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HISTORY The principle of LdL is not new, it has already been part of the so-called Lancaster-School s. The first book about the topic was published in 1971 in the US by Gartner and in Germany in 1975 by R. Krüger. the method received broader recognition starting in the early eighties, when Jean-Pol Martin developed the concept systematically for the teaching of French as a Foreign Language and gave it a theoretical background in numerous publications. At the same time other educational theorists did research in this area 1 . The method spread from 1987 on, when Martin founded a network of several thousand teachers that employed learning by teaching in many different subjects, documented its successes and approaches and presented their findings in various teacher training sessions. From 2001 on LdL has gained more and more supporters as a result of educational reform movements started throughout Germany. THE EVOLUTION OF THE METHOD FROM 2001 ON Learning by teaching consists of two components: a general anthropological one and a subject-related one.
THE APPROACH After intensive preparation by the teacher, students become responsible for their own learning and teaching. The new material is divided into small units and student groups of not more than three people are formed. Each group familiarizes itself with a strictly defined area of new material and gets the assignment to teach the whole group in this area. One important aspect is that Learning by teaching should not be confused with a student-as-teacher-centered method. The material should be worked on didactically and methodologically (impulses, social forms, summarizing phases etc.). The teaching students have to make sure their Audience has understood their message/topic/grammar points and therefore use different means to do so (e.g. short phases of group or partner exercises, comprehension questions, quizzes etc.) Most teachers using the method do not apply it in all their classes or all the time. They state the following advantages and disadvantages: Advantages:
- Teamwork - Planning abilities - Reliability - Presentation and moderation skills - Self-confidence Disadvantages
LEARNING BY TEACHING IN ITS DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS The method learning by teaching is applied in all types of schools and in all subjects. Most Curricula recommend it as an open and pupil-centered option. As a method for further professional training it is for example used with the German "Bundesgrenzschutz" (the Federal Border Guard) or in the professional education of librarians. Furthermore there are experiences with special groups of students (highly gifted ones) and in different cultures. Learning by teaching has been researched on a scientific level by a group of researchers concerned with the workings of the brain since 2001. The method in different educational institutions In Germany learning by teaching is used in different institutions with different target groups:
LEARNING BY TEACHING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SEVERAL SCIENCES Brain research: Learning is an organic process of the brain: The coordinated interaction of molecular, cellular and systemic neural processes in cooperating subsystems of motoric, sensoric and association. Limited to a special time, individual dispositions for selective capabilities unfold, which involve motoric thinking relevant to the Prefrontal Cortex in categories of space and time, the lateralified acquisition of Language and Art Skill s and limbically induced behaviour which is dependent on motivation and Emotion s. It is shown that 1) learning happens in small and big System s, which selectively stabilize by a connection of structure and function; 2) Learning follows the rules of activity-dependent reorganization and is always exclusively carried by individual motivational and emotional dynamic and neither IQ nor EQ alone, but both together are the requirement for successful learning; 3) sensomotoric and associative circles are involved completely and in a self-amplifying way into the learning process by the individual, which necessarily means „learning by teaching“. 3 THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT The central dimension, which should be moved forward by the usage of this method, is the capability to communicate, to generate knowledge together: cf. communication (lessons). Here, the group is considered a ). Thus also the resource orientation deals with this topic. A change in paradigm - the society of knowledge There is a remarkable parallel between the construction of knowledge during ''learning by teaching'' and the construction of an internet-encyclopedia. Schoolmates are stimulated into focused examination and contribution to the incomplete knowledge discovered and presented by their non-expert peers. In analogous fashion, internet-encyclopedia users may contribute critically, since they consider themselves as representative readers requiring further clarification, correction, or a more current representation of the knowledge base. The democratization of users makes it possible to continue the exponential growth of public domain knowledge in the encyclopedia. This new form of recording, discovery and construction of mankind's knowledge reflects the change from a society of experts who expand upon knowledge and pass it to dependent consumers or students, to a society of knowledge workers, where all of those wishing to participate are involved in collective construction and/or consumption, within their chosen fields of interest, within the ever-emerging knowledge base of the public domain. This follows the historical advances and gradual democratization trend of the production and consumption of knowledge, from the development of language, writing, the printing press, educational, scientific and other specialty group publications and communications, popular lay publications, telegraph, telephone, moving pictures, television, internet, etc. New skills are expected of teachers 1. Because the class is structured like a neural network (sitting in a halfcircle or circle is a precondition) and the communication between pupils gets more and more intensive, the teacher has to get used to recognize the main facts of each contribution and to put them in relation to others. He becomes the organizer of collective reflection and has to steer the flow of thoughts carefully to the course‘s objective without intervening too much. Thus he has to focus on contents, but he has to intervene in the first place on the level of process, so that the communication between pupils (metaphorically: neurons) works fast and directly. 2. As the organizer of collective reflection the teacher has to be sure that it leads to a goal, which is the absorbation of new material by the whole class. Hence at he beginning of the lesson there might be an indefiniteness of contents (no linearity) and in the classroom clarity (linearity a posterion) should be created step by step by working together. A good preparation for the profession of a teacher would therefore be an activity like serving as host of a discussion board, which is about constructing knowledge step by step out of chaotically incoming information. The final point in a transformation of the class to a neural network should be a Complex Structure , which would be more capable of Self-organization . According to this concept, successful communication will be the main attribute of problem solvers in the future – many researchers consider this the requirement to a 6th Kondratjeff - Jean-Pol Martin continues developing his concept. NOTES 1 e.g. Renkel, 1997; and a publication in the magazine Pädagogik, 11/97 2 An empirical report with theoretical background, practical advice and bibliographical reference (in German) can be found at LdL: Vorbereitung auf die Wissensgesellschaft an der Uni 3 The text was taken with permission from the homepage of Prof. Dr. Gertrud Teuchert-Noodt (2003) from this site: Learning by doing: Physiological foundations of learning [http://mkat.iwf.de/index.asp?Signatur=C%2012425 EXTERNAL LINKS
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