Looking into the sun, effective learning

Sun Set in December Zandvoort Beach The Netherlands
Vicki McGarvey BY-NC-SA

When you look directly into the sun, first you see the beauty and then your eyes start to hurt. This is how I feel sometimes when I try to examine learning processes. Learning can be a wonderful experience however studying effective learning can metaphorically cause you eye strain. Trying to unravel what is effective learning is a complex business, however, this what the University College of London's Coursera delivered MOOC, What Future for Education, is trying to undertake.

This is a self paced MOOC. Given that my completion rate for MOOCs is low compared to my enrolment rate, I am dipping into this, taking the pressure of myself by not completing all the assessed pieces and just engaging with the content. Reflection is an integral part of the course and in the first week, which concentrated on how we learn, we were asked to reflect on successful and unsuccessful learning experiences, as well as our preferred way of learning.

From the age of 7, when I entered a streamed middle school, I stopped enjoying school.  Even though I was in the top stream, I spent most of the years up until high school on the bottom table because academically I found school a challenge. The bottom table was also the naughty table, where the misbehaved were demoted to.  This experience for a long time had an impact on how I saw myself academically and to a certain extent has created a small lifelong dent in my educational confidence. In the 1970s, I saw my inability to keep up with two thirds of my classmates as my fault, now with hindsight and having more knowledge of the learning process, I realise that education was to blame. I am a constructivist leaner and I like to interact whilst learning, I have a good cultural memory, I am not great at remembering details, tests at school were a nightmare for me. My parents said they found it frustrating at the time, they could not understand how I could be so verbally articulate outside of school, but still continue to struggle academically.  My mum even asked if I could be put in a lower stream so that I could be nearer the top of the class, which the teacher reassuringly said was not a good idea.

I continued to be streamed right through high school, and still thought myself academically average, Admittedly I do not have a packed case of O'levels and A'levels, but I got a good degree, an MED and have done well in my professional life, mainly because I think work suits my learning style. Despite this I often say I am academically average, which annoys my husband and quite rightly so. For me, my successes are a result of effective learning, so unsurprisingly I was better at sociology than physics. My husband's education journey was far more challenging, working class Irish parents, failed eleven plus and employment on building sites until his late twenties. This was followed by an educational flourish. Thanks to a funded education access scheme and a free degree, education changed his life. He and many of his peers went on to get good degrees, followed by postgraduate qualifications, in my husband's case two masters. They have continued to make major contributions to society in various professions. This is all because education helped them to escape the predestined career that selective education had planned for them. From labourer to social changer, now that is a wonderful sight for sore eyes.


For more on the horrors of streaming please see:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/25/school-streaming-pupils-english-primaries