Building students' learning ability

By Hendra Gunawan

BANDUNG (JP): The rapid growth in science and technology has placed many demands on our everyday lives. Now the modern world is forcing change upon our education system, urging us to update school curricula and improve teaching and learning skills.

This is not a simple problem. New teaching material must be integrated with important existing material and this can be done in several. First, existing teaching material can be condensed, allowing new material to be added to the curriculum. This has been done in our country's high schools.

Alternatively, some parts of the curricula can be taught to children at an earlier stage of development, making way for the introduction of new material. There are also examples of this in Indonesia, particularly the introduction of reading, writing and arithmetic lessons in kindergartens.

Extra lessons can be added to the academic day, allowing new material to be drawn into the curriculum without jettisoning any of the existing content. This too has been done in our country, in both private and public schools.

In all these instances, incorporating new material has been given precedence to adapting the teaching-and-learning process, an unwise move which only acts to further burden teachers and students. Ways of improving education without adding further clutter to our curricula must be found.

Students are clever because they learn, not because they are taught. Following this logic, the main task of a teacher is to nurture the learning ability of his or her students. Therefore, replacing old style teaching that concentrates on transferring knowledge with a new style emphasizing the importance of developing students' learning ability can achieve this end.

In developing students learning ability, teachers must pay attention to the learning style of his or her students.

According to D.A. Kolb (Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, 1984), students can be classified according to a preference for concrete experience or abstract conceptualization in the way they absorb information, and active experimentation or reflective observation in the way they internalize the information.

Students who prefer concrete experience and reflective observation often ask "why" and respond well to explanations relating course material to their own experience, interests, and future careers. To be effective, the teacher must be able to motivate this type of student.

Students who relate best to abstract conceptualization and reflective observation often ask "what" and respond to information presented in an organized, logical fashion. They also benefit from time for reflection. In order to be effective, the teacher should be an expert.

A third type of student prefers abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. Such individuals usually ask "how", work well on specified tasks and respond positively to learning by trial-and-error in an environment that allows them to err safely. To be effective with this type of student, the teacher should function as a coach.

A final type of student prefers concrete experience and active experimentation. They frequently ask "what if" and are interested in applying course material to new situations and solving real problems. To be effective, the teacher had better stay out of the way, allowing the student to discover things for his-or-herself.

Thus, to teach a group of students with different learning styles, a teacher must act as a motivator, expert, coach and distant observer.

In practice this requires the teacher to explain the relevance of each new topic, present the basic facts and methods, supervise opportunities to practice these methods, and encourage students to explore further applications of the knowledge. Only by doing all four will the teacher reach out to all types of student.

Now, how is this process affected by the periodic introduction of extra teaching material? Relative to the student's learning ability, the teaching material is now less important. Only essential and strategic material need be taught.

This can be illustrated with reference to mathematics. Mathematics, as a subject of study, has been developing for thousands of years and is still growing rapidly today. It simply can't be taught thoroughly in 23 years, from kindergarten to completion of a doctoral program.

Even an expert can never master the entire length and breadth of his or her subject. Old information is forgotten and new material must constantly be absorbed, so the process of learning is more important than the subject of the teaching material.

Developing students learning styles will teach them to learn for themselves and to decide which subjects and skills will be of use to them, a asset that will be immeasurably more useful in the workplace than memories of archaic classroom polemic. If teachers can accomplish this, their job is well done.

Thus, in order to meet the demands of modern life, we need to have a lean curriculum which consists only of essential and strategic material taught by teachers who can help students develop their learning ability and turn them into lifelong learners.

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, ITB, Bandung.

Window A: Mathematics, as a subject of study, has been developing for thousands of years and is still growing rapidly today. It simply can't be taught thoroughly in 23 years, from kindergarten to completion of a doctoral program.

Window B: Developing students learning styles will teach them to learn for themselves and to decide which subjects and skills will be of use to them, a asset that will be immeasurably more useful in the workplace than memories of archaic classroom polemic.