, rather than factual recall, or at least that is how I remember it. Perhaps because I enjoyed the subjects, the facts stuck in my mind better anyway? This time, however, I needed precision. Precision of dates, facts and chronology. I had to get a whole set of alien pieces of information lodged in my brain. In the past, my modus operandi had been read, re-read and scribble down a few revision notes, never to be looked at again. I relied on what I could remember to get me through, rather than really paring down to the essentials and ensuring I had secure knowledge. The result was that I settled on mediocre marks. For years in my teaching career, I have taught pupils so many ways of revising. Different methods work for different learners, but now I had to try some out for myself. My ways of old had not been particularly effective for me. I had not really been an A Grade student since I was quite young: I now know why. It takes hard work and commitment to know your stuff inside out and back to front. I condensed my notes down; highlighted parts that were so interesting that I wanted to be able to impress an examiner with them; made checklists of dates and then sheets where I could test myself, doing them again and again until I got them all right. I used flashcards to remember dates and yet there was one that annoyingly kept on escaping me. I simply could not get it right – ever! What to do? What was the solution for committing this one particular date to memory? Well, in the end, I drew a small picture of a house and then built into the fabric of the façade the date that I needed to memorise. If I thought hard, I could see that small picture in my mind and subsequently never failed to remember it. I only had to do this for the one fact, but it worked. Interesting to me was also how my revision changed over time. During the Easter holidays, when available work time felt eternal, I luxuriated in being able to read books on my subject, write out longhand sheets of information and refresh my knowledge of work done much earlier in the year. As the examination dates loomed, however, the need to condense, focus learning and concentrate on my weaker areas directed
