Course | The Teachability Factor

Price

Original price: CA$200

Description

Teaching is getting harder, not easier — even though teachers have never been more educated, technology so advanced, curriculum so refined, and pedagogy so honed. Although these factors are important, the true problem in learning lies elsewhere — in the teachability of our students. The answer to the waning teachability of students is not to teach harder, but to teach differently, harnessing the most powerful motivating force of all: attachment.

As is the case with all Neufeld Institute's courses, this course features lectures by Dr. Neufeld, carefully curated support for enriched study, study aides, the opportunity to ask questions of trained faculty or course facilitators, a year's access to the campus to enable study at one's own pace, and a certificate of attendance upon completion. For more information, consult the "about our courses" on Neufeld Institute's page.

Sessions: 8
Lecture: 8h 19m
Certificate: 16+ hours

Course Summary

The teachability factor refers to those determinants of learning that are psychological in nature, that is, developmental, relational, and emotional. Indications are that the teachability of students is on the wane, making teaching much more difficult than it could be or should be. Not only are students more immature emotionally and less curious intellectually, but also less adult-oriented and so more challenging to manage. This course is about providing insight into what is happening so that compensatory measures can be taken. There is a surprising way through that can make teaching both more effective and fulfilling.

This course captures the best of Neufeld's professional development for educators. Many teachers have found that this material resonated with their own intuitions. Others have found this course to serve as a well-needed dose of inspiration in a time when the challenges of turning teaching into learning have never been more daunting.

Suitability/Applicability

This material is applicable and suitable for all those involved with students in an educational setting, from kindergarten to Grade 12, teaching assistants to administrators, classroom teachers to school counselors, family workers to psychologists, mainstream educators to those in alternate education settings.

This material is also very appropriate to home educators, as understanding the factors that determine teachability should enable parents to choose an approach that best suits their child.

Sample Topics

• The crippling effect of psychological immaturity on learning and behaviour
• What is happening to today's students that is making them harder to teach
• A model of attachment that can be used within the school system
• Peer orientation and its devastating impact on learning and behaviour
• An explanation for why today's students are losing their curiosity
• What happens when teachers go to school to teach, and children go to school to be with their friends
• Developmentally-friendly strategies for dealing with problems resulting from emotional and developmental stuckness
• The root causes of the emotional immaturity in today's students
• The role of parents in sending children to school who are teachable
• How student-teacher relationships can compensate for the typical problems in learning and behaviour
• How student-teacher relationships can be cultivated and nurtured

Course Outline

The course is structured into eight sessions, with each session including approximately one hour of instructional video from Dr. Neufeld.

• Session 1 — Teachability Introduced
After introducing the teachability factor, this session looks specifically at the role of emergent functioning in learning and behaviour, including curiosity and sense of agency, and the impact on teaching when these elements are missing.

• Session 2 — Teachability & the Adaptive Brain: correction, resilience, and neural plasticity
This session covers the role of the adaptive process in learning and behaviour, providing insight into why some students fail to learn from mistakes, transcend disabilities, or benefit from correction. Aggression is best understood in this context.

• Session 3 — Teachability & the Developing Brain: problem solving, self-discipline, and the capacity to process conflicting thoughts and feelings
This session deals with the role of the cerebral cortex and its integrative processes in learning and behaviour. Recognizing these common developmental deficits is key to not tripping over them.

• Session 4 — Teachability & the Heart: stuckness and defendedness
This session deals with the role of emotion in learning and behaviour. When the vulnerability is too much to bear, the resulting flight from vulnerability greatly impacts their development as well as their learning and behaviour. The impact on teachability is profound.

• Session 5 — Teachability & Relationship Part I: empowered teaching and the desire to be good
The immature are not receptive to being taught outside the context of a working attachment. The empowering effect of student-teacher relationships is explored. This session explains why alpha children are so difficult to teach and how the dynamic of counterwill cripples the learning process. Peer orientation is also introduced together with its devastating impact on the teachability of today’s students.

• Session 6 — Teachability & Relationship Part II: how attachment is meant to develop and what hinders its formation
This session looks at how attachment is meant to happen and how the capacity for relationship requires six stages to fully develop. An understanding of how attachment develops and what impedes this development provides the keys to fostering student-teacher relationships.

• Session 7 — Raising Teachability through Attachment: overcoming students' reticence to attach and cultivating a context of connection
This material is developed through the constructs of collecting, bridging, and matchmaking. Suggestions are made for overcoming shyness and competing attachments, including peer orientation. This material is applicable to developing working relationships with individual students, as well as creating a context of connection in the classroom and the school.

• Session 8 — Raising Teachability with Stuck Kids
Stuckness is looked at as a primary source of learning problems as well as troubling behaviour. Stuckness also renders conventional discipline ineffective and even counterproductive. Alternative methods for dealing with behaviour rooted in stuckness are reviewed. Included in this session are the keys to caring and considerate students, and how this attachment-based developmental approach differs from other prevailing approaches.