The go to for the Nurse Educator
Introduce and provide an overview of heutagogy:
This is part of the presentation series from Nursing Education Network. All based on microlearning, they will be short quick snippets on education topics to provide an introductory overview.
Resources
Nursing Education Network. (2018). Heutagogy & Nursing.
Introduce and provide an overview of adult learning:
This is the second presentation from Nursing Education Network. All based on microlearning, they will be short quick snippets on education topics to provide an introductory overview.
Introduce and provide an overview of education theories:
This is the first presentation from the Nursing Education Network series. All based on microlearning, they will be short quick snippets on education topics to provide an introductory overview.
This is part II of organising posts from this blog into grouped resources for the nurse educator, and the focus is on learning theories. Part I were resources to support and direct the understanding of the nurse educator. Part III will focus on education delivery methods.
Adult Learning Theory
Constructivist Theory
Social Learning Theory
Experiential Learning Theory
Cognitive Learning Theory
Learn-Unlearn-Relearn
To move into new domains of learning and knowledge there is a need for revolutionary thinking to be confident enough to rise to the challenge of moving into the unknown. Education from school to university and then into workplace, is normally planned and structured around a developmental trajectory as a persons skills, knowledge and experience increase. But what about the future and learning, if we don’t know the skills or knowledge that we will require, how do we unlearn any irrelevant information? This could be termed as a deimplementation process of learning. The process of unlearning becomes an important process in our learning skills repertoire.
From the organisation viewpoint comes the focus on becoming ‘learning organisations’, but maybe this could be supported with seeking new logic and a process of unlearning. “Unlearning is not about forgetting. It’s about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm” (Bonchek, 2016). The skill is recognising mental models that are no longer relevant or effective. This reflexivity of working with uncertainty could be benefited by utlising already well used practices such as self reflection, which could focus on considering any of our biases we hold and allowing change to occur as we move forward.
This post was inspired by the Twitter conversation below, thanks to @precordialthump.
Keywords: Unlearning; Reflexivity; Transformation; learning.
Resources
Bonchek, M. (2016).Why the Problem with Learning is Unlearning. Harvard Business Review.
Klein, E. J. (2008). Learning, unlearning, and relearning: Lessons from one school’s approach to creating and sustaining learning communities. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(1), 79-97.
McGregor, A. (2018). Unlearning: The key to the unlock 21st Century problems? International Teacher Magazine (ITM).
Authenticity is key, don’t worry too much on making everything beautiful and perfect is the message when creating online resources. Visualisation is important to grab attention, and imagery can portray powerful messages but follow the substance over style to start with. Authenticity can be seen in a range of ways from the delivery, to the content created with the target audience in mind for a personalised approach to education. Yes something more visual may be more eye-catching and engaging but we don’t all have the skills, resources or time to create such masterpieces (slide-ology). Just add this skill as part of your professional development or outsource it to an expert.
Focus on authenticity, engagement, participation, collaboration and learning new skills. Try to forget about worrying about the type of learning management system or password protection in the learning environment. Technology develops so fast that why not go with the free and open technology to prevent wastage of valuable money? It’s an expensive lesson when technology does not meet your training needs, becomes quickly outdated and requires specialist training for staff to understand and engage. Also if the resource was quick and cheap to make, your more likely to update and replace this resource than an expensively created one that you hang onto and over time becomes obsolete. In the real world, consider where you, your colleagues and students are communicating, it’s likely not in a learning management system. In everyday lives we use social media to network (socially and professionally), so why not engage and set some learning tasks in the online domain? Provide support to guide discussion around the topic and maintain confidentially (check your employer and national body social medial compliance rules if your the facilitator).
Learning Networks
Don’t forget using different media and resources can allow greater connection and engagement to a wider community of students, professionals and experts. Become a global citizen, who want’s to work in silo’s anyhow?
Task
Dedicate some reading time from the resource section below, focusing on the potential benefits of how an open pedagogical approach can benefit learning for both student and educator. David Price (OBE) book on education OPEN: How we’ll work, live and learning the future is a fantastic look into the school, higher education and workplace of the future.
Inspiration: Take a look at this bio on Sir Tew from Wikipedia and using open access in education, “The end of throwaway assignments and the beginning of real-world impact for student editors”.
Skills Learnt
Aspirational
Keywords
#InternetAsThePlatform, #PersonalLearningNetwork, DigitalLiteracy, #FOANed, #FOAMed
Resources
DeRosa, R. (2016) My Open Textbook: Pedagogy and Practice. Actualham.
Blackall, L. (2016) No LMS- an argument for when your institution comes to reviewing their Learning Management System. Leigh Blackall Blogspot.
Price, D. (2013). OPEN: How we’ll work, live and learning the future. Crux Publishing Ltd. [sample here]
University of South Australia. (2013) Resourcing and Materials – Teaching and Learning Languages: A Guide.
Wikiversity (2015) Human Vision and Function.
Pattern or Form
The main premise of Gestalt education theory is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a Gestalt approach, it is believed students are able to comprehend a concept in its entirety rather than broken down into segments.
“A person’s ability to organize and transforming what is taught into a general pattern (or Gestalt). They believed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and breaking the behavior into its components, generally destroy the whole concept of behavior” Aliakbari, Parvin, Heidari, & Haghani (2015).
Gestalt theory can be considered part of the phenomenology approach to education in that the learner comes with perceptions and relates to past experiences which have a significant impact on their approach to learning. Education is delivered with relation to the learners real life experiences and this is when learning happens best.
