My Experience as a Learner?

“Week 1 Journal Entry: Based on your experience as a learner, what do you think you will be able to get out of this course? And what ideas do you already have about the future of education?”

Well, I am a bit confused by the questions in this first week’s assignment. The first part would be simple enough without the modifying corollary: ‘based on your experience as a learner’ — is this suggesting that we should identify, with some introspection, where our learning styles will restrict us, or what areas will be new and exciting? I was of course hoping that the large majority of the course would be the latter!

I suppose that we can look at this first question in relation to this week’s reading, specifically viewing learning as a product vs. a process. The question implies the learning will be a product (i.e. as the question says: ‘to get out of this course’), but the article leant heavily towards the understanding of learning as a process. I would say that if I wanted one ‘product’ from the course it would be an academic, global and internationalist perspective on education with regards to policy. In terms of ‘process’, I have already enjoyed and been a little surprised by the discursive learning style, and I think that this ‘experience’ will shape my future learning in an (un-measurable) way.

I am still not sure how this should specifically be related to my own experience as a learner, rather than my interests and context. The best I can do is to make a simplistic observation that, coming from a science-background, I am not accustomed to learning in a particularly reflective way i.e. using learning journals. However, I am aware that the scientific process (especially in research) is based on almost constant reflection and a kind of empirical phronēsis and ‘acting’ (see the reading from this week). I can add, in relation to my initial reflection, that the way the MOOC has been set up will hopefully give me a space to be creative and investigative in my learning, diving into ideas loosely, without the fear of making mistakes.

Finally, in terms of The Future of Education: I recently stepped into the teaching side of 16–19-year-old education, and I am fascinated by how different the environment is to what I remember of my school days, only 10 years ago. This may be due to the change in context (rural vs. urban), but I think it is also likely due to ‘modernisation’ in the UK. In relation to this, I have the idea that modernisation of education (whatever that may be…) needs to happen in a joined-up kind of way. Lots of ideology and well-meaning changes happening in a chaotic educational ‘market-place’ have started to cause a chaos in British education, which places unnecessary stressors on teachers and students.