a note on pedagogy

*this is the extended version of an article I wrote for Arthur Issue 0 and is based on my experiences during a feild course called Living and Learning on the Land

Pedagogy is the way we learn and the way we teach. Depending on your high school experience, you may have a fixed or rigid way of understanding this concept. Like, there are only so many ways people learn and there is a right way to teach and be taught.

According to “The Strategic Learner”, a style guide by Sheila Collett published by The Academic Skills Centre, there are three kinds of learner: auditory, visual and kinesthetic.

The audiocentric, ear driven learner takes oral instruction better than written instruction and usually needs visual aids vocally explained to them. They are great story tellers and prefer Trent Radio over Arthur.

Those who were given an eye for an ear want instructions written down. Diligent note takers that prefer Arthur over Trent Radio make visual aids to help them in their never ending quest to get the entire lecture down on paper. These learner hawks can tell what you are saying by observing the way in which you say it (body language).

The kinestete must be involved and doing. So many coffee breaks make it so they prefer to stand while working. Space is the place, they need to know their environment in order to feel comfortable working as a part of it. Hand talkers and touchers, they enjoy using their hands and have a reputation for being high energy and in need of relaxation.

Some advice from “The Strategic Learner”:

Ears, tape record lectures, talk to everyone about everything all the time, use stories and rhymes to remember and study out loud.

Eyes, visualize information, look at the lecturer's face, write everything down all the time, and use visual aids and colour whenever you can.

Body, take loads of breaks (I recommend starting to smoke), do something with the information you are given (experiments, building models, explaining it to others), read on a bike or balance board, and double read (skim fast then go for detail).

This is a very linear pedagogical model. We are all eyes, ears and bodies, so will therefore have a combination of these habits. One problem with the more classical psycho-educational models of pedagogy is that it sometimes forgets that people are people and not just observable patterns of behaviour.

Form relationships with your fellow students and your professors. It feels good and you learn more. Form relationships between concepts too, most of everything comes from similar places and is just formulated differently for a specific purpose.

And sometimes it is important to take some time with yourself to be alone with the information you have received. We go to school in a forest, take advantage of that.

On that same note, remember that we learn in communities and keeping those communities vibrant and healthy is of the utmost of importance. So when you are striving for the true, the real and the right, remember that these things have nothing to do with proving someone wrong. Give your fellow teachers and students some space to make mistakes, to indulge in their own perspective and to feel safe doing these things. When you feel like someone has said something that is wrong, or offends you, try to ask a question. By asking a question you are extending you're own understanding of what they are saying and why they said it. Develop yourself, don't put others down.

Asking questions in the face of frustration also sets an example of how we can treat eachother in academia, not treating the academy as a battleground over terms, but a place where we can form positive epistemic communities that improve all of our understandings surrounding an issue, instead of producing anxiety and stress.

In trying to build shared conceptual structures we often forget that everybody has their own experience of them and learns about them in different ways and come at them from different angles. Attune yourself to your own thoughts and build your own understanding of these concepts. Thinking occurs in your mind alone and when we communicate, we are sharing, so be respectful of other students and teachers offerings, because they are a gift.

Dominance via intellectual supremacy is a pitfall that we all must be weary of in our quest to seek out epistemic contributions that fit our own experience of the world. We all face the temptation to think of others as wrong or incorrect instead of letting them speak their piece. You do not need to wholly take in everything a fellow student is saying and it is not your responsibility to formulate their thoughts for them. Speak with them, not for them or on top of them. If an epistemic clash occurs (it will), then speak to what you know in the context of your own experience, and resist the temptation to speak to what you know in the context of how others are wrong or misinformed. If you feel someone is misinformed or wrong, that's their business, you cannot think for them, only give them something to think about.