THE TEACHING MIND
An Alternative Perspective for Approaching Intentional Lifelong Learning

The Teaching Mind refers to an approach to lifelong learning that depends upon the learner intentionally taking on the perspective of “teacher,” which ultimately means seeing the subject matter being learned through the perspective of teaching it, as well as engaging in the process of learning as one might do in preparation of teaching others. The idea for this think-piece was developed by Jeremy as he completed his capstone project for an M.A. degree in Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) at the University of Massachusetts Boston (Szteiter 2009). This built on the interest he had developed an interest in lifelong learning as a result of questions that he raised about the purpose and value of education starting with his early school years.

My interest in lifelong learning has guided personal and professional choices to be involved in several community and adult education settings over time, and eventually it led me into the CCT Master's program to explore lifelong learning more extensively. The idea of a “Teaching Mind” reflects the aphorism “if you want to understand something well, teach someone else” and builds upon it by directing this attitude toward a sustained, attentive development of one's lifelong learning. In taking on this idea, I realized that I was asking learners to take themselves seriously by acknowledging that they know much already while challenging them to more critically examine the line between what they know and don't know (in my view, what teachers do fundamentally as they negotiate their role). Teaching-as-learning could then serve as both a reflective and developmental tool. The key implication, then, is that learners intentionally engage with the Teaching Mind when exploring the frontiers of their own ideas and skills.

I noticed a paradox at an early stage. Using the word “teach” threatened to reinforce the emphasis held by conventional education—the act of teaching is usually “done” to someone else within an organized institution. The teacher is the one who has the authority and directs the process. My interest, though, was to shift emphasis to the learner's own motivation and agency in directing their learning. Certain ongoing concerns remained in my view though. I wanted to think about teaching as a role that absolutely anyone could adopt in the approach to learning, but I also wanted to find a way disentangle teaching-as-learning from the common meaning that connects teaching with a professional educator role. Further, I was unsure about how to resolve questions of teaching as a social activity; my original concern was the concept of lifelong learning as an individual endeavor, but I also realized that the practice of teaching-as-learning is necessarily social. I sought how to address teaching as more than just a “state of mind” of a learner who is only working out their new understanding of some topic of interest within their private thinking.

In an attempt to make things more concrete, I questioned what it meant to use the Teaching Mind. My experience in adult and community education, training, and instructional design created a natural space for application, so I found an easy starting point in considering how to create a framework for the Teaching Mind. A framework could be something that could be applied across situations where learning happens; therefore, once the framework was established, I only then needed to recognize situations where it would be relevant. This challenged me further to question what could or should be implied when “lifelong learning” is discussed. This sometimes refers to a vague, general way for people to identify themselves simply because they “love learning.” Otherwise, it could refer to some specific kinds of out-of-school structured programs/classes for adults, particularly seniors. I was unsettled by these meanings, which seemed like an afterthought around something that should be a platform for how one goes about living life.

With this idea in mind, I came to see that the outcomes of lifelong learning are broad and far-reaching and could take many forms, including the ones mentioned above. I came to see that my concern was more about the sense of motivation, purpose, and inspiration that would guide our choices about what to learn, and crucially, how to go about it. I could imagine situations or needs that might arise for a lifelong learner, such as wanting to learn a new skill (improving public speaking or learning to organize a community food drive), or addressing life changes or personal goals (coping with illness, neighborhood development, or improving relationships).

A framework, then, might then serve as a guide for the learner; it would help them to engage with the learning, not only by digesting new information or skills, but also by organizing their learning process around the expectation that they will be teaching others. This made sense when thinking about the role of learning in responding to and addressing tangible situations, where the learner recognizes that it's not possible to make progress without adding some new capacity (the whole issue of what it means to get to that point of recognition and awareness and then confront what is needed began to take shape at a later point when I started to explore more fully the field of transformative education).

What about the possibility that the Teaching Mind exists not only as a framework to apply situationally, but also as a personal disposition—a baseline for perceiving the world and living day-to-day life? Could the Teaching Mind transcend the periods of trying to learn a specific, defined topic with a deliberate goal and be expressed as a disposition that would orient someone around what behaviors and ways of thinking to take on in the first place? This question represented more of an ideal than a reality; I wasn't sure at this point that this idea would be compelling to those who wished to be mindful about their lifelong learning or their practice of teaching. Don't people get along just fine without giving such attention or effort to their lifelong learning? Aren't people perfectly capable of simply recognizing opportunities for learning, making a direct effort to learn for a while, and then move on with their lives? After all, individuals (and particularly adults) are already very much able to look beyond the conventions of school-based education and know how to engage in just-in-time learning, adult education/ enrichment, and various other forms of web-based and community-based learning, for example. These other resources might well be “enough” to help adults shift into periods of learning that addresses their real needs when it occurs to them that this is necessary, and then leave those periods when accomplishing what is sought.