Say What You See
“The gestalt effect is the capability of our brain to generate whole forms, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of global figures instead of just collections of simpler and unrelated elements (points, lines, curves, etc) (Wikipedia, 2017).
The Gestalt theory of learning presents information or images that contain gaps and elements that requires the learner to use critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Gestalt in Healthcare
“This implies that clinicians have the ability to indirectly make clinical decisions in absence of complete information and can generate solutions that are characterized by generalizations that allow transfer from one problem to the next. In essence, clinical gestalt is pattern recognition and is characterized as a heuristic approach to decision-making” (Cook, 2009).
So Gestalt could be considered our clinical judgement and decision making process. The question I still have in regards to this theory is, is this just our ‘priors’, our knowledge and experience providing an all round clinical expertise to make clinical judgments? In nursing is this purely our tacit knowledge, our gut feeling or sixth sense?
Keywords: Gestalt; problem solving; phenomenology; learning theory.
References
Aliakbari, F., Parvin, N., Heidari, M., & Haghani, F. (2015). Learning theories application in nursing education. Journal of education and health promotion, 4. [abstract]
Cook, C. (2009). Is clinical gestalt good enough? J Man Manip Ther. 2009; 17(1): 6–7. Doi: 10.1179/106698109790818223
Wikipedia (2017) Gestalt Psychology
Now I am not a gaming person but for skills of the future I have decided for my own personal development, that my aims for the coming 12- 24 months are to engage in gaming environments (Minecraft to start) and also learn some basic coding skills. Hopefully you find these resources useful when starting out, if you know of any others please post them in the comment section at the bottom of this post. When I somehow find some spare time to commence coding I will create a post with links to any of the resources I have used (I aim to learn using open access resources so it will all be free).
For those in school education, there is also a Minecraft Education edition that promotes an online world with collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive environment.
Keywords; gaming, immersive, problem-solving, collaboration, Minecraft.
Resources
DigMinecraft (2017) Getting started in Minecraft.
Minecraft (2017) Minecraft Official Site.
Minecraft Education Edition (2017) What is Minecraft Education.
Wikipedia (2017) Minecraft.
So Finland is leading the way in approaching education in a different way in the digital age. Finland has become renowned for its innovative educational approach to education with shorter days, shorter terms, more play and no homework! Education moves out of the classroom to engage with the outside world in person or online. Use of innovative technology and sources outside the school are key to the success, engaging experts and museums to enhance the learning experience and create learning networks.
What is PhenoBL?
“Phenomenon based teaching and learning use the natural curiosity of children to learn in a holistic and authentic context. Holistic real-world phenomena provide the motivating starting point for learning, instead of traditional school subjects. The phenomena are studied as holistic entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects. Phenomena are holistic topics like human, European Union, media and technology, water or energy. This enables students also to learn 21st century skills like critical thinking, creativity, innovation, team work and communication” (Phenomenal Education, 2017).
21st Century Skills
The freedom to discover, communication, remove traditional classroom barriers, become connected and be adaptable.
Pro’s
Con’s
Does this approach favour the brightest, who understand what is expected of them while the lower end struggle with concepts and higher thinking. This approach can potentially widen the education gap.
What about the grounding of baseline knowledge, does this take a step too far in the taxonomy of learning and steps are missed out for true understanding?
The jury is still out until actual evidence this approach actually works on a wider scale in other environments, other than in Finland.
Heavy workload for the facilitator, again reproducibility is the question. Finland has small class sizes, well funded schools and a very different education system compared to most countries.
Adult Learning
My personal thoughts are this is an amazing approach and challenges the testing and accreditation heavy educational philosophy that is standardising education into a restrictive manner for both student and teacher. But the classroom still has face to face time which is essential to set goals and expectations. I do think in online learning this can be achieved but it takes time, effort and highly motivated learners to truly engage. Also in vocational professions, such as in healthcare there has to be hands-on and experiential learning events.
Keywords: PhenoBL; Phenomenon-based Learning.
References
Iyer, H. (2015) EdTech Meets Phenomenon Based Learning.
Kekkonen, T. & Tallinn, A.L. (2015) Phenomenon Based Learning: Students on the Focus.
Phenomenal Education (2017) Phenomenon-based Learning: Re-thinking from Finland.
I came across this sticker inside my daughter’s reading book and was intrigued with the learner profiles, value and attitudes. All this for 5 year old’s – very impressive indeed. It is amazing the amount of thought around the learning goals of children’s literature and how it shapes their future. Even the language used to break down stereotypes such as gender bias. In healthcare we still have far to go in changing the male:doctor and female:nurse stereotypes within the literature.
The International Baccalaureate aims to “prepare students for the intellectual challenges of further education and their future careers, focusing on the development of the whole child as an inquirer, both in the classroom and in the world outside.”
Future ready, global citizen, problem based learning all skills aimed for the developing child, these are similar aspirations from the higher education setting (take a look at any University prospectus). Just need to add the work ready aspect and these children will be ready for future workplace where innovation, creativity, self employment will be key. The aims of the learner profiles, attitudes, and values are a very similar approach to the taxonomy and intended learning outcomes that you will set for education sessions and courses in workplace and higher education settings.
References
International Baccalaureate (2017). What is the PYP?
Nursing Education Network (2016). Bloom’s Taxonomy & Constructivism.
Nursing Education Network (2016). Intended Learning Outcomes.