The principles we have explored in this book can be applied to a variety of settings, and the readers will probably have recognized many teaching techniques they are currently using, that fall under one or the other principle. As we can see from the large body of scholarly literature referring to each principle, these are not new concepts. Described in one way or another, the principles represent the core of what can make for powerful learning.
Each principle serves as a thinking guide pointing our attention in one direction, and helping us reflect if we are or could be including that aspect into our class. Personal experience and creativity will do the rest, as we find and try out new ways to achieve our goals as educators. In addition, the particular learning outcomes in each discipline and subject set certain boundaries and conditions, to which we need to adjust. Boundaries also provide opportunities to be creative, to challenge and innovate.
What steps can we take to invent our own new ways of enhancing the learning experience?
In the following, you will find a list of questions that can provide guidance and inspiration to adapt and adopt into your particular teaching context.
Checklist for Using the Principles
Overall: Are participants made aware of the importance, impact, and applicability of the learning principles implemented?
Principle: Relevance
Learning is optimal when the focus of the learning is owned by, important and timely for the individual.1
Creating Ownership of the Learning
Have the participants been sufficiently involved in the co design of the class or course?
Have the participants created their own personal learning goals and identified milestones to measure their progress?
Have the criteria of success been defined clearly and jointly with the participants? Have the criteria been defined first by the participants before the instructor provided input and guidance?
Are the participants free to participate? In what?
Does the design accommodate each participant’s personal learning goals?
Might any of my activities or attitudes contradict the value given to ownership of the learning? How can I identify, and deal with, or prevent them?
Do I periodically revisit the design to ensure that it is still relevant for each session?
Just-in-Time Interventions
As an instructor, am I prepared, do I have the resources I may need?
Am I prepared to introduce tools and concepts, and do I have the time to use appropriate teaching material when it is most relevant and facilitative of the further learning?
How do I determine the right timing?
Am I offering the just-in-time (JIT) interventions as an option, and am I letting the participants decide if the interventions are appropriate?
Can I ensure that the use of teaching material is genuinely appropriate to the needs of the group and is not just meeting my own needs as an expert to demonstrate my expertise?
Do I have a sufficiently good grasp of a wide-enough range of material that I can use immediately without much preparation in working “live” with a group?
Am I making good use of the Matrix of Knowing and Not Knowing, to select the most appropriate processes for Quadrants 1 and 4? (see page 92)
Quadrant 1: Participants realize that they don’t know much about a topic, are curious about it, or unsure of their understanding. The learning facilitator can explore what questions the participants have about a theme, to promote ownership of the learning and to make the experience relevant, following the interests in the room.
Quadrant 4: The participants don’t know what they don’t know. This may be the most frequent assumption of instructors, and it is worth taking a moment to confirm that this is the case. Once it is clear that the participants do not know about a topic, the learning facilitator can wear his “instructor hat” and present the new contents. This role is most powerful when the contents are introduced following a hint—for example, it may be important information for a given project the participants are working on, or for a discussion that is underway. In other words, when it is “justin-time” as opposed to “just-in-case.”
Linking
Am I connecting each concept with the context of the audience to enable further generalization and application?
Are there other contexts and conceptual frameworks that need to be connected to the different activities of the program or session?
What questions can I ask to connect what we just discussed with their own life, present, past, or future?
Balancing Task and Learning
Does the course as a whole, and its separate components, provide an appropriate balance between a focus on task achievement and a focus on process, what are we learning, and how are we learning it?
Is there enough time budgeted for debriefs and learning sessions?
Do we hold a debrief after each session?
How can we alternate the learning at the personal, professional, team, or organizational level in order to make space for all of them throughout the course?
Have we made it explicit that we give equal importance to learning contents or concepts and to learning about self or even about the process of learning?
Principle: Tacit Knowledge
Knowledge exists within individuals in implicit forms of which the individual is unaware: It is under-or not fully utilized and can be accessed through guided introspection.
Using Guided Reflection
Are there sufficient opportunities built into the program to allow dedicated time for reflection on the activities undertaken?
How can we ensure that participants get personal silent reflection time, in or outside the classroom?
How do we include writing as a way to create a linear presentation of thoughts?
What are some activities that can make the guided reflection fun, exciting, interesting?
Does the design allow the opportunity to ask well-thoughtout, stimulating questions that can help to challenge the habitual frames of reference of the participants?
What are some “good” questions that can be used?
Using Questions
What are the best moments to ask the students for their questions?
How can I design a class or a segment where I can flexibly follow their questions as opposed to deliver what I had in mind?
What personal obstacles, habits, and personal preferences do I need to overcome to base my interventions on the students’ questions?
What assumptions do I hold about students and their questions?
What are some creative ideas I can employ when the students are silent, have no questions, and put all the ownership of the learning on me?
What would qualify as “good questions”?
Principle: Reflection
Reflection is the process of being able to thoughtfully ponder an experience, which can enable greater meaning and learning to be derived from a given situation.
Guided reflection
In addition to the previous questions (see Tacit Knowledge) consider the following:
How can I bring awareness to the importance of reflection in our life and to how it is related to the topic of my course?
What rituals of reflection can be brought into the course?
What are questions the students have themselves, to guide a collective reflection exercise (also their personal reflection exercise)?
