Through reading Brookfield’s chapter on understanding students’ resistance to learning I was blindsided by the vast amount of reasons he highlights that can cause or be reasons for students, resistance to learning. The following video from Thats Easy Learning on YouTube echoes many of Brookfield’s thoughts.

Brookfield (2015) also brought a very insightful and obvious (with the benefit of hindsight) point that as teachers, we generally teach what we are passionate about. If we are passionate about what we’re teaching, then surely every single person we cross paths with must be interested in and passionate about the same things, and this causes us to put blinders up to a multitude of reasons students may be resistant to learning.

The one immediate actionable item on my part that causes student resistance to learning, is justification of the learning and its outcomes. I say it is immediately actionable on my part because I agree this can have a huge impact on student participation and engagement, and it’s something I can change in my classroom starting tomorrow.

How I currently lay the foundation for my program and learning outcomes is an intro and overview of my program outline and DACUM charts. Sheepishly I admit these documents don’t often get brought up in the class again unless there is a question from the student.

Going forward I will still do the intro and overview in the first meeting with my students, but as my program progresses course by course, as each new course rolls around I’ll take a minute to pull out the DACUM charts, highlight the learning outcomes, put a personal spin on why each learning outcome is important, and may be relevant to the students future in the trade, and then open up those DACUM charts and learning objectives up to student questions to build a quick discussion.

References

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The Skillful Teacher (3^rd ed.). Jossey-Bass