From the offices to the confectionary, interactions and negotiations have become a rote procedure. However, for the reason that people have different communication styles or situations in life, there is a need to learn adequate social skills for navigating the daily conversations and work together with our coworkers. Evolving these interpersonal skills can be quite difficult if, for learning only books, lectures, and learning from teachers are seen as the source, as theories remain the same, but social situations and people change constantly.

Transforming the long-established, passive learning, and teaching methods based on lectures into effectively active learning, teaching methods based on discussions will pave the way for more opportunities for students. Along with the option to buy custom essay, this opens up more possibilities to learn effective teamwork for their future.

Active Learning Technique

Apart from lectures and textbooks, students learn from their peers too. Author Alison King has made use of an example to the ways how a specific active learning approach can be used for preparing students for lives after their school. This technique described by Alison King is a ‘jigsaw’ approach of learning that is utilized as a technique for active learning and helping learners to evolve the collaborative learning methods.

In this approach, every student gets only a particular section of the study material that they have to first learn and then teach it to other people in the group. The learning goals can be achieved only after all students work collaboratively and actively through discussions, which gives rise to an active learning environment. This approach helps to develop individual accountability in students, as they will be working in these groups, they will be accountable for both their individual learning and learning of their fellows.

In addition, this technique teaches students how to be more accustomed to being responsible to pass on the information to their fellows for learning everything they ought to learn. The skills learned by the students in their classroom with this approach of active learning helps to prepare them better for their life after schools. This is because no one is truly aware of everything and must add to the gaps in knowledge with the information learned from others in the entire life.

Work Appreciation

The active learning technique teaches students to appreciate the work and what others have contributed. This is a skill and could not be earned through mere lectures provided by a single teacher. Furthermore, King also highlights that this cooperative method can positively affect race relations, self-conception, the acceptance of students with disabilities, and also enjoying the school.

Being an adult, students will have to engage with different groups of individuals in different aspects of lives, so learning social interaction with diverse groups of people in schools only prepares them better for adulthood interactions. The experience of acceptance and cooperation helps to prepare students to become adults who positively contribute to future interactions with their peers.

Critical Thinking

Active learning approaches also work on the critical thinking of the student. Critical thinking refers to the student’s ability to impartially analyze information and then draw an impartial conclusion, instead of merely conforming to the thoughts of students. Jiddu Krishnamurti puts forward his thoughts about the notion of conformity in education by stating that the traditional lecture approach motivates students to repeat the actions and words of people as it is the simplest way to live.

He believes that students are inherently capable to think, healthily, and objectively. However, these skills can be brought up in active learning surroundings where discussion and critical thoughts are encouraged. Author Aleszeu Bajak also challenges the traditional format of lectures, he cites different scholars agreeing with engaging students with group activities or questions to be more effective as compared to delivering the necessary information through lectures.

Information provided through traditional lecture format is not able to be provided completely without partiality. Hence, it is necessary to provide students with opportunities to debate and break down information to understand it directly.

Sensitivity

Krishnamurthy also introduces the notion of ‘sensitivity’ in the topic of education. Sensitivity is not just something that one could learn from a textbook or through passive learning or simply any other long-established lecture-based approaches. It can be attained through learning in collaboration with group discussions, perspectives, and any other active learning method. Once, attained, sensitivity is a strong, valuable, and helpful skill for students to work effectively in teams and efficiently as the members of the society.

Being aware of things beyond their understanding enables the student to question and learn better from peers. This creates an atmosphere for creativity to take place. The traditional lecture methods that do not motivate students to challenge their surroundings do not give creativity or innovation. Active learning eventually helps society to move along as it improves students as an individual.

Beneficial For Larger Groups

Apart from the benefits provided to individuals, critical thinking skills benefits larger groups also. Eleanor Roosevelt contends for the need for students to evolve the well built critical thinking skills to ultimately benefit society. She stresses the significance of accuracy in understanding and well built analytical abilities in students. She further adds that teaching should be in a manner to spark interest and ideas in every student, which can’t be merely achieved through traditional methods.

Teaching ought to be focused on the ability of students to think crucially and draw conclusions by themselves and not only the ability to replicate the opinions of the teacher. Strong analytical abilities are needed to solve the complex problems that arise in the lives of students before the days in the classroom. Thus, students must develop these skills in school.

Her idea gets support through Eric Mazur’s work, who says that traditional lecture promotes the memorization of professor’s words in students, which they then parrot back in their exams. However, they do not link what they have learned to what they think about working in the physical world. These skills to parrot or imitate are difficult to transfer to life beyond school as compared to skills that could be gained through active learning approaches.

Challenges

Though in the ideal world, the concept of active learning is more advantageous to students as compared to passive learning, several challenging factors still exist. Author Adam Kotsko puts forward the challenges of the active learning approach. He says that students are first required to be a good reader for effective discussions, which they mostly are not. He adds that students ought to be first provided baseline knowledge to made good readers with a base to lead discussions, it is a point that supporters of active learners style do not address.

It is difficult for teachers to measure the knowledge of students related to materials entirely based on the discussion if they are not prepared to express the knowledge appropriately. Kotsko argues that information-heavy exams and lectures that are a part of the passive learning approach pay an essential role until they are used consciously but he does not go into details for way conscious use should look like.

King brings an idea to fill the transition between both methods. He argues for using student-focused discussion as a forerunner to deliver lecture baseline knowledge. Discussions before giving a lot of information support the understanding among educators and students about the learning experience.