Enhancing Individual Learning: Keys for Educators

1. Referat Gesellschaft The importance of the individual mind for learning processes in general – as well as for teachers’ training courses in the project in particular Lisa Rosa

2. Learning (by an individual) • is an autonomous individual psychological process activity • is following its own rules • depends on the activities by the others • depends on the cultural-historical circumstances • depends on the actually given context • depends on a lot of contingencies • but it is not (and cannot be) determinated

3. Motivation • Motivating another person does not work. • Motives are built by the person himself / herself. • Motives are object-oriented. • Motives are usually often unconcious. • Motives easily change. • Motives are diversified and personal.

4. Personal Sense • Sustainable Learning processes need a constant feeling of personal sense. • Personal sense is grounded in the relationship between the individual and the object. • Personal sense cannot be given or donated extranously. • Personal sense can only be found / built by the individual. • Finding personal sense can be triggered by the question: • "What has this object got to do with me?"

5. Personal Sense and Societal Meaning • Any object has societal meaning(s) – built by cultural- historical processes of the human activity. • Personal sense is not identical with these meanings. • Personal sense is not the concretization of these meanings. • Personal Sense is built in the actual living processes of an individual. • Personal Sense concretizes itself within the specific bunch of several sociatal meanings which are important to the individual.

6. And now? • We cannot motivate the students. • We also cannot give the sense to the students. • So what CAN we do?

7. What we can do – we have to do • give the object • give the cause (or the provocation) to encounter the object • give the time and the space • give the information and the instruments that are needed for building motives and personal sense by every single student of his / her own

8. Learning is a social activity • communicating • collaborating The challenge is to shape learning environments, in which the single motives and personal sense can be built within a communicative and collaborative context. The mainly functioning form: (Learning) Project

9. Triple Loop Learning in Learning Projects Learning of the Learning of the Learning • the object (stuff, content) itself = L • the How to learn the object (method) = LL • the Why to learn the object (sense) = LLL

10. Structuring learning processes in Learning Projects Give procedures instruments large amount of information and communication possibilities Don‘t give stuff, content goals, outcome, results