Replying to LO28736 --
Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl> writes:
>At has described in a vivid way which paths and
>motivations his learning follow. The pictures I got from
>that description were spirals and meanders, not sure
>which one is preferent.
Greetings dear Leo,
Its more meandering than spiraling, but the meandering is too vague.
Picture in you mind a tree (mission) with its trunk. A few main brances
(aims) come out of it. These branches divides into more thinner branches
(goals) and eventually in many twigs (objectives). Now imagine a sloth
living in that tree, growing as old as the tree and moving about ten times
as fast as the tree grows. The course which it will trace in that tree to
find food and to rest will be similar to how i encounter my aims, goals
and objectives.
The fact that i can structure them in a tree like configuration does not
mean that i conform to that configuration. Up to the middle eighties i
simply tried to keep me creativity going. But after the discovery of the
7Es, I became deeply under impression how every move from one place to
another in the tree gets determined by one (or more) of the 7Es.
>Dear At and Alfred, is it not a failure to appreciate
>the childs NATURAL learning behavior, not making
>too large learning steps because there is no motivation
>for doing so. The wanting of learning to deviate comes
>naturally after known what quantities are and how to
>add and multiply.
Dear Leo, I think there is some misunderstanding here. I had no critique
at the NATURAL (spontaneous, irreversible self-orhanisation) learning. I
had the following in mind (and I think Alfred also). Let me explain it by
a parable.
I have bought myself topographical maps (1 : 250 000) of South Africa,
Botswana and Namibia (which costed a lot because there are more than a
hundred of them). I have also bought a geological maps ( 1 : 1 000 000) of
the same regions. Before i go to a desert, i will study for hours the
topographical maps and geological map of that desert. This gives me an
indication what difficulties and interesting places to expect. But once i
get to the desert (i do not take the maps with me), i simply let the
findings at one place to determine the next place to go to, bearning in
mind in which regions i have to take caution and which regions i still
want to go to. (These maps paid for themselves through and through, having
spared me much wasted efforts and time.)
These maps together tell of the learning plan which children, even with
NATURAL learning, ought to have with them. The learning plan is not a
prescription, but a discription of the order of topics and how they fit
together in complexity. It is up to the child to decide whether the plan
is followed or not. My experience as a high school teacher (i was the only
one who gave them such learning plans) was that between fourty and sixty
percent pupils followed these plans to stay abreast of me rather waiting
for the next day in class to learn what comes next. In the two classes
which functioned as "tacit LO's", more than 80% of the pupils worked with
these learning plans.
>The goal (I realise that this word is not well chosen,
>maybe wanting or motivation is better) of the child is to
>build a stable tower or to fit them all together. I think
>that if children have the freedom to follow their own
>and personal learning paths, driven by motivation, they
>will learn faster and better, without instructions of others
>(but with the help of others, no much steering).
I do not differ in principle with you. But what kinds of "help" (not
"instruction" nor "steering") are you going to give them? In my case I
have found the learning plan important. I also found that when a child
gets into a difficulty, it is usually because something prerequisite to it
had not been learned. In such a case i have to steer by an instruction the
child to attent to it. But i never force them. If they do not want to
listen, they have to experience the outcome of their decisions.
>For me, it is still not clear, but I think that learning
>with a goal, or motivation has much higher impacts
>than without (just learning for the learning).
I thought you had goal in mind. That is what my reply answered to.
Many years ago i wrote a contribution to the LO dialogue (i think it was
in an introduction to the 7Es) in which i connected the motivation for
learning with the free energy available for learning. I still think the
same. NATURAL Learning has a free energy landscape to it.which is promoted
best under conditions for "spontaneous, irreversible self-organisation".
But we have to bear in mind that when a learner wants to jump several free
energy valleys, they will contract into one valey with a major barrier
upon it. There is nothing so devastating to motivavtion when a child keeps
on crashing into the same barrier when trying to learn something which is
too complex for his knowing at that stage.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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