Selected Research Papers in Social Change, Education, Labour Market, and Criminology Volume II

3.2 Requirements for an activating learning-teaching setting: five principles

Now it becomes clearer which requirements education, especially higher education, should meet if it is to be sustainable and competency-oriented. Lipowsky (2009: 93) calls activation a “basic dimension of educational quality”. The following five principles give an overview of what has to be taken into account when designing activating learning settings:

• A dynamic-reciprocal understanding of “student” and “teacher” roles • Participation of the students in designing the learning setting • Reflection of the learning actions and their contexts • Feedback on a regular basis • A sufficiently high complexity of learning settings (as tasks and practices)

3.2.1 The understanding of “student” and “teacher” roles

In constructivist pedagogy the learning person is not understood as a recipient of knowledge, but as its active producer. For the understanding of student and teacher roles this means that the differentiation between the two terms is not as clear-cut as it seems; both students and lecturer alike appear in the one or the other role in turn. For the lecturer, this new understanding of the students’ role means realising a change in his role, too: from the source of knowledge to the “facilitator” (Tigelaar et al., 2004: 253), or “coordinator of the learning process” (Rätz-Heinisch, 2009: 49). This makes some demands on him: he has to develop competencies in the “process-related attendance of groups” to fulfil this role successfully (Thömen-Suhr/Marks, 2010: 225). This also means knowing how to do the “change between instruction and construction” (Widulle, 2009: 61 f.). Or in

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other words, knowing when it is his turn and when he should sit back and let the students take the steering wheel.

3.2.2 Participation of the students in designing the learning setting

In literature, this method is also called “peer learning”, “peer facilitation”, “student supervision” or “collaborative learning” (Micari et al., 2006: 296 ff.; Kane et al., 2004: 294; Cabrera et al., 2001: 333; Lipowsky, 2009: 90). Central characteristic is in each case interaction between the students. They teach each other and in doing so appear in different role functions, as experts for a topic or as facilitators in learning processes. Proponents see this teaching method as the most influencing factors on students’ learning outcomes (Cabrera et al., 2001: 333) and according to Lipowsky (2009: 90) it is “superior to individualised and competitive learning settings”. Students’ participation can have many shapes, for example as a deliverer of input in a presentational setting, as a coach in a self-conceptualised practice unit with rather concrete goals or as a host in an open discussion. An optimal setting is one that combines presentational, discourse-based and interactive elements in a reflected way, since methodological variety supports a multidimensional connection to previously acquired knowledge (Wehr/Ertel, 2008: 18 ff.).

3.2.3 Reflection of the learning actions and their contexts

Becoming aware of what is going on in a learning process is not such an easy task for teachers and learners alike. It can be achieved by reflection or observation of one’s own (learning) actions, their results and environment. Helping students to become “reflective practitioners” themselves is thus a central task of facilitators (Sluijsmans et al., 1999: 293). For the teaching person this means becoming aware of their pedagogical behaviour, in and out of class. McAlpine et al., (1999: 106) thus see reflection as the connecting element between experiences of the past, actions carried out in the now and plans made for the future. By this, there is a developmental idea inherent in the concept of reflection: the reflection person observes his actions and tries to see potential for change. Due to this, reflection is also a valuable means for teachers to improve their teaching (McAlpine, 1999: 105). The same counts for the learners: by reflecting within the group, especially about the group’s process on its way to the solution for a problem, the result can be improved from try to try (Pawlowsky/Mistele, 2008: 3 ff.).

To guide the learners on the way to becoming reflective practitioners, specific phases of reflection in a seminar design are necessary. The object of reflection can vary (McAlpine, 1999: 110); it can be the topic of the lesson, a previous learning phase, group dynamics, relations in the learning-teaching setting and much more. To train reflective competencies in terms of an activating way of teaching, the same counts here as for the development of any other competency: variable tasks, inclusion of different perspectives and means of expression (as

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oral, written, performing or in any other way). Due to its metacognitive character, reflection plays a special role in the field of competencies. It is a special type of competency that does not fit into the scheme of key competencies of the DeSeCo project. As shown in Figure 1, it rather marks the link between the other fields of competencies (Brinker/Willems, 2005: 8). Thus it can be seen as a kind of “superordinate (higher level) learning competency” which fosters the development of other competencies.

