Communication is hard. We’ve all (probably) experienced situations where our words fall flat; where repeated explanation just doesn’t seem to create understanding.
In this situation, you are an educator.
Learning and teaching are two views of the same process. However, those views don’t always line up. Each individual’s past experiences, goals, subject mastery, learning habits, and the environment can all cause disconnects. Not just these qualities in students, but in the teacher as well. Teachers are often in a very different stage than their students in each of these dimensions, which makes disconnects complex and opaque.
While the ‘student’ is not free of responsibility, there are powerful ways you can bridge this disconnect. Research elucidates key components of learning, factors that affect those components, and techniques that facilitate effective teaching.
This series is an adaptation of a document I once wrote for myself. The goal was to connect and compact my learnings from reading How Learning Works and Building a Discipling Culture.
The series breaks that exploration into bite-sized chunks along each of the research-based principles in How Learning Works, plus a summary of key ways we can affect learning. Each post concludes with warning signs and tools to combat disconnects.
This series is by no means a replacement for the books that inspired it. I only hope to introduce their valuable perspectives. Both books are quite easy reads for deeper exploration.