Celebrations this week

I would like to begin with music this time, perhaps you would you care to check this youtube clip for example: Friday was Finland’s 96^th Day of Independence and today, on the 8^th of December, we are celebrating the birthday of Jean Sibelius.  I was busy working on my Final Project on Independence Day which made me feel kind of solemn and full of self-criticismJ

 

It was good to learn about the learning styles this week, in a way a good mixture of theory and praxis. To begin with, I did the test http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/mi/w1_interactive1.html, to see what my key approach to learning would be (of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences). Well, to no surprise at all, I found that I was best at interpersonal skills and should be working as a teacher, human resource manager, cousellor:D:D  I did the test twice, same result of course. I sent the quiz to my boy, 19, too. He might find something there as regards music or maybe the spatial dimension. Anyway, fun as it was taking that little test, as I read further along our suggested list for this week, my suspicions were growing. Is this all about learning styles and personality types bringing us too close to stuff like – horoscopes?  But in the readings there was a little bit of scientific evidence also to motivate us to learning of these things – and I think the bottom line would be: you have to know your students and you have to give space to their personality as an entity plus the special talents and traits there are in each and everyone of us. Another key issue is of course that we have to know about and work on ourselves as learners and processors of information, in order to improve as teachers or “preachers” (which I sometimes think I am being a state official and with a job where informing of policies and best practices is what I do a lot!).

Some issues in our readings reminded me of the current topics in the educational discussion in my country too. To mention just two of different sort; first a detail from the multiple intelligences – a new type discovered by Prof Gardner are the naturalists, the ones who relate their learning best to the environments (learning environments). Here we found eg the tip about using geocaching to learn; quite popular already in Finland outside school and amongst geography teachers but I wonder whether it is so amongst the teachers of languages though. The whole thing is also symptomatic of our times as we should realise that the focus in learning and teaching cannot be confined within the four walls of a classroom any longer but we should encourage and recognise learning in a variety of settings, and everywhere – in our ubiquitous existence of the 21st century.

Another issue that came to my mind repeatedly while reading about learning styles: It is all about motivation (cf. the Montgomery and Groat article)! For Finnish basic education this is presently a major challenge, also reflected in our PISA 2012 decline: how do we motivate kids to study and work hard or at least in a goal-oriented way in the first place,  and then how do we motivate them to study math or Swedish which a famously problematic as subjects that cannot be learnt without some effort and which have – undeservedly  – a reputation as dull subjects. Well, tomorrow back to work which delightfully will take me again to our agency’s languages team and our work with the languages curriculum.

And alas - tomorrow will be the beginning of our last week at Webskills.