3.2.4 Feedback on a regular basis

Feedback is information on the learning progress and “is a decisive component in the teaching and learning process” (Lipowsky, 2009: 87). Literature usually refers to feedback given by the teacher to the student (ibid.), but feedback from student to student can also be meant (Thömen-Suhr/Marks, 2010). It can also refer to different dimensions of an action within a learning setting: to “teaching actions” (ibid.) as presenting or moderating, but also to the individual and his experience, or other issues. Decisive is that feedback comes on a regular basis, adequately differentiated (Lipowsky, 2009: 87 f.) and in a motivationally supporting way (Wehr/Ertel, 2008: 19).

3.2.5 Complexity of learning settings

Another important aspect in designing learning settings is keeping the tasks thadequately abstract and complex and not to prestructure them too much. A means to do so is, for example, to include cases that are “real, local and recent” (Wehr/Ertel, 2008: 17), so that the learning settings are close to reality. Taking the other elements of activating education into account, one comes to seminar designs of the type of case studies, practice seminars and mini-research projects. A global concept for a whole study programme of this kind is the project-based learning, as for example John Dewey proposed in the early 20 century (RätzHeinisch, 2009).

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4 Practical implementation – an activating and competency-oriented seminar design

The prior demonstrations of the concept of key competencies and the psychological foundations of activating learning settings have not only been derived from literature and theory, but have also been tested in practical means. Since the introduced concepts are finding a growing number of proponents, but are still the exception to the rule, a seminar design is presented here which gives an idea of how activation and key competency orientation can be implemented. The example given is a seminar about creative scientific writing for students of social sciences, conducted by the author and two colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the winter semester 2009/10 and a second time in the summer semester 2010.

4.1 Overview of the topics

The goal of the seminar was to enhance participants’ coping abilities for the 7problem of having to write a scientific work. The approach was less a “classical” one with literature research or citation rules on the agenda. It was rather about strengthening action competencies concerning the mental and psychosocial challenges of integrating a writing project into the student’s everyday life. Issues with regard to this include project- and time management, personal strategies for coping with crises, active communication of needs and “aid in helping oneself”. Further issues were the development of creativity and a positive relationship to one’s own text. The basic structure of the seminar consists of five workshop sessions, each dedicated to one of the following topics: “inner and outer prerequisites of a successful writing process”, “craftsmanship”, “motivational and creativity techniques”, “project and time management” and “the communicative aspect of writing”.

4.2 Methodology

The group of seminar participants worked on these topics themselves and for each other, using different ways of working, interacting and presenting. The beginning and ending of each session was marked by a plenary phase, so that a sort of

7 Background of this is the fact that quite a number of students think about themselves “What I wrote can’t be good, I’m just a student after all. One needs to be a professor to be able to deliver good writing.” Impulses like “And how do you think, did the professor learn that?” or “That text is well written. But does that indicate to you whether it was easy for its author to produce it?” can be a first step out of this thought-trap.

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8“frame” was built around the action in between. Especially the closing plenary meetings were a means for a reflection of the session just experienced. In between that, participants worked alone, in couples or in groups. Depending on the object of studies, given time and participants’ needs, the working styles varied between discussion, brainstorming, role plays, presentations, problem-based tasks, reading, editing and writing texts and even drawing with colour pencils. The three lecturers ensured that phases of active doing and reflection came in turn. Instruments applied from literature were the concept of the “Inner Writer” and the “Censor” by Wolfsberger (2009), the two cooperative working forms “Writing Tandem” and “Writing Café” and the “Freewriting”9 method (ibid.), the “Pyramid Principle” by Minto (2009) and creativity techniques from the field of storytelling by Heath and Heath (2008). Having activation and competency orientation in mind is important especially during the conception of tasks and practice material, e.g. concerning the degree of structuredness, the chosen form of interaction and the communication media that is used, but also with regard to the order of each step. This is where the application of the principles explained above counts. The didactic instruments developed by the teaching person should, according to that, include student participation, reflection, feedback, complexity and role dynamics.

The preparation of the role distribution was coined by questions such as: which roles do we, the lecturers, want to take in certain settings? Do we want to function as sources of input, as moderators, as participants or observers? Do we set topic, labour organisation, results or do we want to leave part of that to the students? What consequences does that have on further plans?

