DIALOGUE AS A QUANTUM PROCESS

Twelve Principles for teaching effective adult learning

First, I want to say that a principle is the beginning of an action. There´s an assumption that adult learning is best achieved in DIALOGUE.

“Dia-” means “between” and “logos” means “words.” We can, then, say that “dialogue” means “the words between us.”

Danah Zohar defines dialogue as a quantum process; we are going to be discovering why she calls it in this way. What is important to know is that all of the twelve principles and practices are ways to begin, to maintain, and to nurture the dialogue. But, what are the principles are we talking about, what do they mean, and what is their function?

The twelve principles are presented below:

1)  Needs Assessment
It has to do with learners´ expectations and needs. One of the most important things this principle deals with is listening effort teachers should do in order to acquire and learn about the needs and resources assessment. Another thing is how motivation gets started; that´s very important because we, as teachers, must be aware of working with the tangible and visible elements we´ve got from learners. Those elements are their own needs and their own themes.
We have to be clear that needs assessment DOESN´T FORM the way we are going to teach, but it INFORMS the way; moreover, the information recollected can be used as reflective material.

2)  Safety
Safety deals with the respect for learners as decision makers. The learning process should be designed to be hard work and safe at the same time. Teachers must create a safe environment to motivate adults to learn by trusting in the competence, trusting in the relevance of the objectives, trusting in the sequence of activities (from simplicity to complexity), creating a nonjudgmental classroom, and allowing small groups find the power of safety in the classroom.

3)  Sound relationships
This principle deals with RESPECT, SAFETY, OPEN COMMUNICATION, LISTENNING, and HUMILTY. As teachers, we have to demonstrate the sense of interest in adult learning process to increase the knowledge adults are looking for; however, we have to know the limits of each relationship we are going to create for not falling in THE FATAL FLOP (this consists of students´ anger, fear, and disappointment.) If we manage our relationships in a proper way, we are taking the power in the classroom.

4)  Sequence and reinforcement
Sequence means the programming of knowledge to be acquired in the course; in the other side, reinforcement has to do with the repetition of facts during the course to make the knowledge easy to be acquired. Listening plays an important role in the principle because it allows us to modify the tasks if they are too complex for the students; furthermore, listening plays the role of the dialogue in which adults are seen as decision makers.

5)  Praxis
This principle is a inductive process (from simple to complex) because we are going to provide knowledge, we are going to make the students practice the new skills, and we´re going to make them reflect about what they´ve done. That´s why this principle is determined by action with reflection.

6)  Respect for learners as decision makers
This is about the recognition that adults are decision makers in their lives. Adults need to understand that they´re responsible for what happens with their educational process. At this point there are two types of learning dialogue: teacher-learner and learner-learner. And the most relevant thing is that learners should practice freedom.

7)  Ideas, feelings, and actions
This principle involves three important aspects of the adult learning process. Cognitive, affective, and psychomotor are the core for this principle. If we pay special attention ideas (cognitive), feelings (affective), and actions (psychomotor) must be closely related between each other in order to provide the learners an amount of information they can easily get.

8)  Immediacy
This is a very important issue for adults because they don´t want to waste their time, so they want to see the results of their knowledge, their skills, and their attitudes. We, as teachers, must provide the adequate sequence and the appropriate reinforcement for them to see that we are willing to work in their learning process. If we don´t do that, we are going to make them fall in the fatal flop. Immediacy plays a very important role on their determination to keep on learning. This principle will help not only students, but teachers during the process because it helps teachers to decide how to organize the course.

9)  Clear roles
Each part must be clear about the roles its playing in the communication process between teacher and learner.

10)             Teamwork
This principle describes itself. It is both a process and a principle, an action. Besides that, teamwork develops SAFETY and I´d like to cite that “This is exquisitely quantum thinking: nothing in the universe grows or develops alone. We learn together. We live in a participatory universe (Zohar, 1997, p. 68).”

11)             Engagement
The following sentence summarizes the principle quiet well. When learners are engaged to their learning process is not difficult to make them work in small groups or in big teams.

12)             Accountability
This principal deals with some statements that whether we like them or not are very realistic. The design for the adult learning process must be tangible to the learners; this idea is beautiful because we live in a participatory universe as we said and we cannot deny it.

Having said all this, Danah Zohar calls dialogue a quantum process because we cannot isolate any of its parts. Moreover, each adult learner intrinsically possesses both experience and personal perception of life and that´s why the deserve respect during the learning process.

Questions about SBI and classroom management

In this term, teaching is becoming a bit difficult. Some questions may emerge as how I can set up and mantain order when teaching. Well, we should know that classroon management has a variety of factors we must tale into account; moreover, we, as future teachers, should be aware of the energy we are going to create in our classroom through some aspects.
I like to present myself question before teaching, "how would I like to find the classroom if I were the student?" This question helps to take care of the aspect of the classroom before teaching because the enviroment in which the students are, indeed, affect their learning process. 

The neatness, cleaning, and the order of the classroom play an important role in our classes. Similarly, the seating arrengment, interferences, acoustics, and weather can disturb students´ attention in the class. As a personal opinion, the school I´m teaching at has movable desks, that is a big advantage for me beacause I know the other teachers DO NOT make use of the desks and they don´t move them. So, I try to provide my students a different class by rearranging the desks in different positions. 
There are other things we have to take care of such as the white board use and the equipment use. Talking about the board, it has to be clean since the very beginning of the class. You can paste some charts, draw some graphs, give your own examples, and provide your students visual aids for them to better understand the topic. But, DON´T FORGET THE BOARD WHEN YOU FINISH YOUR CLASS. Now, I understand why some tacher get mad when entering a classroom and finding the board all dirty.

