HumaneMaths

  Learning Environment A learning environment is the milieu in which the instructor, the content, and the learners are placed for instruction to occur. It is shaped by the type of instruction that needs to occur, and it is influenced by the attitudes and preferences of those who organize and those who attend (Brown & Green, 2016, pp. 118). One needs to design a learning environment, but it has no single recipe. One can just have salient characteristics of the environment and for that one needs a structure from which to draw the salient characteristics (Branford, 2000, pp131). My group of learners consist of Indian female teachers teaching math online for the company that I work for as an instructional designer. Although they are born and brought up in India, the community of learners is global. The goal for me is to help them develop the skills used by global teachers in their classrooms through online training sessions. I am taking the two prompts to probe into the ways I ...

  Instructional designing requires strategic support and (Instructional strategies list: evidence-based strategy, 2015, pp.2) lists several strategies from which a teacher can draw when designing his or her classroom. Cooperative Learning has been my mainstay in middle and high school classrooms and hence that is what I am focused on in this discussion.   Cooperative learning is a space where students work together in a group small enough to ensure that everyone can participate on a collective task that has been assigned (Barron & Hammond, 2008). My teaching philosophy is to turn the group of students into self-sufficient  gradually (Kochar, 2010) and one of the strategies that helps me here is cooperative learning. My experience in middle school has been very positive a s the kids are ready to let go of the elementary school dependence and moving to being a young adult. I usually made groups of 4 to 5 and had a task sheet for each of them. It took me a while to ...

  Seven dispositions are listed by (Walker, 2013, pp.264), inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, systematicity, analyticity, truth-seeking, self-confidence, and maturity. The theory proposed is that in order to successfully develop critical thinking, an individual must possess and use these characteristics. Else the student may have challenges exhibiting critical thought. My milieu is a group of middle school students in an IGCSE math classroom. The school has PYP and IBDP programs for primary and senior school. The students come from the freedom of PYP into the structure of IGCSE math. This is an inclusive classroom of adolescents. This is the time when their brain is going through rapid changes (KhanAcademyMedicine, 2015) with a growth in prefrontal cortex and synaptic pruning. Systematicity I find ‘Systematicity’ hardest for my students. (Walker, 2013, pp.264) defines ‘Systematicity’ as being orderly, organized, focused and diligent in inquiry. While analyses help in solving a...

  Students need to be exposed to diverse teaching methods (Walker, 2003). That is a standard practice that I have believed in. Diver teaching methods have helped me to always focus on creating an eco-system where all of us thrive. The intent of such an environment has always been for me a user centric and user driven environment (Kochar, 2010). Long ago a Dutch teacher visiting a school I was in had said, ‘our teachers have given us a backpack of strategies to be able to teach any kid’. And that is what I see my role as an instructional designer, to develop a backpack of strategies for myself in order to adapt my teaching to any classroom. There are certain strategies that are very close to my heart as I find that they allow me to target many skills in the kids such as (a) critical thinking or purposeful thinking (Walker, 2003), (b) active engagement, (c) values and of course math, my core subject!  Here I am sharing the top three of my favourite and the way I design a clas...

  Introduction Teaching a group of 20-30 kids can be unpredictable as everyone learns differently. This is where Instructional Design models help as it gives a basic model that helps us create an eco-system which covers most learner styles. And then it is up to our ingenuity to take care of the outliers or day to day eruptions. My Chosen Model The model I related most to is Pebble-in-the-Pond by (Merrill, 2013). Frankly I related to it for it did not overwhelm me. It articulates six design phases,  (1) Design a problem,  (2) design a progression of problems,  (3) design instruction for component skills,  (4) design instructional strategy enhancements,  (5) finalize the instructional design and  (6) design assessment and evaluation (Brown, 2016). The steps are few and they are not micro detailed. Hence it leaves me, as a teacher, room to maneuver or individualize the instruction model to the present moment instead of being lost in ensuring the...

  Introduction “Instructional designers who have a solid understanding of how people learn can articulate the basics of various psychological perspectives that describe different approaches to how people learn. This ability allows them to use this knowledge to create instructional interventions that meet the goals of their clients” (Brown & Green, 2016, p 36). What is the learning environment that leads our students to learn effectively (Kurt, 2017)? When mum cooks in the kitchen, she needs to know the taste of the family that is going to eat the food. If there are multiple guests, she needs to know what they would like. If the guests are in the count of hundreds, and mum does not know their individual tastes, she would need to know some patterns of food that would have enough variety to cover all guests. Her aim is to have everyone happy. My Thought Process The purpose of any design is to achieve desired results (Brown, 2016, pp.5). As an instructional designer in the...

  While I have trained a number of teachers in face-to-face mode, an online platform is a new space for me , and I am consistently trying out new ideas and activities. A typical training session includes discussions based on questions, watching videos, hands-on work in small groups and goal setting in the end. I have always been interested in cognitive science (Rosenshine, 2012, pp.3 ) and keep adding to my repertoire strategies to help ignite the thinking in the students, children or adults. If I map to the principles given in the list (Rosenshine, 2012, pp.19 ) , I am covering:  (a) small steps with practice for I switch the method every 5 to 8 minutes,  (b) clear explanations, which is my core strength,  (c) check for understanding, for my sessions are driven by questioning,  (d) active practice as I keep them working,  (e) explain what they have learnt as I give the teachers time to share what they have learnt at the end of each session and  (f)...

  IBL, PBL and PjBL Inquiry-, project-, or problem-based learning or IBL, PBL and PjBL based learning all have their roots in Piaget’s approach of constructivism (Kimberlin Education, 2019). They are different yet overlapping. The heart of all is learning about a concept or content. IBL would start from a question which is open ended and can lead to many branches of sub questions. If we look at it from the lens PBL, then the question becomes one whose source is a real-life situation or a problem to be solved. If the lens is PjBL, then the real-life problem becomes big enough to warrant a product that comes with a complete solution. PBjL would also entail a long span of work with multiple skills included. We can say that IBL is a subset of PBL and PBL is a subset of PjBL (Larner, 2015). How do we Decide Which One to Use? I feel it depends on the milieu that one works in. the country, resources, kind of students, curriculum and the social landscape. While my favourite is a judi...