Maximizing The Power of Peer Learning - Essay Example

Success for All’ Through Maximizing the Power of Peer Learning In majority of teaching there is aconsensus among the teachers that developing critical thinking in their students is a crucial part of the pedagogical process. Ergo, educators often are trying to come with way through which they can motivate this in their students. Research on the subject has proven that one of the main ways this can be achieved is through peer teaching activities which are said to be highly effective in helping students engage in critical thinking. Consequently, such activities tend to produce more profound learning outcomes when used in conjunction with other teaching and learning techniques. Students and pupils that work groups are said to be more successful in reasoning and critical thinking skills which ultimately improves their general performance (Cohen, 1994). Peer education is a complex expression and as result it is not easy to pin down a simple definition and one can only attempt to describe it. Peer education can be described as an approach through which youths can operate in collaboration with their contemporaries which draws upon the positive aspects of peer dynamics; through appropriate training and exposure, peers can learn how to play an active part in the education process rather than simply be passive recipients of the same. I was motivated to try out peer learning models because as a teacher it was easy for me to appreciate the advantages they held both as result of experience and from a study of research and literature on the same. Peer education is becoming an increasingly popular process of providing not just advice and social information but as a method of pedagogy which is seen as an all-inclusive involving and benefiting pupils the peer educators and the school in general. Among the many benefits of peer teaching is that it brings about positive changes in response to knowledge, skills and confidence all which a critical in academic and personal development. Peer educates are also likely to acquire the unique benefit of up to date information and life skills that the convectional teachers may not provide and it is easier for them to identify and build positive relationships with them. Brown and Campione argue that a community of learners in classroom can be conceived in terms of various proximal development zones through which participants can navigate at their different paces and routes. Piaget who is one of the foremost experts on development and education concurs in his social-cultural learning theory which proposes that people acquire new skills and behaviour from interaction with their immediate social environment. Rogoff (1990) on the other hand suggests that learning is best conceived as occurring in a social setting where support and interaction from peers is provided. I tried out series of learning activities in which I attempted to integrate peer learning in my teaching process with what I believe was considerable success. I was teaching chemistry to class of 40 students; while most of them were fairly good, the general performance of the class was less than satisfactory. After a few months of teaching them, I had come to the conclusion that they did not perform dismally because they were necessarily poor in the subject; they simply never seemed to be bothered with the subject hence were not trying hard enough. For every assessment test I gave, the same students had remained on top and another group seemed to be resigned to failing, there was almost no competition and I was quite sure that the only time they paid any attention to my subject was when I was in class, as soon as I left they would move to other things and even the homework was hardly glanced at. After I did my investigations and talked to some of their other teachers, I came to the realization that the students were unmotivated and bored with science subjects and as a result had developed a negative attitude towards it (Sawyer, 2006). To remedy the situation, I decided to implement peer learning and teaching with the hope that it would motivate the students to change their attitude towards chemistry. I majored on the social constructivist model of learning; quintessentially, constructivism as a pedagogical philosophy is grounded on the assumption that when one reflects on their own experiences they are better placed to construct a personal understanding of the word in which they exist (Brooks and Brooks, 1993). Students tend to create their own mental models and come up with personalized principles and rules through which they interpret the concept. I wanted my students to stop seeing me as the main source of information, instead of acting as a source I would simply serve to assist and supervise their search for knowledge. To achieve this I had to change the way in which they interacted with me and the subject but most importantly with each other. Based on their performance in the last 3 papers, I divided them in groups of 10 each; in each group I ensured that I had assigned at least some students whose grades had been above B. Furthermore, I also included two 10 students from the class above mine (who I also taught) and assigned each of these senior a group which they were supposed to both mentor and assist in their academic pursuits. After classifying them thus, I made some radical changes in the way the lessons would be structured, traditionally, I would go to class introduce a topic and “teach” which in many cases involved me discussing the concept I was teaching with the students taking notes although in many situations they just sat and stared blankly. There were almost never questions unless they were coming from me to them and even these required that I point at some specific individual for an answer. At the end of every 3 weeks I would give the students a continuous assessment test (.CAT) based on what we had covered previously, sometimes I would give projects which the learners would work on for about 2 weeks and submit for assessment. Nevertheless, under the constructivist approach I was applying a problem solving techniques, during the lesson (Ronis, 2001), the learners would sit in groups and each group would discuss a problem which I assign to them beforehand. I would remain in class supervening and assisting whenever called upon as well as helping them with research. The lesson were however not limited to class and since