Learners are unique individuals who learn and develop best in their own idiosyncratic ways

Last year Dick Allwright and Judith Hanks brought out their book: “The Developing Language Learner”: An introduction to exploratory practice. In it they discuss five propositions about learners which they use not only to develop better understandings of classroom language learning but also to help learners develop their own understandings of what goes on in classrooms. In the next five blogposts I’m going to outline these propositions and if anyone has anything to add please feel free.

Last November I had the pleasure to ask Julie Walters how she would describe good teaching, based on the fact that she has played both teachers and learners in some of her film roles (Educating Rita, Billy Elliot and Ahead of the Class).

aheadoftheclass

She said it was important not to see a class as just a mass of faces, in Dick and Judith’s first proposition they focus on a similar thing and use the word “idiosyncratic” to describe the ways in which students learn and develop.

Here is a definition of idiosyncrasy: “from Ancient Greek ἰδιοσυγκρασία, idiosyngkrasía, “a peculiar temperament”, “habit of body” (ἴδιος, idios “one’s own”, σύν, syn “with” and κρᾶσις krasis “mixture”) defined as an individualizing quality or characteristic of a person or group, and is often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity.” It often has slightly negative connotations yet in Allwight and Hanks’s meaning it is embraced.

I think idiosyncracies are somewhat different from fixed learning styles and an understanding of these idiosyncrasies in the classroom and allowing them to “breathe” or “give space to them” may well lead to better classroom dynamics and better language learning as well. This is very different from teacher behaviour which is focused on wanting to get learners to do what we want them to do in the way that we want them to. Anyway here is the quote and I welcome anyone to be the first person to comment on this one week old blog now!

“Proposition 1: Learners are unique individuals who learn and develop in their own idiosyncratic ways.

Treating learners as key practitioners means respecting their unique individuality. They will not be best served if we expect them to learn, and develop as practitioners of learning, in exactly the same way as everybody else, from the same classroom activities, and so on. We shall explore this further, but for now we can simply note that textbooks and lesson plans, and the way teachers are trained to use them, typically do still seem to assume that classroom learners are best treated, to put it crudely, as an “undifferentiated mass”. Learners in a classroom group may have much in common, but we now know enough about learning to understand just how idiosyncratic it can be, and usually is. Each lesson is a different lesson for every learner.”

(Allwright and Hanks: The Developing Language Learner, 2009)

Finally, have a look at Dick Allwright, my MA thesis supervisor at Lancaster, talking about getting learners to use the English class to explore areas they themselves are interested in exploring and then presenting their findings on posters. Fabulous stuff and really allowing children/students to explore individual interests in their own ways and if you do it in English it’s great language work too! The element of focussing on trying to understand something better also goes beyond discussing what people might think about a topic and not encouraging them to take it any further.

Dick Allwright talking about getting learners to come up with what THEY want to understand better

8 thoughts on “Learners are unique individuals who learn and develop best in their own idiosyncratic ways

  1. Hi Mark,

    Your blog looks fabulous and congratulations on the excellent etymological analysis of ‘idiosyncratic’ !!!

    This is a very interesting post, based on this very interesting book. I hope you will not mind if I make a few points to get the discussion started:

    – I feel you are making certain rather broad assumptions about how people are trained
    – differentiated instruction is desirable but can go to the other extreme, resulting in harrassed and overworked teachers who end up being unable to teach anyone effectively
    – there is, indeed, a lot of common ground in any one group which should not be ignored
    – the reasons people flourish or do not flourish in a classroom setting are too many to be identified
    – learners may equally well not flourish in a setting where they are receiving individualized instruction

    I am not against the basic premise, of course, that we should discover all we can and respect the different ways in which our learners process input/language instruction.

    Learning in a classroom setting is social learning and when was a social group homogeneous?

    Or a class, for that matter, which, by definition is mixed ability (and idiosyncasies, to use the term in your post)

    I look forward to reading the rest of the posts in this series, as this is an area of great interest to all educators.

    Marisa

  2. Thanks very much for getting this off the ground Marisa and congratulations for being the first ever person to comment on my blog, when we eventually meet up somewhere which I’m sure we will, you will get a little gift from me ! Am glad you like the look of the blog. While reading other blogs I’ve been thinking a lot about what mine should look like if I ever got round to it! And Monika, you mention vision in your reply, always important to have this as well as the technical expertise to operate in a classroom.

