What is Learning and Teaching?

This reflection will redefine the meaning of teaching and learning, through understanding myself as a learner.  The answer - if there is one - shall be my own personal response to the scaffolded process suggested on the Moodle site.  This process asks us to discuss and reflect on a learning experience that has been either formal or informal and had a significant affect on our understanding of the learning process.

Recently, I attended a Textiles workshop, the whole experience was worthwhile, but the one area that I was most interested in was making felt, there are many little things in the world that I want to be able to do or just see how they are done and felting was one of them.  So when given the opportunity, I jumped at it.  I cannot truly say learning how to felt has any real value or is a useful thing to learn, except I had a personal desire to give it a go.  And I did, being a kinesthetic learner I could not stop myself from watching what the the lecture was doing and mimicking her actions in the felting process.  When the process was completed and my little piece of felt was in my hands I and I looked at it all I could think was that was so easy - it was because since then I have experimented with more wool and made more little pieces of felt, which will one day be all sewn together.

The last part of this scaffolded process asks whether or not having a class full of students that experience learning differently could create issues.  Simple answer is yes, long drawn out answer would be - it depends.  I personally believe that a really good teacher knows their students, known different learning styles, knows different teaching and learning strategies, knows their content and knows how the different pieces fall together successfully.