The Essence of Mental Activity and Engagement in Teaching and Learning
The Essence of Mental Activity and Engagement in Teaching and Learning.
Mental activity
Learning is not something that others can undertake on behalf of learners. It is something that learners must do for themselves.
Adults, whether teachers, trainers, or parents, cannot assume that if they exert thought and effort, directed towards teaching, then learning will be the inevitable result.
Learning requires effort on the part of the learner, and without some effort and some mental activity, it is very unlikely that learning will take place.
Teachers continually put into place situations in which learning is likely, but without the required effort and activity on the part of the would-be learner, the outcome is not at all certain.
According to Howe (1999), Learning always necessitates mental activities being undertaken by the individual learner.
He states that Learning does not always have to be deliberate, but it does always require the engagement of mental processes. The mental activities of individual students form a particularly powerful source of influence on what is actually learned.
The role of the teacher is to recognise the importance of mental activity in learning, and when applied well, it will lead to engagement.
What is Engagement?
- The importance of learners getting as close to the material content of what it is hoped they will learn as possible and then ‘doing’ something with it.
- By undertaking actions and activities, mental or physical, which centre on the facts, the concepts, or the skills in question, learners are in a position to move forward in their learning.
- This ‘closeness’ is possible in a wide range of different ways and is sometimes referred to as ‘engagement’.
For children to understand new information, they must become actively involved with it; that is, they need to engage with it.
There is a five-stage model for learning, put forward by a group of Australian teachers and academics, which puts engagement at the start of the process of learning; which takes a wholly constructivist approach; and within which the importance of the individual and of activity is stressed.
Learning is not a passive process, and so, with reference to what is known about effective learning, and with due attention paid to the notion of engagement, it is possible to map out approaches to learning that encompass the best and most effective of what is currently known about learning.
The five-stage model (Reid et al. 1989) sets out a route which, if followed, is likely to provide the conditions required for learning to result:
- engagement
- exploration
- transformation
- presentation
- refection
Engagement is described as ‘the time during which students acquire information and engage in an experience that provides the basis for, or content of, their ensuing learning’
The next stage in the model exploration is closely related to the stage of engagement.
This stage can be an open-ended process, where children follow their instincts, but possibly a more profitable approach for teachers to take with their classes is to set short tasks which develop both engagement and exploration.
These tasks are designed to give the child an overview of what is contained in the information under consideration and may take many forms, including
- reading and writing tasks;
- finding things out and answering questions;
- more manipulative activities;
- matching and comparing;
- drawing or compiling charts or diagrams;
- discussing and arguing, in pairs or in groups,
- and many other diverse and related tasks.
Transformation is the stage in which information with which the child has engaged and has explored might be reconfigured into a format that allows for presentation (the next stage), but, importantly, transformed into a format that will, from the teacher’s point of view, enable learning objectives to be met.
From the point of view of the child, certain questions will now be able to be answered.
Transformation and the resultant presentation are not the end of the process.
Time to reflect upon what has been undertaken, the process, and the content, gives the opportunity for internalisation, and for a deeper level of understanding to be developed.
Reflection can also take many forms.
One common approach is to ask children to give a short presentation/explanation of what they have been doing and what they have learned.
This can take a variety of different formats, prepared for a variety of different audiences,
- a poster to display,
- a newspaper front page,
- a multimedia presentation,
- or something as simple as a 30-second explanation of what they have been doing in the lesson, possibly including what they have learned.
This idea MUST be a part of the plenary session, which is now forming an integral part of lessons, especially concerning literacy and numeracy, in primary schools.
Encouraging engagement
We have seen that without engagement with the content of an activity; effective learning is far less likely to be the result of anything that teachers ask children to do.
It can be surmised that an important element of the role of the teacher is to encourage engagement, since without some measure of involvement with information and ideas, and the undertaking of activity centred on the content, there is a greatly reduced opportunity for effective learning to take place, especially the deep learning which is the aim of most teaching situations.
There are many effective ways of encouraging children to engage with their work.
Taking into account the;
- prior knowledge of the children,
- level of difficulty,
- social and cultural context,
- A general level of interest in the subject matter will help with the need for engagement.
Certain guidelines can apply to the planning of lessons. The lesson should;
- Have a clear focus and goals, with explicit learning objectives;
- Be based upon the pupils’ existing knowledge;
- Be set in an appropriate context;
- Include scope for social interaction and for activity.
- Be planned in such a way that they aim to move the pupils’ learning forward
It would be unrealistic to suggest that, if all of the above were in place, then effective learning is certain to result, since, as all teachers know, there are a great many variables, some of which are controllable and others that are not, which can so easily influence the outcome of any particular lesson.
However, taking into account what is known about learning and about how children learn will increase the possibility of effective learning resulting from the activity undertaken.
