How We Learn at ISA
As a very young child I chanted the alphabet; I moved on to chanting multiplication tables; I had a brief period of chanting kings and queens of England; and in secondary school I did a lot of chanting of verb endings.
On the whole, I was quite a focused chanter, and received praise after tests. When the teacher was disappointed, so was I, and resolved to work harder. To this day, I am comfortable with the order letters go in, multiplying numbers up to the value of 100, and using the third person singular of the Latin verb ‘to like’.
I am not denying that this is useful, but it is also very limited. The reality is that throughout my adult life, I have had to constantly grapple with new things: new technologies, people from different backgrounds, new professional skills. Some of these things needed existing skills (such as reading and writing), but mostly they required a willingness to take risks and reflect on mistakes.
In adult life learning new skills never involved me chanting, and my motivation rarely depended on the praise or disappointment of authority figures. I learnt things as they were relevant and meaningful to me; when I tried new things, I accepted I might not get it right first time, that I might need to think about it a bit.
When I learnt to drive, I was first given direct and very specific instructions: put your feet and hands here, press your foot here, turn the key like this. Later on, I needed to learn differently.
I remember driving up to a set of lights,, screeching to halt as they turned red, jerking both me and my instructor uncomfortably forward. Visibly shaken, he put me through a debrief soon after:
“What happened?” “I stopped far too suddenly.”
“How come?” “I just didn’t see the light until the last minute.”
“Why not?” “I was focusing on what was right in front of me.”
“So …” “I guess I need to be looking ahead a bit more.”
There could be a chant for road awareness. I am not sure it would have been as effective as my coming to my own understanding through structured reflection.
Of course, we need to be told things but if that is where learning ends, we are left with little of use. We also need the space to think and to reach our own understanding. A pedestrian walks down the street looking at what is directly in front of them, a driver has to be aware of their environment in a totally different way. It is a shift that experienced drivers have often forgotten ever happened.
Similarly students are regularly asked to see the world differently, to approach their reality in a new way. It is easy for adults to overlook that, to take it for granted. And you can’t chant your way through it
At ISA, we have a particular view as to how learning happens, and is part of our guiding statements. We believe that
“[w]hen we learn, we engage with and reflect upon information and experiences to construct new or modify existing understandings, and develop our values.
Our approach to learning is concept based and we also recognise the rich diversity of different cultures and traditions of learning and education.”
It is part of what makes us distinct.
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