    On your points Marisa, one would hope that paying attention to people’s idiosyncrasies would not lead to more harassment and more work but the opposite. I think that if students notice that you as a teacher give them more space in the way they express themselves and the way they work or don’t work on tasks, which can be different at different times, they are more likely to respond to your efforts to get the group to work together in general. For example, not always forcing people to work in pairs when sometimes, for whatever reason somebody might want to work on their own at any given moment.

    As you say, there is much common ground in many classes and more individualised instruction may not lead to students flourishing for all sorts of other reasons. However, responding to learners’ idiosyncrasies doesn’t necessarily entail more complex forms of differentiated instruction, however desirable that may or not be. It might just mean getting students to reflect more on the way in which they have been taught in the past, the way they think they learn now and how they might learn better in the future and giving them opportunities to explore this themselves and in the group and making it part of language learning too.

    Finally, on the subject of how students are trained initially, if we concentrate on techniques and strategies for presenting lessons, which is obviously important, it may be that individual learner or group decision making will be less likely to become part of what a teacher does or takes more seriously in the future. I think we can have both. Rose Senior in her “ The Experience of Language Teaching (2006)” on the topic of trainee anxiety has suggested that: “ Not surprisingly, trainees tend to be inward looking –focusing on themselves and their own performance, rather than on how well their students are learning”.

    Guess that’s all for now Marisa, we’ll see if any more people contribute to this discussion and then I’ll move on to the second of Allwright and Hanks’s propositions in the next blog post. Thanks for your thoughts.

  3. So, it looks like we have some agreement that there are many ways of dealing with and catering to individual idiosyncasies within a classroom context, which is really what I think is sensible for any teacher to do.

    But I do agree with you that not sufficient time is spent by teachers, especially in the EFL context, on finding out, being aware, or planning lessons with a sufficient range or variety of learning activities that would give some learners some satisfaction for some of the time!

    I look forward to your next post!

    Marisa

    • hi Marisa,
      This is ALI from middle east, Iran. Your idea is very inspiring. I have been applying idiosyncratic approach to teaching English in my classes. I intend to develop this new approach to present it as new post-method approach. I wonder if you can help me.
      best

  4. You mention planning lessons Marisa, Allwright wrote an article in 1997, Planning: Intervention or Interference which was about the insightful notion of planning for understanding. This kind of lesson planning would leave space for what an individual student might wish to understand or pursue as a result of anything that comes up spontaneously in the class.

    In initial teacher training it is possible to devise lesson plans which create space both on the actual piece of paper and mentally in the head of the trainee and leave some scope for really reacting to learner contributions.

    All of this relates to valuing and affirming and trying to understand why a particular learner comes up with a particular question and by encouraging this kind of classroom behaviour it should also encourage other learners to do the same.

    I think this is part of what I think I understand by responding to learners idiosyncratic needs instead of squashing them.

    “When learners don’t learn what was planned:

    Just as only some of the things learners learn will have been in the lesson plan as learning objectives (see Allwright, 1984a. “Why don’t learners learn what teachers teach?” some of the learning objectives will remain unlearned. When learners do not learn these targeted items, trainee teachers may well be deeply frustrated and the trainer disappointed in the trainee’s performance. The learners, too, may feel guilty or inadequate if they notice the teacher’s frustration, or simply realise that they did not learn what they were expected to. The fact that they may have learned many things not on the teacher’s plan will go unnoticed and be of no comfort to anyone.”

    Allwright, D The Developing Language Learner (2009)

  5. hello Mark,

    I would go back to basics first. The teachers have to respect their students to recieve respect back. You cannot just think that you should get it, just because you stand in the front, facing the students. It is hard work, even if you have only one student. I think if you trust the teacher respect comes naturally, the other way around also works. If you start respecting your teacher you also start trusting him. Respect can be earned by listening, focusing, being prepared and having a good sense of humour.
    The teacher is older, has to be more clever and open first to the students and shouldn’t expect much in the first place, maybe set just one rule in the beginning. Like: I would like you all the look at at me when I am speaking to you.
    At first these things came to my mind. 🙂

  6. Hi Eszter, good to see you on here. I think of all the qualities that you mention here, listening is one I would pick out, and by that I mean really listening to what a student says, not only what they say but trying to understand what they mean by what they say. These can be two very different things. I think if a student feels that you as a teacher do listen to what they say and are genuinely interested in what they say then they have the feeling of being made to feel both noticed and taken seriously.

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