Teaching and Learning during Lockdown: Time to Challenge our Assumptions

Please note that this article provides my individual views as an educator and does not claim to present views of any institute. The content is based on my personal opinion only.

“We all see our world with our lenses based on our existing mindsets and assumptions.” The current turmoil in the education industry and the struggle of educators during the ongoing pandemic renders a chance for reflection and rethinking.

According to the constructivist philosophy, a careful observation of a situation, followed by a deep reflection results in the construction of unique learnings. Learners do not take or absorb learning from the teacher. Learners use their existing mental makeup, previous learning, and experiences, and new experiences designed by educators to construct their learning on their own. It implies that the role of the teacher is to design learning activities, create a learning environment, and provide scaffoldings to support the construction of learning., not just to transfer or give the learning to students.

Even after more than twenty years of intense research in the area of teaching and learning, which provided huge evidence of constructivist philosophy as a more realistic and successful for adults in the tertiary education, there are very few teachers and educators who know about it, and a fewer who apply it in their teaching either due to the lack of exposure or due to their comfort zones with an argument – “Well, I did well as a student using traditional methods of learning, so why should I use another method when it is working fine.” There is a need to check the assumption that traditional methods are working fine. Are the traditional lectures over the video conferencing or recorded video lectures with limited interactions resourceful enough for the learners, especially in the countries and educational institutes with limited infrastructure and facilities?

Let’s review other assumptions.

Assumption: Teaching means lecturing and teaching theories with some practical activities

“As a teacher, I provide a high-quality lecture with sufficient examples, solve students’ queries, give a good set of PowerPoint slides, notes, and a variety of learning resources like videos, case studies, practitioner written articles, and occasional industry guest lectures or industrial visits. These should be enough for effective learning.”

This assumption presents a traditional way of teaching where teachers ‘provides’ the learning material, acts as an expert or a source of knowledge (knowledge provider) from where students need to gain or obtain the learning. The teaching is centered around the teacher as the teacher occupies most of the learning space and time during the learning session. During the problem solving, or discussions, the teacher assumes that he or she has a duty to “correct” the students’ work and views. As there is a limited chance for students to experience and construct their learning, there remains insufficient or a very limited opportunity for the students for an independent/self-learning. Most teachers using this assumption feel or think that students need them to learn and without teachers students cannot learn.

Assumption: Case-based teaching is more effective

In case-based teaching, the teachers provide notes, chapters articles, and cases to the students. Students need to read through ‘all the material’ and they may be advised to discuss the cases in the peer groups before the case discussions in the class. Many institutions and educators claim that the case method is the best method for professional learning. During the case discussion, the teachers moderate the discussion and direct it to the intended so-called ‘pastures’ so that students can learn from the discussions. But I have noticed that after the discussions, the experiential learning cycle is hardly ever completed. Students start to see the teachers as their guru who impart knowledge to them through the Socratic Method of teaching. The students labeled as ‘quiet’ during the discussions are considered as ‘struggling’ students who in fact may be more reflective than the dominating or active ones. The case teachers seldom see their roles as a facilitator of reflections, rather they like to be considered as case discussion experts. They assume that their role is to generate a high-quality case discussion. If you remove these teachers-moderators from a case discussion class, students will be totally confused, clueless with no idea even how to start a discussion. Based on my observation, students remain in owe from the teachers who are seen as ‘experts’ to learn from. Because only case discussion is used as a learning activity and other reflective learning activities are not used to consolidate students learning. Therefore, even case-based teaching looks like teacher-centric activity, and not truly experiential and effective.

The Need Now

During the lockdown situation, students are not occupying the physical space together with the teacher/Socratic moderator. They interact through video conferencing. So how to ensure the effectiveness of teaching and learning?

Let us start challenging our assumptions about the effectiveness of teaching in our minds. How can we consider a method of teaching as effective when students are struggling, feeling lost and helpless just due to the reason that they cannot meet physically? Are not educators making students dependent on them? Why are students not learning to be a self-learner at least in the tertiary educational settings? Why students still need a regular flow of knowledge from a teacher or a Socrate expert to learn from? The current situation indicates that higher education has failed to a large extent to achieve its objective of transforming learners to an autonomous/self-learner, skilled and independent individual, a team player, critical thinker and confident social member of the world.

Can constructivist and student-centered teaching where a teacher is not the provider of knowledge, nor a Socratic expert, provide a solution? Perhaps yes. The recent wave of popularization of MOOC and asynchronous lessons where there is no requirement of teacher and student to be live together provides a hint that it is time to challenge our assumptions on education, teaching, and learning.

Let's see how teaching and learning can be more effective that are always needed and are now needed more during the lockdown. The following approach is student-centered and experiential.

Role of the teacher

The teacher acts as a co-learner and guide by side and initiates the discussions on learning objectives/outcomes in the initial sessions. Some learning outcomes are adjusted based on the students’ needs. The teacher welcomes students to create and share their learning outcomes from the experiential learning of the course, co-design the course with students in the initial weeks of the course. These discussions are possible in the classroom as well as in the online environment with the use of discussion forums. The teacher avoids any form of the dominance of their own or any other student. The teacher also welcomes suggestions and additions to learning resources from students. Some educational researchers coin this as ‘Flexible teaching and learning’. Teaching and learning can not be effective without being flexible. I doubt on the quality of teaching and learning if it is not flexible based on the context of students, their realities, expectations, and contributions.

Role of the students

Students take the role of co-learners, actively sharing their learning regularly in various learning activities co-designed by them with the teacher. Students reflect on their experiences and observations during the activities. These reflections are critical bricks of the construction of learning for the learners. Some researchers call it ‘Social learning or Peer learning’

Adaptation during Lockdown

Students as co-learners can quickly adapt to the changed circumstances, keep on finding and sharing learning material with each other and with the teacher who welcomes and guides students on how to do it more effectively. Students use online methods to communicate with each other and the teacher on how to re-design the activities they co-designed earlier for the physical classroom sessions. The teacher acts as a guide and welcomes active suggestions and brainstorming with minimal guidance as and when needed. Physical discussions could be shifted easily to discussion forums. Physical presentations from the students as co-teachers could be easily converted to recorded presentations followed by chats/online discussions with other students. Note that discussions here are with other students and not only with the teacher. The teacher moderates the discussions and participates generally acting as devil’s advocate and many a time gives that role to other students too.

Assessments during lockdown

The students as co-learners give candid and constructive feedback of all the activities to each other with the inclusion of the teachers’ views and feedback at the end only. Peer feedback and peer assessments can be used using online tools. With the use of such student-centric constructivist philosophy of teaching and learning, the learners do not remain dependent on the teachers and can confidently continue the learning on their own to a large extent with minimally designed interventions and limited facilitation of the teacher.

But, there is a practical problem in the suggested approach. It cannot be successfully applied with the existing issues of the need of a feeling of self-worth, a higher level of ego, and the notion of duty in the mindset of many teachers who still think that their job is to ‘teach’ and students need to ‘learn’ from them. The main challenge for teachers and educators is to reflect and challenge their assumed roles and role of students in the teaching and learning