Reconstructing the Learning Space in new Working Environments

The future of the learning space has been a central issue for discussions in teachers’ development trainings. The implementation of new realities in teaching such as the use of technological resources in the classroom calls for an adaptation of previous paradigms in the application of best teaching practices. Institutions, students and teachers are now facing a new reality, and efforts have been concentrated on proper training of all people involved in the field of education, as well as on the adaptation of materials and pedagogical approaches that best suit this new and fascinating environment in the learning space.

The Learning Space and the Teacher – a matter of constructivism

Many teachers now wonder what is really going to happen to the teaching space some years from now; as a matter of fact, technological changes have already begun to take place in most of the educational institutions around the globe – high tech audio devices, state-of-the-art materials, interactive boards and the internet are just some of the issues we have had to learn how to deal with. And dealing with new technologies is not just about knowing how to switch a button on or off. It has to do with learning how to effectively put them to work for you in a pragmatic way, in a tangible way – it has to do with actually seeing the results in the learning process.



The Current Standard Learning Environment


For many teachers, the pre-conceived image of a learning space is the classroom – funnily enough, learning for most people still have to do with being confined in a four-walls space, with a white board in it and some “Look and Learn” pictures hanging on the wall.

Despite of all new researches on different and fresh approaches to teaching, the effort is now concentrated on changing this traditional and worn out perspective that the public in general has as regards to educational institutions – students, on their side, have the idea that the learning process only takes place inside the classroom, within a certain time limit (usually, until the bell for the next class rings), just comfortably sitting while the teacher “broadcasts” information and tell students who are chit-chatting off; and the teachers, on their side, face the classroom as a stage (specially if they have to use the microphone), where their role is to perform the best show they can so they captivate students´ears (not questionings or interactions) and to know and try to predict questions that (may) arise from the content they are supposed to teach at that moment.

To make sense of, or meaning from both teaching and learning processes and the environment we find ourselves in is our main concern and, even though it can expose our methods and preferences when transmitting information to an audience, a deep analysis of how it occurs can be enlightening and point to solutions we have never thought of before.




“Don’t do as I do – do as I say”

Controversially to everything that has been said about teaching methods, teachers still find themselves learning how to teach in the same kind of environment they are advised to avoid at all costs – the constructivist and the ‘theories-in-action’ idea that putting hands to work is in fact more effective than theorizing is abandoned, and real risks are not taken.

When teachers are in college, they receive constant input of information which they rarely have the opportunity to put in practice (and this happens in any area of studies – law, business, etc) – it is only when they apply for an internship or when they get their first jobs that they have the real chance to actually add knowledge to the information they have previously received, and subjectively work on and improve generic ideas with their own creative imagination.

Instructors will eventually become real professionals when real problems arise, and real solutions come out of their minds. It is impossible to gain experience without having the experience – just as simple as that. However, if working with human beings and all the characteristics that are natural to them – such as personality and character – involves knowing how to understand and deal with subjective realities all the time, it is extremely important that we rethink the way teaching and learning take place, either from a teacher-student, or a student-student (per se) perspective, in the new learning space arena.




Interactive board + the internet and the situated learning


When I was studying to take my CELTA, the thing that I had to struggle more with was designing tasks for students. As I took the intensive module of the course, time was very limited, and all the exercises, eliciting, presentation of new language, etc, had to be hand-made by us. I understand that in most countries novice teachers take the CELTA in order to be able to start teaching. But here in Brazil most teachers take CELTA as a course extension to their careers – I took CELTA this year, after 11 years teaching (before, during and after my graduation) – so you can imagine that I had already developed my own techniques to perform those steps in my (very) personal way. And as we all know that old habits are difficult to be changed, I used to spend all night long (for all nights during the entire module) searching, printing, cutting, gluing, imagining board schemes, CCQing… I had to virtually relearn how to do everything.

And, to be quite honest, I started using my laptop to teach with internet resources way before online teaching or materials specifically designed for the teaching purpose were available on the internet – I used to adapt songs, texts, newspapers articles and other resources to my one-to-one classes, and I had had great experiences with that up to that moment. And, all of a sudden, I realized that I would have to go back to printed materials and images books all over again, and convince myself that that way (using traditional materials) was better for students in their learning process.