What is the overarching and specific purpose of each activity where I’m guiding their reflection in a certain direction?
Feedback
What opportunities for feedback can I create so that students develop their habit of reflecting?
How can I design feedback moments (individual, in pairs, collectively) so that students benefit from reflecting on what happened?
Principle: Self-Awareness
Building self-awareness in people through helping them understand the relation between what they feel, think, and act, and their impact on others, is a crucial step toward their greater personal and professional competence.
Learning and Personality Styles
Am I using a full range of learning activities that will appeal to the complete range of different learning and personality styles?
Am I making a conscious check to ensure that the learning and personality styles addressed through different learning activities do not overly reflect my preferences as instructor?
Have I planned spaces for the group to reflect on how the preferences of others may be influencing their behaviors that we perceive as “strange”?
Have I included enough activities to help participants learn, explore, discover, and articulate their own learning and personality styles or preferences?
What is my own learning preference? What is my personality style and how is it expressed in my performance with the students?
What are my “shadow side” aspects that I should be aware of?
Coaching 1:1
Does the design offer opportunities to give participants 1:1 coaching support?
Is there a more formal process of contracting that I can use so participants can be given 1:1 coaching support?
Am I ensuring to make at least one meaningful contact with each participant?
Is this individual support helping the participants to increase their self-awareness?
Have I planned activities to help participants reflect on the impact of their own behavioral patterns?
Principle: Social Learning
Learning emerges through social interaction and, therefore, individuals multiply their learning opportunities.
Exchange of Learnings
During the class, do I explicitly give time to participants to share their individual learnings?
What opportunities do I provide for new learning, insights, and frames of reference to emerge spontaneously from the interaction of the participants?
Are participants made aware of the power of exchanging learnings?
How are the exchanges captured?
Principle: Paradigm Shift
The most significant learning occurs when individuals are able to shift the perspective by which they habitually view the world, leading to greater understanding, both of their world and of others.
Unfamiliar Environments
Are there sufficient opportunities for risk-taking and challenge?
Does the course expose participants to unfamiliar environments and activities that help to surface and challenge their default mental models?
Is there enough time planned to reflect on, analyze, and debrief the impact of encountering unfamiliar environments, to explore one’s deepest assumptions, values, interpretation patterns, and feelings that are triggered?
Are there opportunities to uncover the participants’ underlying assumptions?
Principle: Systems Thinking
We live in a complex, interconnected, cocreated world, and, in order to better understand and tackle individual and organizational issues, we have to take into account the different systems and contexts that mutually influence one another.
Interconnectedness
How is the systems perspective introduced, presented?
Does the design include the appropriate focus on the different subsystems, that is, individual, team, organizational, community, environmental, global?
Are the participants aware of this?
Principle: Integration
People are a combination of mind, body, soul, and emotions, and respond best when all aspects of their being are considered, engaged, and valued.
Appreciative Approach
Do the type of questions asked, and the overall design of the course, help build an appreciative approach of individual and team strengths?
Do I feel comfortable being appreciative? How do I show it?
Are participants’ positive qualities, talents, and skills sufficiently recognized, valued, and celebrated?
What activities will help us in being more appreciative?
How is success acknowledged?
Safe Environments
Does the overall environment in all its aspects, both physical and emotional, provide sufficient safety to, and inspire the trust of, participants?
Do I give time, and use the appropriate tools, to explicitly build a working atmosphere of trust, openness, collaboration, and mutual respect?
Holistic Involvement of the Individual
Do the different activities and tools used enable participants to engage and express themselves at an emotional and imaginative, as well as an intellectual, level?
Is the whole mind–body system involved in the learning experience?
Does the design include sharing the different aspects of the participants’ life (family, hobbies, interests, life experiences, etc.)?
Principle: Repetition and Reinforcement
Practice brings mastery and positive reinforcement increases the assimilation.
Sequenced Learning
Do the different parts of the class or course fit well together into a coherent, logical persuasive whole?
Does the design provide time for participants to try out new behaviors or skills, and how can I support them as they reflect on their experience, and how address difficulties and obstacles?
Does the class make good use of summarizing to reinforce learning?
How are small change attempts identified, supported, reinforced, and celebrated?
Feedback
Have we clearly defined the criteria to measure success?
Is periodical feedback included to assess the impact, efficacy, and appropriateness of the design, contents, and interventions of the learning facilitator?
Do I revisit what I do, based on the feedback I receive?
Are there measurable ways to assess the results of the different learning outcomes?
Have I included my peers and the students in answering this question?
Am I connecting regularly with the participants to support them and provide them feedback to help them reach their goals?
Principle: Learning Facilitator
A specific role exists for an expert in methods and techniques for teaching and learning who can optimize the learning of both individuals and groups.
Learning Coach
Am I using the full range of learning coach roles (reflector, JIT teacher, coach, facilitator, designer) in the course?
Am I equally comfortable with all these roles?
Am I comfortable redesigning “on the go”?
What can I do to get more comfortable?
Is the role of the learning coach clear to participants?
Do I see a gradual transfer of these roles from instructor to the group, going from high intervention to minimal and low?
Is feedback included to periodically assess the performance and efficacy of the learning facilitator?