My compromise here was then to focus on a key principle for reminding someone to stay aware of the Teaching Mind. Fundamentally, using the Teaching Mind meant holding on to the “as-if” perspective. When you are aware of needing to learn something in a reliable way, imagine going about that learning as if you will be teaching someone else. Take on a point of view that helps you to organize your thinking and prepare yourself to communicate understanding to others. Get clear on where your certainties and uncertainties lie along the way as you build your own capacity, and anticipate questions that might be posed by others (perhaps people who are a few steps behind wherever you are now in your understanding).

I started to see the implications of this principle on what it meant to try to actually practice the Teaching Mind, and this landed somewhere in between the formal (i.e. professional teaching within an institutional education) and informal (i.e. everyday exchanges and interactions with others). The broad range between those extremes is sometimes called non-formal learning and involves environments where there is often at least some structure and intention to learning and teaching. It doesn't necessarily fit into a curriculum that leads to some credential or certification, and at the same time, it isn't arbitrary.

What about the issue of teaching itself as a real, complex skill? I wondered what it meant for someone to make use of the Teaching Mind across experiences with having formally taken on a teaching role. This led me to see the dispositional view of the Teaching Mind as limiting. I had been seeing it as a binary (experienced teachers, including professionals vs. novices), when it should be considered a developmental process. The Teaching Mind is not so much a state to be reached as it is an orientation toward lifelong growth. Within this possibility, lifelong learning is not just about adding the products that increase knowledge, skills, experience, and wisdom, but also about the process of how to learn (and coincidentally, how to teach through exploring how to learn!). In this sense, someone who looked to “apply” the Teaching Mind would need to go beyond their intuitions about how to teach. They might gain by simultaneously making the practice of teaching an object of their own learning, in addition to the topics or subjects or skills that they were seeking. A new question was then raised. How was I to expect the general population of lifelong learners to include the skills of teaching in their learning endeavors, when these skills are explored over a career by professional teachers themselves, who spend many hours, and the years, directly pursuing these skills?

Following this thread, I was able to start thinking about the Teaching Mind as a confluence of other capacities and explorations, including some of the following:
  • Learning how to facilitate, mentor, coach others.
  • Reflecting on our own school experiences and making sense of them.
  • Gaining awareness of how teaching practice was modeled for ourselves and then thinking about what to adapt (or not) in as we teach others.
  • Revisiting what we thought we knew well and reconsidering it in our evolving context.
  • Learning about core skills and best practices used in professional (formal) teaching.
  • Confronting our values and assumptions about what we think we and others need to know.
  • Communicating well in speaking and writing.
  • Developing empathy, being curious (on behalf of others), looking beneath the surface of conventional wisdom (i.e. building critical and creative thinking).

    • I have been able to find some relief around this concern in recent years as I continued to focus on the possibilities of reflective practice, particularly in the way that this perspective offers some suggestions around the developmental aspects of the Teaching Mind, and how lifelong learners can make use of tools and processes of reflection. I saw these tools and processes as having universal appeal, allowing participation by learners across a range expertise in teaching or educational practice, disciplines or subject areas, and cultural backgrounds.

    I have continued to look for opportunities for the Teaching Mind idea to influence my ongoing work, such as in my own teaching, where I have experimented with different approaches to asking learners in graduate courses and community workshops, for example, to explore issues and develop teaching modules, lesson plans, or guides for others in class. I have also carried the idea of the Teaching Mind forward into a more recent and still-emerging idea that I've called Transition Education, which ultimately helped me to think through where lifelong learners might more specifically direct their teaching. This has served to address an issue that I mentioned previously here around what is needed to employ the Teaching Mind not only as a methodology for one's learning, but also as a real source of support for bringing education to community settings based on real and timely issues of the changing world.

    Reference

    Szteiter, J. (2009). Exploring the Teaching Mind: Extending Participation in Lifelong Learning through Engagement with a Supportive Community. Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection, no. 295. https:// scholarworks.umb.edu/cct_capstone/295 (viewed 19 Oct 2018).