Helping Students Learn to Learn Cultivating Lifelong Learners by:

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Helping Students Learn to LearnCultivating
Lifelong Learners by

• Engaging Students in Reflecting in on their
  Learning Process

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Focus of this session

• ObjectiveCultivating lifelong learners
  Helping students learn to learn (a) from
  academic subjects, and (b) in lifelong
  learning(a) (b) are closely related two in
  one
• Strategy proposed Engaging students in
  Reflecting in on their learning process

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PolyU Strategic Objective 1

• To enhance the all-round development of students,
  particularly in the areas of global outlook,
  critical and creative thinking, social and
  national responsibility, cultural appreciation,
  life-long learning, biliterarcy and
  trilingualism, entrepreneurship and leadership.

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Strategic Action (see p.11)
Strategic Action Goal
S1.1 Academic departments and relevant centres to review and strengthen curricula, teaching and assessment methods, and to ensure the inclusion of components that could help students to attain the qualities listed in the objectives. To ensure that each programme must contain, where appropriate, elements that would enhance students' all-round development, particularly in those areas listed in the objectives, so as to develop a basic 'core-competence' in our graduates.
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What is lifelong learning?Is it different from
learning in university?
Name some scenarios of lifelong learning How does learning take place in these scenarios?

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Learning in professional practice

• Schön (1983) The Reflective Practitioner
• Professionals face messy problems which require
• Reflection-in-Action (or learning by doing)
• Reflection-on-Action
• Effectiveness in such reflections affects
  performance continual professional development
  of a professional

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Reflection-in-Action

• Professionals think about what they are doing,
  e.g.
• What features do I notice when I recognise this
  thing?
• What are the criteria by which I make this
  judgement?
• What procedures am I enacting when I perform this
  skill?
• How am I framing the problem that I am trying to
  solve?

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Reflection-on-Action

• Professionals sometimes reflect on their
  practice, e.g.
• think back on a project they have undertaken,
• think back on a situation they have lived through
• explore the understandings they have brought to
  their handling of the case

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Developing abilities for lifelong learning
throughout the professional career

• by enhancing the abilities for reflection in the
  process of learning reflection on the process of
  learning

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Learning in professional courses

• Schön (1987) Educating the Reflective
  Practitioner
• Professional education should be centred on
  enhancing the practitioner's ability for
  'reflection-in-action'

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Developing abilities for learning in
professional courses

• by enhancing the abilities for reflection in the
  process of learning reflection on the process of
  learning

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Metacognition as a highly
reflective process

• What is metacognition?
• Awareness / knowledge of what cognition
  (learning) is
• Abilities to control cognition (learning),
  i.e.,the attitude habits that support and
  drives learning
• Key operations in metacognition (control of
  learning)
• Planning your learning
• Monitoring your learning
• Assessing your learning
• A self-reflection process

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Developing Lifelong Learning Abilities at
2 Levels
Cognitive strategies for lifelong learning Cognitive strategies for lifelong learning Metacognitive strategies for lifelong learning Metacognitive strategies for lifelong learning
What are they? How to develop them? What are they? How to develop them?
Making meaningful reflection in the learning process Making meaningful reflection on the learning process
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Easy methods for engaging students in reflecting
in / on their learning process

• 3-column table for reflective questioning
• Question asking guide
• Building of knowledge worksheet
• 3-step thinking worksheet
• Pattern detector
• Think of your thinking worksheet
• Two person instruction
• O diagram for experiments
• Vee diagram

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Reflecting on the process of learning-Reflective
Learning Journal

• Functions
• A tool for engaging students in metacognitive
  reflection on their process of learning
• A record of the metacognitive development of
  students (for both student's and teacher's
  reference)

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Reflective Learning Journal How should it look
like ??

• Format and structure
• Can be unstructured, just a blank note book
• Can be structured with guiding questions(see
  examples of guiding questions in the 'bank')

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Questions Prompt Bank

• A pool of guiding questions to help your students
  to adopt the right approach of reflection
• Banks for tapping different component of
  Metacognition
• Awareness
• Monitoring, Controlling, Planning
• Evaluating and Assessing
• Sub-categories within the component
• Cognitive vs Affective type of questions

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Reflective thinking questions bank (a)

• Awareness in learning
• Awareness of the meaning of the knowledge learnt
• Awareness of oneself as a learner
• Awareness o the standards requirements of the
  learning task

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Reflective thinking questions bank (b)

• Monitoring and Controlling in the process of
  learning
• Monitoring learning progress
• Difficulties encountered during the learning
  process
• Execution of plans strategies

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Reflective thinking questions bank (c)

• Evaluating learning
• Evaluation of the overall learning experience
• Cognitive abilities acquired through the process
  of learning
• Evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive
  strategies employed
• Subjective evaluation of one's performance
• Self-evaluated strengths and weaknesses

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Student Guide

• Whats in it?
• Nature, objectives, tips, specific tips
• Why need it?
• Reflective journal writing is novel to many
  students, i.e. theyll need support and
  guidelines as well as reasons to do it.

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Writing reflective journal students' opinions

• Yes, journal writing will make a difference It
  stimulates me to think about what I have learnt.
• I found that journal writing helped me to think
  after the visits to think about and organise the
  feelings and ideas.

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The Learning to Learn website

• http//megaweb.polyu.edu.hk/kenneth/L2L/teachersit
  e03a/frontpage/frontpage.htm

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Future efforts on Helping students Learn to
Learn

• Proposal for a second learning to learn project
  (funding to be approved)
• Developing a Curriculum Integration Approach to
  Enhancing Learning Abilities and Cultivating a
  Life-long Learning Culture for a Knowledge based
  Economy

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I would like to use these prompt questions for my
subject