Expedition ; An under-explored Pedagogic approach

Expeditions — An under-explored pedagogic approach

One of the most rooted and hard-wired patterns in our brain is to "learn by experience". For millions of years through the development of human history, the  'wandering approach' of exploring and engaging with the natural and social phenomena has 'caused' learning. As the social structures advanced, we started to sense the need of having a refined yet more complex window of learning, i.e school. However, several philosophers and thinkers have necessitated learning through the parallel trajectories of these twins (ie school and nature). The growing complexities of societies have forced schools to transform into larger inorganic institutions.

Figures like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Krishnamurthy, Mahatma Gandhi and Bertrand Russel are among the few thinkers who have advocated that natural settings in the school foster better and authentic  learning. A few nations have been eloquently championing the connectedness of nature and learning. Perhaps this requires a greater investment and in a largely unequal world, there are countries which have fought a long battle for Independence and hence haven't yet been able to afford and ensure the integration of nature and school.

I believe that the human DNA has been designed with an auto-pilot feature - implying that whenever we are put into a new setting, learning starts to happen on it's own. We consciously imbibe some part of it, while the remaining we absorb unaware. As a testimony to our personalities today, each one of us has reasons to be grateful for all that we have acquired from diverse places. To quote an example of such an opportunity, every excursion visit to an unexplored state has added to our auto-generated and self-managed portfolio, which is unique for everyone.  

Whenever we go to a new place to observe, we absorb through all our senses. Infact, even the modern researches have suggested that an effective lesson planning is the one which amplifies learning through multiple senses, with the degree of involvement varying for every learner. In a  controlled laboratory-like schooling setup, such an acquisition requires a lot of planning, whereas in the natural settings, a major bit of it functions automatically. The mention of Hovard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theory becomes more meaningful here.

A good feature of such educational excursions has been the non-hierarchical learning. In a country like India, where we have always deeply associated knowledge with hierarchy, this non-stereotypical observation brings fresh perspective. Many of us may have experienced learning the big lessons of life in the non-hierarchical and non-structured settings only. When I retrospect upon my own journey as a learner, most of my learning has also availed this approach.

Exposing the learners to the world, through such trips across the length and breadth of the country, would also enhance in them 'the art of becoming good citizens'. What better way would there be to train our young learners than to bring them face to face with the multi-cultural milieu which would offer them safe spaces for "experiential learning".  Since our independence, one of the largest experiments of its kind has been to convert and club together the multi religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural groups under the bigger umbrella of 'Indians'. 

A spirit of patriotism surfaces in most of us at oftentimes, like -during wartimes, the seasons of international cricket matches and even during the elections phase. But to move from the coincidental citizenship to a perennial citizenship - to an idea which brings an unflinching faith in our collective belongingness, I think nothing works better than the 'people to people contact'. This break many glass ceilings and help us appreciate and learn from one another and thus develops a common collaborative understanding. 

Exposure trips to other parts of the land amply serves this intent and thus can be described as one of the most desirable activities for nation building. They are the opportunities to add shades of experience to what we have read in our books about various parts of our country. Let's understand this through an example - Students studying the picture of a tree and then tangibly experiencing a real tree will certainly bring them different levels of understanding the same phenomenon. Similarly reading about the different regions of India is only a part of the knowledge-acquisition, whereas traveling to those regions will bring about learning through involvement. The liberal progressive thinking is also often associated with the exposure to multi-cultural groups and community. Many people have tested this in their life and have been convinced to invest in 'travel - to explore'. In this context, I remember an advice given to Mahatma Gandhi by his political mentor Gopal Krishna Gokhale. When Gandhi Ji returned from South Africa in 1914, Gokhale advised Gandhi ji to go for a tour of India - to be able to see how people live and through that to be able to understand what India is. Gandhi ji highlights the importance of his trip to far flung areas of the country and how that shaped his personality in the later years. Later Gandhiji exclaimed "Thee soul of India resides in its villages." 

There have been nations investing heavily in the training of teachers. When the teachers gain exposures to the different parts of the country/globe, the impact is deeper than imagined. On an average, a teacher directly interacts with thousands of students in his/her lifetime. If that teacher has had the experience of observing the best practices, he/she can directly bring it's flavour into his/her sphere of influence. The joy and the gist of the teacher's observations can be rightfully transfered and enjoyed by his/her students. This can be more influential if the teacher gets an 'individualised' experience to interact with the identities which have only had a mention in the curriculum, for eg. Tribal cultures. As an example - if the syllabus includes a lesson on 'Tribes of India' and if the concerned teacher has had the closest possible experience of engaging with the tribes of a particular region, then he/she will be able to cascade the concept in its entirety. It wouldn't merely be limited to a few fact-bites, which anyways are available on the world-wide-web. The teacher will be able to confidently and convincingly include his personal narratives with reference to the tribal group he could get in contact with. The multi-sensory assimilation which the teacher had experienced will also in some ways reach the targeted students. 

I, therefore, have an opinion that Govt. should invest in such provisions for the teachers, wherein the educational practitioners be sent on national and international visits, and even better if this is spelt as a compulsory component of in-service teacher training programmes. Every teacher must be encouraged to spend atleast ten days in an unfamiliar and unexplored territory. This would be an investment which is sure to bring life and reality to our four-walled classrooms. It's time to break the boundaries and enable expansion. No digital mechanisms and internet-knowedge-bank can ever substitute a teacher’s personal narratives. Yuval rightly writes in his book 'The Sapiens', "we are designed to create and tell stories." Hence, such national and international trips will help teachers in creating stories which can eventually benefit generations after generations of learners.