When I was writing my assignment, I thought that I had grasped the main idea of the readings and that I have captured what the facilitator wanted us to realize. Reading further and deeper into the forums and what my classmates have presented had given me a lot to think about.
Maybe having a concrete answer is not really the point of this, as our views would still vary even if we read the same readings. Maybe there wasn’t really a singular answer to the concept which was being discussed. Maybe, I was just too used to the idea that every lecture from a formal education course had one specific answer that all activities had to drive at.
Reflecting further into it had brought me this tremendous insight that perhaps the point of these stretched activities is to make the learner (me) understand that learning is not dictating what, when, who, or how. It is to figure out the purpose (why) and then forming the strategies (how) to teach it through experience.
Learning and Intelligence is all about that—experiencing it to learn from it. My classmates and I engaged in fruitful discourse and that’s how we learned, because we threw ideas back and forth, agreed and disagreed with each other until one has reached a certain level of understanding that was satisfactory.
It could be that this was the point of the activity; to show me, the learner, that this is how you form activities in the classroom for the student to reach an “aha” moment or insight. We simulate an experience to drill down the points, and we process these points through intellectual discourse—banter that had scientific basis as to prove why our belief is more grounded than the other. This way we get to the real “truth” of things.
As I was writing down my assignment, I was 99% sure that what I was going for was the correct answer. But then after reading my classmates’ work, I’ve realized that they may actually be correct too. The cognitive dissonance settled in as I was confused, wondering which among us really had the correct truth. After reading the 5th assignment, I gradually began to realize that maybe these similarities and differences are what we are really searching for.
We have to take note of the differences because it points out the weaknesses of current theories, and we take note of the similarities because they lead us closer to the universal truth.
All in all; however, the point of this push and pull is just to accept that our differing views and beliefs are all truths that we as individuals hold to be valid, and as learners, we must accept all those truths however varying it may seem because it is this variety that we are able to gain more knowledge and step closer to discovering the real understanding of human phenomena.
Professional Teaching Course 