Another thing we have to be aware of, when trying to mantian the order, is our tune of voice and our body language. We have to know that when teaching, we must speak as natural as possible because our voice is going to give us the confidence to teach and we´re going to sound secure about the things we are talking about. Our nonverbal expressions are very important due to they are caught by students easily.
One thing I can tell you is that many topics can arise at very moment of teaching and you have to know what to do. If the topic in question has to do with the topic your students are dicussing, try to relate it in a very smooth way. Don´t cut your students´participation; let them talk about the topic if they´re speaking in English, obviously.

An external question may be born someday, "how can I learn successfully a new language?"
Our answer must be STRATEGIC INVESTMENT; nevertheless, many of you may be wondering what that means. Well, let me tell you that strategic investment means that the learning process has to be match with investment. We all have to be clear that "every set of complex skills is acquired through a combination of observing, focusing, practicing, monitoring, correcting, and redirecting." (Taken from the book TEACHING BY PRINCIPLES, 3rd edition, page 258) 

LEARNING STYLES

Well, we´re beginning a new semester and there is no better to begin it than writing on my blog.

As I´ve been doing, I ´ll try to write as much as I can to let you know what´s going around and today´s topic is about LEARNING STYLES.

Learning styles can be defined as the ways people implement to acquire a new knowledge or to reinforce the knowledge previously acquired. I really like this topic because we can mention the variety for learning; however, some experts say that there are three learning styles: VISUAL, AUDITORY and KINESTHETIC.

Like their names reflect we can infer what each learning style is about. Visual is when people learn by watching, auditory happens when people learn by listenning, and kinesthetic style occurs when people learn by manipulating the things or when they´re in constantly movement in order to do the things.

We are familiar with these terms because we studied multiple intelligences last semester. 

Even though it seems to be ok, I´m not totaly in agreement with what those experts say; I agree with the experts that say there is one more learning style which is MIXED LEARNING STYLE. It talks by itself and I consider I am in this learning style. I think I learn in different ways not only in a specific way, but in a vary way of learning.

Now, it´s your turn to think and reflect about what your learning style is.
Good luck.

When teaching take into account...

As we have been studying, it´s important to know how to get our students´attention when teaching, but that process involves several "items" we have to take into account. It´s necessary to understand that each item contains other subcategories that are connected one to another.

The categories, or items, are:

1. Attention
   Attention is related to how teachers can obtain and mantain students´attention. It´s based on several movements as desisting, alerting, enlisting, acknowledging and winning.
   
2. Momentum
   Momentum deals with the environment a class should has. It relies on provisioning, overlapping, fillers, intrusions, lesson flexibility, notice, subdivinding and anticipating.
   
3. Space
   This subcategory not only deals with how the classroom is arranged but also with the students´ attention got with the different arrangements.
   
4. Time
   This is one of the hardest things we can face when teaching. We have to let our students know taht there is tiem for everything and that once in the classroom that time is to learn. Time relies on alocation, instructional time,begining and ending time, and pacing and rhythm.
   
5. Routines
   Routines are actions or situations we apply every single day in order to find things, to look for something, etc. But talking about teaching routines, we have to know that they must be clear and effecient.Communication plays an important role here because it has to be direct, specific, repeated and consistent.
   
6. Discipline
   What can we say about this category? It depends on the categories we have already mentioned.

If we pay special attention to those items, we´re going to notice that they cannot be separated because each of them is important in the teaching process.

CLASSROOM MATERIALS

I WANT YOU TO WATCH MY VIDEO ABOUT CLASSROOM MATERIALS, JUST GO TO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRpFaNHRl64&feature=youtu.be
THANKS FOR WATCHING.

Are you motivated?

Do I have motivation? Why some people behave in the way they do?
This is one of the hardest questions we can ask ourselves and we must answer it at some point of our lives.

According to William Burden, motivation is a state of cognitve a emotional arosal, which leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives raise to a period of sostained intellectual and physical effort in order to attain a previously set goal. Through this definition we can say that motivation is not only the desire for doing something, but also the fact of doing that something.

As we know, motivation can be influenced by a variety of factors whether internal or external, that´s why we have different types of motivation:

1. INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION
   This motivation deals with groups of different types.
2. INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION
   This type of motivation deals with the usage of something, in our case LANGUAGE.
   The question here is: why do we use the language for?
3. INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
   This motivation is the one that is in us. We all have it, but not all of us know how to use it.
4. EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
   This motivation is shared from others towrd us. I rather saying: "It´s the positivity that people give us."

Many people, in this case, many students need to be motivated, but how can teachers motivate students??
APPLYING MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES!!!!!!!!!!!
I wish I had explained this, but this video just took my words away...
(Click on the blue words ;D)

Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

Reflective Teaching

Talking about REFLECTIVE TEACHING, I ´m sure that it is a good way for improving ourselves. We can manage our way of teaching through this topic. We cam be aware of what is helping us and what isn´t.
Last week I went to teach and I encountered that many students had their motivation very low. I didn´t know what to do, but I remember that we are their fountain of motivation (extrinsic motivation), so I decided not to let them keep on going in the same way. I tried to motivate them, belive me, IT WAS TERRIBLE hahahahahaha I cannot lie to you, their behavior affected mine!!!!!

As we have studied, we should try new things with our students, but we have to be very careful when developing certain activities, we cannot be helping them, but obstructin their learning. We should be sure what kind of activities they like the most.


I hope I improve my teaching bye the passing of the time because I do care about them as much as I can about my learning. I know what activities are useful and what activities are useless, how do I know that? Thanks to reflective teaching.