And I did! At the end of the course, I was pretty much convinced that I would spend the rest of my life preparing my classes that way – printing everything, singing, etc. Well, that feeling lasted only for a month – right after that, I joined a very prestigious language centre here in Brazil, and, since they had no time to offer me training and (apparently) they trusted my work, they just gave me a funny pen and said “You start on Monday”.

That was a Friday, and I have to admit that I spent the whole weekend looking at that funny gray pen, with a round edge and a strange format, wondering how the paint would come off from that high tech marker… When I entered the classroom next Monday you can imagine my surprise – there was a computer, a funny board, and 20 9-years-old students staring at me…. I do not have to say that they taught me (imagine, me, the teacher with high tech tendencies!) how to first use the interactive board. When I got home late that night, after a whole day struggling to pretend I had being using an interactive board for my whole life, I looked at my messy desk and wondered: “What now? What is going to happen to all my beautiful pictures and printed images, my precious red, blue and black markers, my eraser….” . I felt like I had no ground under my feet.

Well, a semester has gone by, and I have to say that not only the way I teach has changed, but also my beliefs, my creative processes, my personal approach to some topics of the lesson… everything concerning my professional issues has suffered a dramatic change.

As I usually say to teachers in training, teachers are not only what they have in their minds – their personal beliefs, their cultural background and the way they view the world influence on how they are going to transmit knowledge. And I felt that I have undergone a lonely and drastic process of rapid change in my way of teaching, purely because I had not been prepared to face those changes – I had not been taught on how to teach in a new learning space, and the so called situated learning did not take place with me in the first place – after all, I had never been in that kind of environment before. All my personal and professional backgrounds were somehow influenced, and certainly the results of my teaching were way below expectations (mine, at least).

Thankfully, I can say I have mastered most of the functions of the interactive board myself (so far), and I have managed to use most of the resources it offers (not only internet connection) in a successful way.



The Teacher and his centrality

“Interaction with the professor will continue to be the centerpiece of education, no matter what the medium." (Feenberg - University of Illinois, 1999, p24). However the focus on the teacher/trainer as being the 'guide on the side' "...lend themselves to the notion that the instructor can be nothing more than…a non expert but motivational cheerleader"

When I first started teaching about twelve years ago, my main concern was to stand in front of a 12 students classroom and, basically, continue speaking English for as long as I could – this would prevent students from making futile or difficult questions which either I did not know how to answer or I did not want to answer, and my students would see me as some new icon of the communication (as my main objective – and thought – was to speak the perfect English, with the perfect accent) era. Of course that this has changed, and interpersonal interaction – at all levels – is one of my greatest concerns in the field of teaching a second language nowadays.

During teachers´training sessions, we can clearly observe teachers favorite interaction pattern inside the classroom – the teacher-student one, where (and in accordance with) traditional teaching takes place. Cultural issues and teachers´personalities apart (this will be discussed in another article), it is widely known amongst teaching experts and researchers that this kind of pattern should happen in a minor scale during a session, and that the interaction student-student or student-teacher is the most effective one from a pragmatic point-of-view.

However, if we now consider the technological breakthroughs in the educational field, we will be lead to review the interaction pattern concept and analyze with broader eyes what is in fact occurring inside the learning space: is the interactive board substituting the traditional teacher and working as a TV, only broadcasting the news? Or is it actually functioning as it has been conceived to do: as an interactive resource?

If we consider a constructivist approach to this matter, we are going to reach a common agreement that students actually learn when they have the chance to effectively put in practice, in a natural and contextualized environment, considering their personal beliefs, cultural backgrounds and learning styles, the language. Do teachers have the chance to best perform this situated learning with the internet, for example? If you think of a movie filmed in England, with a typical English boy showing and describing his typical British bedroom, when the topic of the lesson is “Bedroom Furniture”, then you would answer ‘yes’ to the last question. However, if you consider the way this movie is going to be displayed (in parts or not) and the approach the teacher is going to develop (present language and vocabulary, or only vocabulary?), then the topic based on the visual and audio resource (the movie) can be only something displayed on the screen – are the students discussing the topic? Has the teacher previously elicited the vocabulary? Are students developing mental and emotional connections with the movie? Do they feel comfortable discussing the topics? Has pronunciation been cleared out?

