Replying to LO29499 --
Hi everyone,
First a quick intro. I'm a management trainer-consultant in Leadership
Development, based in Malaysia, with clients around the Asia-Pacific. (The
closest I've come to continental Africa is Mauritius.) I lurked on this
list for a while a year or two ago, then stopped lurking (without actually
unsubscribing) and decided to resume lurking very recently.
AM de Lange wrote:
> "Given the educational culture here in South Africa, it usually took me
> two
> months to get them questioning me without hesistation. That left another
> two months before the semester ended. This frustrated me very much,
> putting much into winning their confidence and then having little time
> left over to put it to work."
I've recently been exploring Action Learning as an approach to Leadership
Development. In some schools of AL, Rule #1 is "You can say something only
in response to a question". My limited experience in applying this rule is
that it quickly forces participants to more into a mode of 'inquiry'. But
what if everyone chooses to remain silent, one might ask?
Well, you might also find it useful to break the class into groups of not
more than 6 or 8. In Asia, students of all ages give so much difference to
the 'teacher' (and, I suspect, to their peers' opinions of them) that they
tend not to speak out. However, this reticence is usually overcome when
they are in small enough groups without the constant presence of
'authority'. If need be, make the groups really small, 3-4 pax.
If I had to make a guess, I'd say that with a little experimentation, you
will probably shrink time needed for confident questioning from two months
to one month or less.
Terry Netto
People Potential
Malaysia
----- Original Message -----
From: AM de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za>
To: LearnOrg List <learning-org@world.std.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 8:00 PM
Subject: Tertiary Education LO29499
> I myself become on occasions horrified at the "teaching" methods of some
> lecturers. The worst "teaching" method is to reproduce information
> verbatim. One lecturer was "caught out" when he told exactly the same joke
> at exactly the same place. A student of the previous year kept as far as
> possible meticulous notes, even of the jokes!
>
> However, i have to bear in mind that a lecturer may want the students to
> learn self how to find appropiate bibliography to the course. In that case
> i will give one reference where most of the other bibliography are to be
> found. That they will have to find themselves.
[..snip by your host..]
--"Terry Netto" <terry.netto@peoplepotential.com>
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