My experiences of teaching and learning culture changes

Teaching and learning cultures have changed and are changing based on my personal experiences. First it maybe better to define what do I mean with the learning culture. There is a number of definitions about it, this is one I recently read and liked: 

“Learning culture refers to operational practices that are characteristic to a learning community which are formed by learning, community, community members and environmental practices, perceptions and beliefs and their interpretation. Learning culture is defined as a set of shared beliefs, values and attitudes favourable to learning. (e.g. Innovative Workplaces, OECD http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/innovative-workplaces_9789264095687-en”

When I went the comprehensive and high school, the teacher was in the center. The learning culture was pretty behaviorist. Though it changed a bit from the very early classes to the time I did the matriculation exam. It was the teacher who knew and pupils spoke when teacher allowed. Learning was very individual, but sometimes we did group work but I´m not sure if that worked well. Usually there were one or two pupils making the work and the others didn´t know so much about it. And about the work of other groups we didn´t have any idea. Groups were pretty homogeneous and we all had a similar background. There wasn´t so much technology in use. I remember a tape recorder and an overhead projector. In very rare cases there was a television in a classroom and we watched a video. 

The learning style didn´t change when I went to university. Professors there were even more distant and classes bigger. Research work was new and gave the possibility to do something independently too and a bit more teamwork was done. During that time the computers started to get a bigger role in studies too. We still read books and papers but we were able to produce our own material with computers. 

 
When I started my working career the digital technology was there. My working life was knowledge work and it changed gradually global and the technology was a necessity for daily communications. It was an everyday life to collaborate in a virtual team online in a multinational environment. A new multicultural online working culture was created which helped us to work together. I saw at work the potential technology can give to learning too but still I had a quite old fashioned idea about schools and learning which bothered me. I wanted to understand better the learning today. 

I started my teacher studies and got familiar with an online learning environment Moodle and Optima which enabled group work and reflection. I was also fascinated about the idea of Coursera, where the top universities and organizations in the world offer courses online for anyone for free. I experienced that the technology was available for learning. I also understood that online learning has a lot of potential which is not yet in use. There was too much traditional teacher centered learning culture implemented which didn´t fit for online. 

I also see my kids go a bit similar school than I used to go. Today there are computers in schools, but the classroom looks pretty much the same like it used to look some decades ago. Thinking the world were my kids live at free time or the knowledge work today, school and way of learning there looks quite old fashioned. 

My experiences of online learning and schools tell me that it´s difficult and slow to change the existing learning culture to something else. Even when we know that the old way of learning doesn´t meet the needs of knowledge working life. I´m also sure that today’s kids would like to have the learning culture that fits their world they are living. They have already learned to communicate online in an multicultural environment (but not at school).

So far I have at least understood the need to change the learning culture. Based on my work experience I believe I can understand the nature of knowledge work and what kind of skills are needed there. As a learner I experienced that digitalize the traditional way of learning is not enough. As a mother I also see the huge difference of two worlds my kids live. The way of learning has to change.

This course I´m now attending suggests that authentic e-learning could be the way to change learning. When following authentic e-learning framework, the student-centered and active learning culture can be developed. Then the emphasis is on the collaborative completion of realistic artifacts, similar to those that people would do in real-world professional situations. It means that a shared culture of both the context and the product must be developed by students as they engage with the task. (Teräs, H., Leppisaari, I., Teräs, M. & Herrington, J. (2012, pp. 29-36). During this course the understanding of this framework will get better. Possibly this could be the learning culture I also would like to create and promote. I´m interested.

Teräs, H., Leppisaari, I., Teräs, M. & Herrington, J. (2012). Facilitating the development of multicultural learning communities through authentic e-learning. In Kommers, P., Issa, T. & Isaias, P. (Eds.) Proceedings of IADIS International Conference on International Higher Education (IHE 2012) (pp. 29-36). PDF