In my personal experience, it depends entirely on the teacher to have the technological devices working as powerful tools to generate interaction between the students and the content being provided. The learning space has, in this sense, a direct influence on the establishment of the proper interaction patterns, but it is teachers´role to best use these resources in favor of a proper learning environment, and make it relevant to the learner - a piece of information only acquire meaning and can, thus, be used to express ideas in communication when it is first, meaningful to the speaker and, secondly, correspondent to its actual use in natural speech.
And it is not ‘natural’ to repeat words, even with the perfect pronunciation, if this word is not contextualized and functioning as a means to convey meaning, feelings or emotions embodied in the message. Interaction is, ironically, the key-word we should keep in mind when adapting the learning space to the best use of technological resources in the classroom.


The theory-in-practice

The principles that emerge from constructivism play, in the learning space, an important role when we consider a healthy second language acquisition process - "Knowledge is individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretations of experiences in the world" (Jonassen 1999, p. 217).
If those experiences from the world, which eventually will lead students to a subjective interpretation of the information, are presented to students in a non pedagogical and contextualized environment, learners will struggle more than the expected to reproduce that information. Since ‘information’ is ‘language in context’ in the present case, some theoretical considerations are of major importance when we move from the constructivism principles in the learning space towards its implications in learners and the role of the teacher in the classroom:

(1) embed learning in complex, realistic, and relevant environments;
(2) provide for social negotiation as an integral part of learning;
(3) support multiple perspectives and the use of multiple modes of representation;
(4) encourage ownership in learning;
(5) nurture self-awareness of the knowledge construction process (Driscoll, 2000, pp. 382-383).

Building and adapting a learning environment that supports these principles is fundamental for those involved in the establishment of better teaching practices. Face-to-face teaching and individual training are just part of the main concerns in the application of new technologies in the learning space.



A Wake-Up Call

"It is probably no accident that constructivism is gaining popularity and momentum at the same time interactive, user friendly computer technologies are becoming widely available. The computer offers effective means for implementing constructivist strategies that would be difficult to accomplish in other media" (Driscoll, 1994, p376).

The internet and other computer medias urge for a rapid change and adaptation of the design both of the information and of the materials, as well as the proper training and awareness of the teachers involved in teaching with these resources, so we can maximize students´learning abilities and increase their performance inside and outside the classroom.
Generating autonomy and independence for learners to recreate knowledge in their own realities is fundamental in this process – that is, in fact, the ultimate goal of using technology in the learning space in the first place.
Teachers, institutions and learners are engaged in finding out their place in the sun, struggling to discover the best way of interacting with each other, of learning from each other and of maintaining a good relationship amongst all parts involved. Nevertheless, the construction of knowledge is always connected with the idea of further development of a critical awareness and with the implications different approaches to the teaching-learning process will generate, and eventually with the results and improvement of the standard procedures.
Once these aspects have been deeply analyzed, their outcome further scrutinized, and, since there is the desire to keep the quality in delivering excellence in the development of teaching methods, there will be always place for new ideas in the field of educational resources.

Bruna Mendes






References



• “A New Framework for Teaching in the Cognitive Domain”. ERIC Digest. by Molenda, Michael


• Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), "Instructional design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory (Vol. 2)," pp. 215-239. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.


• 2005 Phillip D. Long and Stephen C. Ehrmann “Future of the Learning Space: Breaking Out of the Box”
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume40/FutureoftheLearningSpaceBreaki/157992



• Ros Brennan Lecturer in VET, Charles Sturt University “Implications of Online delivery for teaching and learning in Education and Training”

http://nw2000.flexiblelearning.net.au/talkback/p27.htm


• Driscoll, M. P. (2000). "Psychology of learning for instruction," 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

• Marion Williams and Robert L. Burden (1997) Psychology for Language Teachers: Cambridge University Press