Tailored and targeted
For a teacher to tailor learning to the learner, he or she must know the learner well and must have established good rapport and an effective working relationship – the tailor must know the needs, wishes and measurements of the client before the suit can be made.
My life teacher was an expert at tailoring. He knew and understood his learners strengths and weaknesses and the inner workings of their minds, and would offer activities and advice that were appropriate for just one person, the next person could be offered something quite different to address the same learning need.
My Form 6 (Year 12) Maths teacher gave weekly practice exercises and encouraged us to be competitive about our success at these within our groups of friends and peers. The competitive component proved very effective in a traditional boys’ school. In the book ‘Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys - Strategies that work, and why’ by Michael Riechert and Richard Hawley (2010), competition is one of a set of key themes that are identified as being particularly appropriate for boys. The full list is: Gaming, Motor Activities, Open Inquiry, Competition, Interactive Technology, and Performance/Role Play. A competitive approach may not work in all situations of course, such is the nature of tailoring – it targets specific group and may only be effective with that group. One size does not fit all.
With regard to tailoring, the smaller the teacher-to-student ratio the better. The more the teacher can get to know his/her students the better he/she can tailor for the individual. However a teacher can reach a good compromise by working some of the time as a whole group and some of the time spending short periods working one-to-one. For very large groups such as university classes of hundreds however even this is logistically challenging, however the use of groups of tutors (more advanced peers or mentors) or clever technology can help here. A couple of years ago I completed some introductory computer programming study in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Weekly exercises and challenges were given and regular feedback was provided by tutors and peers. For the assessed components, much was set up to be marked by computer and individual feedback was provided by lecturers, tutors and peers. Although the one-to-one rapport was not there in the same way, I felt well supported and was able to ask my individual questions (online) perhaps more easily than would have been possible in a lecture theatre of 500 or more students.
In the career counselling world, much importance is given to creating a ‘mattering’ environment (Amundson et al, 2014, 43-45) as a crucial part of establishing an effective client-counsellor relationship. I believe a very similar approach is appropriate in teaching, the teacher must know the learner and the learner must feel as though he/she ‘matters’ to the teacher. Clearly, due to logistical considerations, this is often much easier to achieve in one-to-one or small classes than it is in large groups. One solution, in large group situations, is for the teacher to arrange for the learners to ‘self-tailor’ their learning experiences by giving a range of options for learners to choose from in their assignments, activities or homework. This also touches on another feature that has been important to me as a learner, the idea that learners are free to choose the learning according to their needs and abilities, with certain pragmatic parameters – in other words to have some part in the construction and creation of the learning. A constructivist approach.