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Walter & Group...
Will Turek is at presently pursuing an advanced degree in education. This message from him. I highlighted a counterpoint to asking students how they learn in red :
Hi Gordy,
With all the talk on teaching I thought I might share a model for designing instruction. This is a tried and true model based on loads of research and applied throughout all sectors of society for developing effective instructional materials. I think the more experienced teacher will discover that many of the teaching techniques and practices they use in their lessons align with this model - the ARCS model of motivational design.
Also, I want to add that my personal experience teaching agrees strongly with Jim's comments. Not to take anything away from the importance of recognizing different learning "preferences" (I say preference because most people either have not experienced or do not avail themselves to all types of learning) exist and being able to design, develop, and prepare differentiated instruction, however, the fact is most people have poor metacognitive skills. Simply put, they don't know what they don't know. As a result, asking them directly how they learn best is often not effective. Not to mention it can make them self-conscious or worse when this tactic is used in a group setting. Rather, the perceptive teacher will know to include many types of instructional practices into a lesson, private or group, and watch the student's response to the type of instruction and proceed from there tailoring the instruction to meet the individual need of the student.
What I find is that most instructors fall into the rut of subscribing to purely kinesthetic learning - monkey, see - monkey, do type of learning. What's missing is the understanding between the style or "preference" of learning (kinesthetic) and the type of learning fly casting involves (psychomotor skills). Psychomotor skills require deliberate cognitive process to guide specific physical acts. That is, students MUST understand why they do what they do in order to properly, efficiently, and effectively execute motor skills to achieve a specific desired result. The trick of excellent instruction is figuring out how to do this as simply as possible without being so simple as to make the instruction meaningless - parsimony, Occam's razor*, KISS or whatever else you like.
When Jim says there will be more educational tools available to FFF instructors, I hope these tools are being developed from research based instructional practices and not the anecdotal teachings of celebrity instructors. It is time for the FFF to reach out to real professionals in the field of education and instructional design, no need to reinvent the wheel when there is much in existence that can be applied to teaching fly casting.
W
* [GH] I see Occam's razor as the means to cut out all unnecessary material.
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Followed by :
Hey Gordy,
Here's one I think everyone will like... the last one is a bit too centered on eLearning.
W
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