School reunion
Generally I would avoid school reunions. There is too much reminiscing about how many boyfriends you had and who asked you to dance at the end of the school disco for my liking. This may be because I didn’t excel in either of these topical areas! I accepted this invitation to prove a point about learning. My own career path had nothing to do with the exams I took at 16, 18 and later, although it was good learning (I still recall the definition for Homeostasis for example) I can’t say it helped me in later life. So the question I would ask was “What was the most useful learning you have ever done in your life?”
I have to say my sampling wasn’t scientific as I migrated to the same people I had been friends with back in the day. I just wanted to find out what learning they thought had most impacted their lives. Was it English with Mrs X or Maths with Mr Y?
The Geography Major. He had a slow start out of university and blamed that on himself as he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He went into sales and is now a Regional Sales Director for a software specialist. His most useful learning he said was two training courses that helped him ‘Manage people to success’ and ‘How to make decisions’. So all that intellectual learning about ‘rotational slumping’ went to waste? “No not at all”, he said. It proved to him that he could go from knowing nothing to knowing something. He learned how he personally absorbed and embedded information. Text books helped, seminars were seen as warm places to sleep and writing down everything and highlighting made all the difference in the world to his revision of facts.
The Hair Dresser. She is an owner of a local salon, a true entrepreneur with a growing business. Self-admission that attendance at school was not a priority but when the weekend came was sweeping ‘snippings’ at the hairdressers she later became the owner of. She changed the question because she wanted to tell me what she would like to have learned. She wanted commercial training, she needed to know how to talk to a bank manager and convince them she was worth a loan. Then when she had the loan it was how to spend it wisely and not run out. So a bit of financial planning. None of that was available at our multi ability school and she wouldn’t agree that pure maths would have helped, in her eyes it wasn’t related to business at all. Apparently she asked in her final year if there was anything to help her open her own business and was told to stay and do her ‘A’ levels. The advice she was given didn’t match her question in her opinion so she left academia. She learned everything she needed from the internet but as she was rating her own learning she didn’t know if it was the best ….she wasn’t even sure it was her best.
The Finance Director. This chap was never a swat, homework was often late and there were many detentions. He managed a B+ average so who would have thought he would have reached the lofty heights of FD for a well-known high street company? What happened? He left and went to college and was suddenly aware of ‘growing up’. The best thing that he learned was that ‘he could do it’. A tutor who saw him in his class three times a week saw his potential, he made him stay behind and told him (apparently very firmly) to stop sabotaging his future. He told him he was better than a B+, his mind was more capable than most and he was short changing himself. To have another’s’ belief in him was empowering, it stopped him thinking he was ‘average’ and he went from average to spectacular; achieving a first in Mathematics and first time passes in his ACA qualification.
During the evening there were more questions and more people to meet and more glorious baby pictures shown to me and telephone numbers exchanged but what was the trend about learning? Quite clearly in my mind it proves the principles of adult learning …..make it at the right time, make it appropriate and relevant. Make it about the learner, give confidence to your learner and make it a positive experience and don’t sheep dip. It would also appear to be that you should never give a dog a bad name. Learners may develop the desire for learning at any stage in their journey so ‘educators’ of all types should keep open minds as to their ability to learn , not assume that their people won’t be able to absorb information. This is not a commentary on academic learning; it really was trying to find out what made a difference to my peer group, what affected their careers. For some it was about the teacher who got through to them, for others it was improving management skills as you don’t learn that at school and for everyone is was about their desire to learn because it meant so much more than at school.
So if we have to prove the value of learning we should start with proving the value of learning to the learner first! Don’t sheep dip your learners and expect performance improvement as you will not get any, make it relevant to their needs considering the strategic direction you need to go and for goodness sake inspire learners to achieve their potential not your potential.
Six Principles of Adult Learning
Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director
- Adults must want to learn, they learn effectively only when they have a strong inner motivation to develop a new skill or acquire a particular type of knowledge.
- Adults will learn only what they feel they need to learn Adults are practical in their approach to learning; they want to know, “How is this going to help me right now?”
- Adults learn by doing.
- Adult learning focuses on problems and the problems must be realistic
- Experience affects adult learning adults have more experience than children. This can be an asset and a liability.
- Adults want guidance. Adults want information that will help them improve their situation.
Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director
0 comments: