My 7 yr old recently landed awkwardly on his wrist while
fighting with his brother, and he has been struggling with it since. After yet another interrupted night to have
medicine for the pain, he went to school today with the plan to tell his Teacher
if he was in pain.
After school he tells me that he put his hand up twice to
tell his Teacher that his wrist was hurting, and twice he was told to lower it
before he managed to get a word out. We
have been told on previous Parents evenings that he is fully engaged in Class and
needs to learn to give others a chance to answer. It seems that his willingness to ‘engage’
cost him dear today at school.
I mention this because in my short time of being a Driving
Instructor (3.5yrs), it strikes me that one of THE most crucial ingredients for
a quality learning experience in the car is having an ‘engaged’ Learner. Sure I can revert to simply telling my
Learners how to drive, mindless instruction, do this, do that, now do this, now
do that..... and yes, I can avoid accidents with this approach and my Learner
can physically drive the car, but that would be all they would be doing – there
would be no learning going on.
Generally speaking, in our world (which is governed by the
DSA), we are tested on our ability to tell someone what to do - giving the
reasons, prompt them what to do by way of subtle questioning, and in the
process ‘transfer learning’ of how to drive.
Telling someone why an action is needed backed up by justification is
not difficult, likewise thinking of asking questions that tests the level of
understanding and ability to apply the actions by prompts and then ultimately
independently is not overly difficult.
But what it assumes is that our Learners are going to ‘play ball’ and
participate accordingly. Of course, they
don’t. It is simply make believe world
to assume that all Learners will willingly engage in this mode of
instruction. And here the trouble
begins. Because as nice as it is to have
a kid or three in a class, shooting up their arm to answer Teachers question,
we all know that there will also be a kid or three quite content to lay low, ‘under
the radar’ so to speak.
But I would suggest that having a young adult in a car that
is unwilling to ‘engage’ can be quite a challenge. And this is my problem with the DSA
methodology. On the tests for Trainee
Driving Instructors the examiner will inevitably role-play a nervous Learner,
or perhaps an arrogant Full Licence Holder, but you wont find them role playing
someone who is unwilling to engage – basically if you conform with the levels
of instruction mentioned above, the examiner will comply and miraculous 'learning' has taken place.
The challenge is accurately assessing if learning is taking
place – I can understand why the DSA would want us to strive for that, I just
don’t agree with the assumption of how they believe we should be testing it.....
treating humans like robots is not clever.
What makes matters even more curious, is how the DSA themselves
assess Learners on the test. When it
comes to their testing whether learning has taken place, any concept of Q&A
is lost without trace. They just observe
what happens, with no regard for ‘what if...’ or ‘why did you.....’. The consequence of this approach to testing
is that it is seemingly perfectly acceptable to condition Learners to do a
certain action which has little sense attached to it, but merely undertaken to
satisfy a ‘tick the box’ style of assessment. The concern from my point of view would
therefore be how willing that person would then be to carry on performing that
seemingly senseless driving action that was needed only to pass the test.
I would very much welcome any comments/thoughts from other ADI's/PDI's on this subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment