Moving Education from Content to Process

IntroductionThe models used to understand learning influence the material/pedagogy/assessments, often without the

curriculum designer realizing it.Traditionally, educationists have either visualized or designed teaching processes which would be appropriate while educating pupils who'd have to start from the scratch, who'd have to remember a lot of rules.

However, Noam Chomsky's Language Acquisition Theory and Jean Piaget's Developmental Psychology Theory suggests that children already know quite a few rules or they already know how to find patterns. So then the purpose of education is activate these inherent capabilities and unleash an exponential burst of information/insights.

The idea is co-create the understanding with the help of the students, by involving the students in the process of exploration.

Neuro-Psychological Context

* Every child is wired differently

* Every child constructs meaning based on sensory cues (Constructivist Learning Theory of John Dewey)

* Mirror neurons help in mimicking other's actions (the example of a monkey throwing a cap is quite profound)

Bloom's Taxonomy

1. Knowledge Questions: Who is the president of India?
2. Comprehension Questions: Why do we have a president of India?
3. Application Questions: If a country is not a republic, would it have a president?
4. Analysis Question: Why do we need a head of a state?
5. Evaluation Question: Which structure would you prefer - a republic or a democracy?
6. Synthesis Question: Can you define your government structure?

The first three layers are considered to be factual questions while the next three are considered to be cognitive or higher order questions. We shall now try and see how we could apply this question classification system to understand various educational processes.

Process

Now that we agree that we'd have to move from content to process, keeping in mind children's diverse inherent capabilities, it is important to understand how the word process shall be interpretted in this context.

A very simple and probably the most basic process is the imitation game, wherein the children are encouraged to spell out names, catch a ball, sing a tune or may be write down alphabets. This would be a Knowledge recall process.

Another very profound process would be net practice, which is done after the student learns basic techniques can comprehend their utility. In the nets, the student has to apply the techniques as per the situation. For instance a drawing teacher may teach how to draw curves and may be how to color using pastels, the child could be made to comprehend this by doing this again and again. The drawing teacher can then ask the child to apply these techniques, to draw may be a duck or say a tiger, which again is a kind of imitation, while applying some known principles.

Good teachers evolve the learning process to the next three levels, which are not exactly very hands-on, they are more cerebral or intellectual or may be minds-on. The students can be asked questions which analyse a particular component of the whole process. May be something like why should my elbow be straight and facing the bowler or why should the seam point towards thirdman? Analysis questions help a student in constructing his own meaning for the learnt techniques.

Basis the analysis, the students can then ask evaluation questions to judge efficacy of various techniques under varied conditions. Let it be an artist or an engineer or a scientist, judgement or evaluation is a very crucial everyday process. This can then be taken to the next level by giving problems to students and asking them to create their own ideas or solutions. 

Tangibility

* Note the subtle difference between application process and synthesis process. In application phase, a student applies a certain rule or technique, in synthesis phase, the student tries to combine multiple ideas. The former can be done mechanically if the various steps and the dextrity of combining multiple steps is acquired through practice. 

* Synthesis step can have both tangible and intangible components depending on the objective. However, the intangible creative component is inevitable as the child has to think about combination and re-combinations of the various ideas he has.

Summary of the Six Processes

* Knowledge process helps a child in acquiring the motorskills to use a certain technique.

* Comprehension process helps the child in understand various contexts in which the technique was applied.

* Application process invites the child to apply the process in select contexts.

* Analysis process lets the child investigate various aspects of the techniques and learn from them.

* Evaluation process helps the child in judging the utility of various techniques under varied conditions.

* Synthesis process is about combining the ideas (First three steps) and understanding of ideas (Step4,5) and creating new ideas/projects.

These six processes describe the "evolution of an idea in the child's mind".

Note that we can not color processes in black and white, the statements and the classification system could have a variety of counter-examples.

Two-Fold Approach- Analysis and Synthesis

Construe the Constitution, a Sciensation event, used a two-fold approach, so does Design Thinking. The first three steps are acquired via benchmarking/literature review. However the educator must be aware of the three steps and shall perform them incase the student is not clear about an idea.

Evaluation and Analysis are done together in Construe the Constitution while asking questions about a specific part of the Constitution. Evaluation and Synthesis are done together while creating something of their own- let it be a constitution or an ammendment. 

This example asserts that we can simplify the six steps into two simple steps inorder to simplify the process for the learner. However, the educator must be aware of the other four processes in order to troubleshoot and handhold the student while working on projects/problems.

Why process and not content

* Every child is unique

* New use cases and perspectives of the content emerge

* The child internalizes the concepts and absorbs it into his worldview

* Inlines with the constructivist learning paradigm