Managing the learning process
المؤلف:
Rob Cowdroy & Anthony Williams
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P94-C9
2025-06-15
469
Managing the learning process
A significant aspect of more recent teaching methods such as cognitive apprenticeship, PBL and R&D, and crucial to their success or failure, has been the managing strategies adopted to support them. These managing strategies must not be confused with "administrative" obligations imposed by the institution; nor should managing strategies be confused with "facilitation" which is integral to student-centred learning methods associated with cognitive apprentice and PBL approaches.
Managing strategies represent an essential executive role of teachers that complements teachers' teaching role; they are essential to support effective learning/teaching equations; that is, they are essential to maintaining appropriate morale, motivation and orientation aspects of students' learning environments necessary for development of mid-level and higher-level thinking that supports mid-level and higher-level task abilities.
Managing the learning/teaching equation to achieve lower-level task abilities requires strategies focused on encouragement that is already part of conventional good teaching practice. Managing to achieve mid-level and higher-level task abilities, however, requires more sophisticated approaches focused on motivating students to be self-confident, self-directing and self-evaluating, and to achieve "personal bests".
Without both motivation and self-confidence to venture away from dependence on the teacher's opinion and direction, students (generally) will not venture into self-direction and self-evaluation that are the hallmarks of student-centred learning and are essential to achievement of mid-level and (particularly) higher-level task abilities. Students cannot be motivated by decree, and motivation cannot be taught in the conventional sense, nevertheless morale and motivation, and self-confidence, self-direction and self-evaluation can be developed through application of positive motivational and self-development approaches such as some that can be drawn from small-enterprise good-management practice.
A most effective and sustainable managing strategy for developing both individual and group morale and motivation is establishment of a positive collegiate environment among students, on various class and cohort bases, and among students with related interests (e.g. related career path interests). Traditional studio-teaching in design disciplines such as architecture and industrial design, workshop teaching in engineering, laboratory teaching in science, and small-group tutorial teaching in some forms of Problem-Based Learning characteristically achieve very conducive collegiality.
A collegiate environment allows students to become mutually supportive and encouraging and, if they are positively ambitious and competitive, become mutually motivating and high-achieving on both an individual and group basis, with significant student-satisfaction returns. A significant benefit to the teacher is that a substantial part of the load of teaching and facilitation is transferred from teacher to students, reducing the load on the teacher while achieving the required results (a win-win result).
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