Need Of Promoting Peer Learning

Madhav Prasad Dahal

Ensuring sound relationship between instructors and learners is the key to an effective teaching-learning process. An instructor needs to respect cultural diversity and be updated with new teaching techniques. Managing a healthy classroom interaction and mutual respect between educators and learners can bring miracle in the field of pedagogy. The teaching materials used in classrooms are less crucial than the strategies adopted by the teacher. A carefully designed pedagogy can facilitate students to have a deeper grasp of ideas delivered in the classrooms. This encourages them to formulate their own ideas on different subjects and situations.

 International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP) categorises three major pedagogical approaches: ‘teacher-centred’, ‘learner-centred’ and ‘learning-centred’. ‘The teacher-centred approach’ is one in which teachers deliver lectures and the students follow the assignments individually or in a group. This method stresses on students’ presentations, discussions, case studies and other experiments. ‘The learning-centred approach’, as Marlies Beaten states, derives knowledge from a social and relational process. It prioritises learners’ individual effort of formulating knowledge and understanding instead of rote learning.

Pedagogical tactics

With the passage of time, pedagogical strategies are constantly evolving. Johann Friederich Herbart introduced five components of pedagogy: preparation, presentation, association, generalisation and application. His model is known as Herbartism today. Thorndike, Pavlov, Bandura and Skinner developed the ‘Behaviourist’ approach of teaching. In this traditional approach, a teacher plays crucial role in delivering knowledge to students. This focuses on learning as behaviour modification. Its evaluation process is also summative one. It assesses students’ potential holistically. It does not conduct formative tests and frequent exams. They are held annually. Jean Piaget, Maria Mantessori, Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey, on the other hand, developed the ‘Constructivist’ pedagogy that stresses on learners’ active participation for knowledge formation.

In this digital age, traditional pedagogies are being replaced by new ones. Heutagogy, andragogy  cybergogy or peeragogy are some of them. According to Hase and Kenyon, heutagogy is a self-determined learning process which believes that people learn through random responses to unpredictable situations with their existing knowledge. It is not a teacher or content-centred approach. It is flexible as per the need of learners who design their curriculum. 

Similarly, Malcolm Knowles introduced ‘andragogy’ as a new teaching approach. It postulates five characteristics of adult learners that differ from those of child learners: self-concept, experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learning and motivation to learn. Kearsley claims that adult learning is problem-centred rather than content-oriented. 

The increased use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has introduced a new form of pedagogy known as cybergogy. It was developed in the context of 3D immersive (3Di) world by Lesley Scopes who claims that it can facilitate teaching by setting a good learning environment for the advancement of cognitive, emotional and social development of students. It encourages learners to consult different electronic sites for gathering information and knowledge.

Civilisation is ever evolving. With this, new challenges are also emerging. Nobody had ever imagined that the COVID pandemic would engulf the entire world. All activities halted for some time to control coronavirus from affecting us badly. The teaching-learning activities were also not an exception. However, they could commence with the help of ICT. New inventions, transformations and improvements in pedagogical approaches can help us settle educational challenges. Cybergogy became the most effective approach to engaging students during that time.

Corneli and Danoff, who advocated for peeragogy, states that it is based on self-motivated learning. The learners set a supportive environment for learning together. This is basically a learning process through digital media by connecting with each other for the construction of knowledge. Learners get easily and quickly influenced by the group of equals. They like to learn things by imitating the peers. Deciding about how to go ahead, they organize their own tools and courses to study sharing opinions with each other. During this process, they bring new topic to discussion, see its relevance, analyse it, interpret and ultimately formulate a common notion. 

Advantages

If handled carefully without letting it go downside, peeragogy has many advantages over all other approaches to teaching. The first advantage is it makes learners brainstorm over a topic to formulate ideas of their own without depending on set ideals. This method of teaching does not allow anyone to stay away from active participation. It values all learners’ potential equally. It sets a welcoming platform for all individuals to deliver their thoughts. Accumulating everyone’s opinions, it processes them as raw materials for a new thought making industry.  Later, everyone takes the ownership of the new idea as all of them are the contributors in the entire thought making process. It boosts motivations and assists in forming a working team that harnesses the expertise of all members. Peeragogy has the power to concentrate on practical aspects instead of abstract theories. It helps learners bring abstract concepts to concrete reality. 

A teacher’s role is determinant in imparting knowledge to learners. A skilled teacher always keeps him/her updated with new pedagogies to keep the students motivated. Though the governments’ policies on education and curriculum standard also determine teaching approaches, self-motivated teachers can design their own new pedagogies as per the need of time and students.  Improved pedagogies can facilitate teaching learning activities developing students’ cognitive skills like comprehension, interpretation, synthesis and making evaluation.  Lengthy classroom lecture hours are not as effective as live learners’ interactions and knowledge sharing among peers.

(Dahal is an Assistant Professor at TU. mpdahal076@gmail.com)