The Ideal Learner: Being Dynamic

Graham Gibbs’s article “Raising awareness of best-practice pedagogy’ delves into defining and improving the student for academic success. Concentrating on student techniques and skills, its clear the priority of the article is a refinement of tertiary level students academic techniques – quite a contradiction seeing these students have already accessed ‘academic success’. I understand that this article is rendered around tertiary education – that point is quite obvious being ‘Times Higher Education. Nevertheless, I wish to explore the gaps Gibbs has left out. What kind of teacher enabled these students, despite their immediate difficulties, to reach the distant heights of Harvard and Oxford University? 

Gibbs redistributes traditional power from the teacher to the student. I do agree with this sentiment. However Gibbs has failed to highlight the teaching pedagogies that have enabled these high-achieving students to attain their results. What kind of teacher enabled these students to reach these heights?

The educational interventions that make most difference to student performance are not to do with improving teachers or curricula, and certainly not with policy or organizational changes, but involve improving students: changing what it is they do in order to learn. (Gibbs, 2013, The Times Higher Education).

Gibbs argues that student self-determination and ambition is the obvious answer. It is difficult to nullify that argument. But that is not the single most defining aspect of a successful student; nor is it, as Gibbs argues, “specific technical skills” (Gibbs, 2013, Times Higher Education). A teacher must play apart in student success.

Ladson-Billings (1996) argues the importance of a cultural competent teachers negotiate not only student academic achievement, but also engagement and interest.  Ladson-Billings explores the need for teachers to embrace all attitudes, values and expectations of cultures within the educational setting.

With the incorporation and inclusion of culture into pedagogies, reinforce not only critical thinking, but expand on student cultural constructs. When the students and their teachers are from different cultural backgrounds, they can bring vastly different experiences to the classroom and interpret the knowledge in radically different ways. They can have quite divergent ways of making meaning. Being culturally aware is fundamentally important to actively engage and mobilize students in the day-to-day learning environment. Understanding the parameters of culture, motivation, and individuality, teachers can reflect the community they serve and the society they represent. The inclusive movement of empathy to harness academic success is a fundamental concept in activating positive cultural awareness and instruction.

The reason why I have used Gibb’s, and contrasted it to Ladson-Billing’s article, is the undercurrent theme that denotes each of them: the dynamic challenge of successful learning. Both teachers and students are learners. Although the two articles explore two diametrically opposing concepts, the undercurrent of these articles expands on the notion that learning is not a definitive and static arrival point: it is a dynamic and professional development. Professional development is critical in keeping with rapid political, social and technological shifts in society. Culture competency another aspect of the teaching and learning environments that is overlooked by Gibbs.

 References

Gibbs, G. (30 May, 2013). Raising Awareness of Best-Practice Pedagogy. Times Higher Education. Retrieved from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/raising-awareness-of-best-practice-pedagogy/2004204.article

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Cultural Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32, pp. 465 – 490.