Usually we chose a way in which one of the lecturers took over the main part and the other two appeared as assistants. The main lecturer of the sequence, depending on the role conception in his part, had to introduce the task and supervise the students’ dealing with it, host a discussion or help students keep the overview on “time on task” during self-organised sequences. The other two took over a support function, either concerning student supervision or as observers of the colleague’s teaching behaviour to give feedback. The latter focused mainly on presentational and moderational behaviour, but also interaction with the students and a comparison between pre-session plans and actual results. Another question was that about the degree of students’ participation. To what extent should they be involved and in which way? At which point would it make sense to let them work out contents themselves, and where should we give a more structured input? In general, student activity should take place wherever a personal meaning could be derived from the content. Thus an emphasis was put on self-organised learning, for example when it came to reflecting one’s own writing behaviour, in training language and stylistic competencies or when students were to acquire

8 A method for mental relief prior to a writing session which can help to focus consciousness on the work ahead.

9 Main focus is on the “SUCCESs- Formula”, a criterion for a “good idea”. The concept is mainly about how to get an idea out in a clear, precise and meaningful way. Or in short: “What exactly do I want to say?” A second concept from this book is the “Commander’s intent”: the art of formulating texts in a way that the central idea behind it becomes clear to every reader, without having to mention every detail which might only be interesting for a subgroup anyway.

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understanding of a theoretical concept. Here students’ work prevailed over lecturers’ inputs.

10Examples of implementations of those strategies are drawing the “Inner Writer”, the preparation of text sources as presentations with interactive parts or a simulation game, during which students wrote a short term paper. Other tasks were more structured; in these sequences, participation consisted less of academic work and more of self-experience. An example is the “postcard game”, in which the participants had to work in couples: sitting back to back and one after the other, they had to draw a postcard motive they only knew from their partner’s descriptions, without being allowed to ask questions. In this case, the actual action is given. Here, involvement is rather emotional – taking over the partner’s perspective, changing the point of view mentally; these are challenges that primarily affect inner attitudes. Reflective elements were built into the seminar in the form of special reflection phases. The idea was to let them take turns with active phases during the seminar’s progress, as described in Section 3.2.2. The type of interaction chosen for the reflections was mostly a plenary type, in which every participant was asked to express a thought on the respective session. Depending on the focus, students were either asked for an open contribution or for their answer to a certain question. An add-on to enhance sustainability and intercontextual application was the “writing diary” which each participant was asked to start at home. It was stated that the content of this personal approach towards writing would stay private. This approach was chosen to offer participants an alternative to the public statements in the seminar. It also gave them the opportunity to find out which way suited each one best.

5 Critique and future perspectives

The concept of key competencies proved to be a promising pedagogical approach towards a solution of contemporary educational political problems. Nevertheless, some questions still ask for further examination, mainly about the definition and methodology of empirical inquiry of key competencies. The DeSeCo project offers a concept that gives relatively little reason to complain, compared to previous conceptions. Still, there is work left to be done. First, the concept of the DeSeCo has to be discussed more in-depth as its connection to existing theoretical traditions is still waiting to be worked out in greater detail. An example of an arguable discrepancy is that between theoretical ex-ante assumptions made about DeSeCo on the one hand and practical outcomes of a competency-based learning setting on the other. Can the latter really provide what the former promises? The author’s own experiences give a hint that this issue needs further attention in the

10 During the reflection after this session, several participants mentioned that this very task had affected them a lot, emotionally and personally. They also drew conclusions for their writing: They realised that they now had a better understanding of their readers’ position. This shows how important learning on the “emotional and volitive” (Otto/Schrödter 2010: 168) field of competency is also for the cognitive part.

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future. Second, clear empirical evidence has not yet been given, at least not directly. A complex approach would be needed, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, including both observations and interviews. A rigorous examination of the field would thus require a project of bigger scale, which is still waiting to be conducted. So far, empirical proof for the pedagogical approaches presented in this article comes mostly from small, isolated projects which are rather limited concerning topic and sample size. Often enough they are personal projects of single professors and lecturers or sometimes institutes, carried out by a handful of employees (Lesnick, 2009; Gresalfi et al., 2008). Other projects do feature an acceptable sample size but are limited in their focus (Vaatstra/de Vries, 2007; Cabrera et al., 2001; Jaeger, 2003). This shows that interest in a deeper insight into this field can be found among pedagogical and academic staff, but the frame for bigger scale research is still waiting to be set.

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