most of the problem were practical in nature they would assemble in one of the science labs and each group would discuss and practically try to solve or demonstrate the question assigned. Afterwards they would meet and discuss their findings and under the guidance of the senior student write a report on the experiment. They would then be expected to make classroom presentations each group would be assessed by their classmates who would determine if their project had been satisfactory or warranted repeating. I dispensed with the convectional grading system because I had come to realize although it was inevitable since I could not change the entire school’s or country’s curriculum structure which is heavily test reliant, they were often a barrier to good performance. Therefore the only criterion on which their success would be measured was based on the success of their projects and since these were different the standards would also not be identical. Working together the members of different groups were expected to demonstrate and explain their projects to their classmates who would then quiz them about it and this way each of the students took part in a projects and experience those of their colleagues albeit indirectly. For constructivism to work, one needs to first eliminate convectional restrictive curriculum and create a situation where students can learn through hands on experience especially through problem solving techniques (Palincsar, 1998). In the pedagogy of the oppressed, Paulo (Freire, 2006) discusses one of the problems facing education systems world over which is the culture of rote learning in which the teacher is assumed to be the supreme possessor of knowledge which he dispenses to the learners. By accepting this mode of reasoning, he argues that the system ignore the creativity and imagination of the students ultimately making them a disinterested party in the process of their own education. To avoid such a situation, I ensured to organise the learning activities in a student centred way such that they could solve practical problems as opposed to simply learning theories which do not really have any value outside the examination room where they would be regurgitated and promptly forgotten. In as much as they studied in groups, I ensured I set aside lessons in which I could interact with the students and discuss relevant theoretical material which was to provide the groundings for much of their practical work. The students were reluctant at first but they gradually became very enthusiastic and excited about the whole idea of peer teaching and learning. For one given that I had divided them in groups based on the ability observed although I had not made it explicit I had expected the “better ” students would naturally take the lead, I was wrong in that respected. When it came to practical work the students worked with so seamlessly that I could not automatically detect the distinctions created by the academic rankings. The questions I gave the students were open ended and they allowed them to excise their creativity imagination and critical thinking skills, ideally constructivist learning requires students to interpret analyse and predict information and this was largely successful in my class. In convectional projects, teachers tend to give students restrictive questions to which there can only be so many answers, as a result the students will work to solve the problem and give the teacher the answer they think they want (Johnson and Johnson, 1994) . This is basically the definition of teacher centred learning where learners are working towards meeting the teachers expectation and in many ways the antithesis of learner centred or constructivist learning. The constructivism approach to learning precludes all forms of standardized tests which essentially assume that student have the same abilities thus should be tested on the same exams under the same conditions. This makes exams an extremely teacher centred activity and it tends to completely ignore the diverse abilities that different students have, in addition given that most of this exams are theoretical they give students with better long term memory unfair advantage over their contemporaries. Exams, it has been argued do not actually test ones understating of the concepts learnt but their ability to express them under the misconception that these two are the same. However the constructivist model requires that assessment is not divorced from the learning process, learners should be involved in the process of assessment and they should be given a bigger role in judging their own progress. In my students, I noted that whenever they made a presentation the students got immediate feedback and they often conceded to the weakness in their projects and were eager to fix them not for the points they expect to get but because they genuinely wanted to get solutions for the problem at hand. Through the social- cultural constructivist aspect of the learning experience activity I created emerges in the fact that the students were able to learn from each other and the seniors in the groups as well as the academic environment in the school at large. According to Vygostyky culture helps children acquire both knowledge and intellectual adaptation since they learn what and how to think through persistent interaction with their peers and seniors (Vygotsky, 1978) By introducing other students who were older and more experienced than my learners as well as my input, i managed to help the students improve their level of knowledge since they the student’s level of knowledge could be gradually improved through scaffolding. The learner instead of being told exactly what to do are only guided supported and pointed in the right direction this way they were able to perform tasks they would not have previously been able to on their own with only a little guidance. As I mentioned peer education is said to highly beneficial to the children in question because they by interacting with their peers they get a redefined academic and social experience (I observed this first hand from the activities for which I set for them, for one the weaker students were able to get assistance more easily since it is easy for them to ask their peers to help them with problems. In addition, even those supposed to help were not always 100% sure of the correct problem solving method to use. As a result, it was often a matter of both the weak and strong