To have a deeper insight into how apparently disparate parts of information impact each other is one of the hallmarks of real learning. Relationship seeking, cause and effect driven structures as they are our minds can use this information to take action on desired results and make the outcomes that did not previously exist. And yes, old dogs can learn new tricks. However learning something new can be fear producing in many students. A student by definition is beginning at a place of not knowing. And as was discussed in the first article of the series, the mind does not care for this state. In fact it will make things up to alleviate the discomfort of not knowing. Good students typically have developed a tolerance to this state of the unknown. A competent educator knows how to use the potential energy available to support the change effort that the student is presenting.
The task of the educator is to create a new structure for the mind to explore cause and effect. An underlying structure of a clear outcome and an adequate understanding on the student’s current knowledge and capacity levels in relationships to the outcome produces a clear path to learning. Structure is causal. It has tendencies and the use of different structures in the plan of care will result in specific outcomes. It is the educators’ choices that will determine the structure to be used and the forces in play generated by the structure.
In this way, the educator is an architect, building the structure for the mind to step into, to begin exploring. The new structure, like a jungle gym provides the mind with the chance to begin to see new possibilities, learn new skills and shift its perspectives. The curriculum is more than just a collection of facts and knowledge to be presented. A well-developed curriculum is three dimensional, with internal relationships. It is hierarchical in that there is complexity at that top that is supported by lower levels of complexity and difficulty. It explicitly and implicitly demonstrates cause and effect. With this insight the learner is able to become the causative factor in their lives, as they seek to make choices to reorganize the materials on hand towards more of what is desired and take actions that are measurable in terms of their impact.
What differentiates competent educators with the newbies and wannabies? Is it the grasp of the knowledge they were presenting? Maybe a background rich with experiences to highlight and explain the content presented in the real wold? All helpful, but what really is the key the skill to assess the state of learning of the student. It takes the educator to have not only a clear understanding of the curriculum and its component parts but also how to assess the state of learning of the student in relation to the behaviors, skills, and aptitudes within the curriculum. With these two complimentary data points of where the student wants to go in terms of the curriculum and where they are now, a real dynamic is produced to activate the change effort. The quality of the measurement tools used by the educator will impact the clarity of current reality. Standardized screening and assessments produces reproducible and credible data that supports the change effort to come.
Again, the movement professional will see similarities when teaching lessons of movement. Whatever philosophy the curriculum is rooted in, whether yoga, Pilates, biomechanics, or insert your favorite approaches here, it must include an effective assessment component. Otherwise the learning loses steam when things get tough. Focus is lost and the mind does what the mind does. In this case find something else easier to try and the collaborative effort is lost as the learner becomes unavailable for learning.
Through the collaborative effort the student has the opportunity to examine the sequencing and role that there clinical decision making made on the outcome with the instructor. It is the student’s role to do the heavy lifting in thinking it through. This is sometimes an insurmountable task and always a task that is challenging. When it is too much it is the educator’s role to know how to reorganize the learning in a way that the learner will develop the knowledge, skill, aptitude necessary to move to the next step. Sometimes it requires stepping down and re-consolidating to form a more firm foundation to take the next step up. As movement educators we need to know how to regress the movement lesson into a lower level of complexity and find the area that is in need of remediation. This is done through the ability to produce smaller components and granularity in your movement curriculum.
Here is the good news. In education, much of the designing of learning as change efforts has been researched and understood. There are a number of different approaches, such as Blooms Taxonomy and many others, which organize actions and behaviors into hierarchies. In much the same way, the movement curriculum presented in the Structured Motion courses is organized to present a clear outcome and how it relates to higher more difficult levels of movement. As stated earlier, curriculum is not of much use unless the student and instructor activate it through the assessment of the student’s current level of learning. Through using both data points, the learner is well positioned to gain the skills and knowledge to be involved in their life.