Changing the Learner’s Question

What better classroom that a boat travelling through the most biodiverse waters on the planet, Raja Ampat? In December 2022 I had the great fortune of working as a naturalist and educator aboard such an expedition. Following a morning dive, we would set up a 3 hour session of learning for the kids, and then following lunch I would lead a dialogue session with both adults and students in attendance. The afternoon often allowed us chances to alight on the pristine beaches that dot the eastern end of the archipelago. My daughter and I joined the Blue World Expedition for their final leg of the cruise, 14 days to travel from Ambon in the Malukku Islands out to Raja Ampat and conclude the trip in Sorong, a moderately sized city in West Papua.

There is no doubt in my mind that every moment of such a trip is a rich learning experience. The educator in me picked up the excitement regularly felt by all parties as the wonders of nature and novelty of our environment piqued our senses. The bubbling of the water as baitfish scrambled to escape their predators would lead to deeper inquiry about ocean food webs. The excitement of children exploring the workings of the boat and finding the engine room and generators helped to frame the limits of the life support system we were living in much more readily than a home would. In effect, learning was happening everywhere at every time.

There was still room for structured learning though. With 3 hours in the morning dedicated to school we covered a variety of concepts and topics. While some elements felt fairly conventional and did not take full advantage of the incredible space we occupied, it did comfort parents and kids alike that their connections to conventional school were not fully severed. And we could not avoid the occasional opportunistic pause as our boat encountered pods of dolphins or a squall approaching across the sea.

One morning the educator who had guided them throughout the whole trip excused herself to go on a particularly compelling mid-day dive. That left me with the whole group, 10 kids between 5 and 14 years old, to work with. As many of their habits had been established, this was not a big deal and a fully enjoyable task.

Each student had a personal learning plan, and would go between the different elements of their curriculum. This included math exercises, reading, and writing. They had already established the rhythm they needed for the most part, so my role was that of a troubleshooter. If there were elements that blocked their progress they could ask for some personal tutelage to get them through it.

The hours that morning were full. My brain had to kick into high gear as I moved between a variety of skills and levels. I had to readjust from helping with basic addition and subtraction to statistics and then move onto why certain sentence structures make more sense over others. All through this time, I would hear “Noan, can you help me with this..” as kids found themselves at an impasse and needed support to move forward.

Not long after getting rolling with the group I started to assign older kids to support younger ones. I strongly believe in the power of peer mentorship in this way, and found both the older kids and younger pretty receptive. While it did alleviate some of my burden as point of reference, I was still chugging away jumping from kids to kid to help them on their personal learning journeys.

In many respects, this is a sign of learning. Kids seeking help means they are engaged in the work, and recognize how to find support when they need it. These young people have built some good habits to be motivated to get through the work allocated, and use the tools at their disposal to do so. So in many ways, we are seeing a constructive and positive learning environment.

A few hours later, another experience provided me with a nice counterpoint to dwell on.

Each afternoon provided the guests on the boat with a couple options to enjoy. While many took advantage of the spectacular snorkeling, the younger kids by and large wanted to get onto terra firma and play in the sand. The beaches are strikingly beautiful, but I think that the kids were more motivated by the fact that they could run and jump and play and build with relative freedom. I joined them for many of these forays, in part because I have a heart of a kid and need a bit of unstructured playtime myself.

As we settled down on yet another picturesque beach we got into our usual routine of creating kingdoms out of sand. For the kids this was a highlight activity of each day, and it was pretty clear that their imaginations were primed and ready to create the next story of a new ephemeral empire made of sand and hermit crabs.

I found myself doing the same. Architecture, sculpting, and enjoying the peace of the beach is just the ticket. I started to scoop together the foundations of my castle, digging out the moat and building up the bulk of what I would later add detail to.

My experience in castle building has led me to become, as Daddy Pig would say, “somewhat of an expert”. After stacking a generous pile of sand I started to sketch out a spiral shape of ramps trailing outwards. I explored the maximum angle the sand could hold, and began crafting defining lines with my hands.

On the periphery of my vision I noticed I had attracted a guest. One of the kids was just to the right of my building area, watching me work away. And then she said it:

“Can I help you?”

I cautiously agreed, slightly worried that uncareful hands would lower the product I was trying to create. I naturally started to share my techniques and put the young person to task. Soon a couple other hands were engaged, each willing to take on whatever piece of the collaboration we were now building.

I left the fray with a semi-finished castle surrounded by several new recruits, who had found ways to connect in their own creations and ideas into the castle.

Later that evening while reflecting on the day, it struck me that I had experienced an excellent example of a shift (or reversion perhaps) in a key perspective in how we learn.

The morning exercises were driven by content. The learners had content that either they had been assigned or had chosen themselves, and were intent on completing it. Naturally there were roadblocks, and to overcome these the learner sought deeper expertise. My role in this case was to help bridge the gap in understanding.

In the afternoon, there was no content to be covered. Learning was in abundance, through imaginary play, exploring the environment, and the development of skills. My role however, had changed. I no longer was there to unblock their gaps in learning, but as one who can demonstrate, inspire, and be imitated in order to deepen the learner’s understanding.

When looking at our current learning landscape, it becomes fairly obvious that even in very progressive schools the latter type of interaction between learner and ‘expert’ is missing. Learners in the best of cases find a supportive group of educators who are there to bridge the gaps. Even the arts are often bound by content based objectives and benchmarks (a teacher term if there ever was one) set externally.

The afternoon learning environment does exist, however it rarely seen in institutional education. It exists as apprenticeships, which due to the degree of specialization we have in society are only available to learners after most of their youthful neuroplasticity has left them. The practicing experts that many of the young of today experience are educators, who while skilled in an area don’t by any means reflect the diversity of skills and dispositions that one finds in the larger world. At best they have an educator who is both a polymath and eschews the restrictive content objectives the system throws at them and plays and learns alongside the learners.

Ultimately, what such an insight has lead me to believe is that we need to start advocating for creative and profound shifts in how we educate and how we learn. This is not an exercise in tweaking our existing systems of learning, but a large scale reimagining of what we deem as constructive learning environments.

What shifts can you imagine to create these new realities? How can we create systems that meet our innate drive to learn and the natural curiosity that lies within all of us?