students playing a game of trial and error under my direction attempting various solutions until they came up with one that would solve or explain the problem in question to their satisfaction (Bridges and Botelho and Tsang, 2010). The students immensely enjoyed the activities set out for them because all over a sudden chemistry was no longer a hard and complex subjects but simply a collection of puzzles which they could solve through their collective reasoning. Piagat argues that during the developmental stages children will construct on experiences which they acquire through their environment through the mental schemas they have constructed up to a certain point. To make it easy for my students to form these schemas I ensure the first projects I gave them would be used as foundation on which later ones would be built, this way they could repeat the basic parts of their experiments then move on to more complex and newer aspects which they would assimilate. As a result they could gradually elect more cognitive structures, Piaget had suggested that play is an integral part of helping a child develop constructivist learning (Hogan & Pressley, 1997). In the team activities I provided my learners, I ensured there were various attributes of play which student find naturally engaging and exiting. For one play requires teamwork and most team oriented games are structured in such a way that the goal can only be achieved if the players work in cooperation, in the projects, the students have to apply the same principle. This enabled them to acquire the skills to work together and learn to depend on each other all the while when making themselves dependable for the sake of the team. In addition play is probably the most child centred learning activity that can be conceived, this is because children are able work on their own or with the guidance of peers and teachers solve puzzles and problems. By instituting peer teaching, I was effectively turning learning into a sort of play and this was proved critical in increasing the motivation and enthusiasm of the leaners. As a teacher the experience was instrumental in helping me reflect on the educational background with which I provide my students, this is because I realized that I was not as effective when teaching as when I let the students do it for themselves. In retrospect I had assumed that the learning outcome was dependent on my ability as a teacher as well as the learners acumen, however while these play a part I came to realized that they may pale in significance when compared to the teaching approaches more so peer learning. Unfortunately, in as much as I could change the assessment techniques for the individual class to make them constructive and student oriented, I could not do the same for the entire school so at the end of the semester the students had to do their exams. However despite the non-traditional methods I had applied their performance was remarkably improved; they were giving more incisive descriptions and definitions of terms; whenever I had them describe a concept in the past, they most of them would write generic definitions which they had picked from me of the books and copy paste them. However their answers appeared more mature and developed and they seemed to describe chemical concepts based on an in-depth understanding rather than just what they read in books. In addition, teaching in Hong Kong which is a highly cosmopolitan city I had students from multiple social cultural background. By encouraging team learning, I was able to harness their different approaches to learning and not only improve their academic skills but also their social awareness, since they learnt and developed each other’s social and intellectual skills. The experience also taught me quite a bit about the conditions required for team learning to succeed , for one having a group of student in the same room possibly doing individual work but free to interact with each other does not amount to team or peer leaning. This is simply a form of “individual leaning with talking”; however for team work to be effective, the group have to be structured in such a way that there is cooperative learning and positive interdependent. In addition, as the teacher I should ensure I supervise the tasks so as to ensure that some people do not leave all the work to others in a group. Group learning needs must be structured as a cooperative learning situation in which the group not an individual is given tasks to carry out and they are consequently rewarded collectively. Furthermore a cooperative group must have a sense of individual accountability meaning that all the students must understand the material being discoursed or experimented on before the group can be deemed successful. In conclusion, pedagogy based on the peer model is without doubt one of the most successful ways of imparting education to learners, the social constructivist approach teachers should foster the leaners propensity for deep enquiry and collaborative problem solving. The curricula should however be less flexible as should the exams and this is currently a major challenge educators like myself face since sometimes the constructivist approach may work in opposition with the traditional pedagogical techniques which are accepted by teachers institutions and governments. References Bridges, S. M., Botelho, M. G. and Tsang, P. C. S. (2010). PBL.2.0: Blended learning for an interactive, problem-based pedagogy, Medical Education, 44(11), 1131 Brooks, J. G. and Brooks, M. G. (1993). The case of constructivist classrooms. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexendria, Virginia. Cohen, E. G. (1994a). Designing group work: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Freire, P. (2006) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary ed. New York: Continuum. Johnson, D. W., and Johnson, R. T. (1994). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Palincsar, A. S. (1998). Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning. Annual Reviews Psychology, 49, 345-375. Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: Oxford University Press. Ronis, D. (2001). Problem-based learning for math and science: Integrating inquiry and the internet. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training and Publishing Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press. (HKU Library – eBook) Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Read More