Tag: Learning

You Didn’t Teach Me ‘That’

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A Wikipedia definition of critical thinking

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Training for the 3 Ring Circus

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A trained pony is not memorizing a right turn and a left turn, or considering if this move will result in a figure eight.  The pony is reacting to the way the whip is pointing, he is in the moment.  A critical thinker is in this moment, as well as in other moments, both past and future, and even in moments they have never experienced.  The critical thinker looks at the whip and decides if what the whip is indicating is genuinely the right direction to accomplish the desired goal – or not.  Therefore, the thinking must fully understand the desired goal first and foremost.  For the accomplished critical thinker, there is no compulsion to agree with the whip simply because it is expected or may result in punishment.

A critical thinker is always striving to make the right decision.  And when they make an error in thinking, they think about their thinking. This thinking is not ‘disapproval’ of their own thinking but remedial or curative goals.  And then, they add this corrective thinking about what happened, what should have been different to their arsenal of thinking tools. “Hmmm, to accomplish that, I could have done this or that instead.” Of course, in the 9-1-1 setting, we would certainly prefer those errors in thinking to occur before they are on their own on the console.

A trainee can only learn critical thinking in a situation where the trainee doesn’t have someone to point the whip.  If someone tells you what to do, you don’t need to think at all, you only need to react to the whip!  It is so much easier to be a trained pony.  The danger of using the whip in Emergency Communications is that we cannot possibly recreate every configuration for the trainee.  They cannot learn to PERFORM every act; they must learn to THINK their way through on their own.  Therefore, they must learn to think like the trainer.  How does a trainer help people feel like them or use critical thinking?

A Wikipedia definition of critical thinking.

Critical thinking is the purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments. Critical thinking involves determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, or, concerning a given inference or argument, determining whether there is adequate justification to accept the conclusion as true. The careful, deliberate determination of whether one should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim and the degree of confidence with which one accepts or rejects it.

[1] In a summary of a draft statement for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking the authors state, Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Critical Thinking in Emergency Communications

Critical Thinking’s definition never addresses those decisions that must be made in seconds and involve life and death.  In fact, the definitions seem to indicate the critical thinker takes time to think things through.  Emergency Communications decisions include data, information, assumptions, interpretations, concepts, implications, points of view, clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logical consistency.  Astonishingly, also immediately, and never with the same exact set of circumstances as in the previous decision or judgment.

 

For a trainee to begin using critical thinking, they must be given the opportunity to begin to use the process of examining their own reasoning: looking at purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, empirical grounding, reasoning leading to conclusions, implications and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference. And all at the speed of light, without knowing they are doing it.   How do trainers accomplish this seemingly daunting goal?

Step One:  Define the goal.

Ask the trainees to define what success is in Call Taking or Dispatching clearly.  What is the promise of 9-1-1?  Why does 9-1-1 exist? What is its purpose?  Generally, the answer is something like to serve and protect – not good enough.  Serve who, protect against what?  How about sending?  Send who, where, when, and how?

Teaching Critical Thinking involves a process of facilitating thinking.  You cannot accomplish this by telling the trainee the answer to your questions.  Trainers must painstakingly extract whatever is up there in the trainee’s head about the work.  Some thinking will be right on, some will be misdirected.  Some a vast black hole of nothing in which case Trainers can then fill in the ‘blanks’.  Trainees may come up with something like this.

  1. Send the right number and type of units (police, fire or EMS? Combined, support)
  2. To the correct location – with zero delay.
  3. With the right amount of information so that they know what they are facing.
  4. While keeping caller or those at the scene and responders safe
  5. Accurately record the information and times on the call in some manner.

Step Two:   Match the goal to the actual work. 

Once you have the ‘perfect outcome’ defined, the trainee must be given the opportunity to view the work being done to look at purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, reasoning leading to conclusions, implications and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference.  Simply stated they must work with a large variety of calls to determine if the ‘promise’ was kept in all regards. Did the Call Taker accomplish #4, if not what was missing and why? The call taking, dispatching example, as well as the CAD printout, can be offered to complete this analysis and properly affect the reasoning of the trainee(s).  Best accomplished in groups, these critical thinking exercises welcome disagreement, challenge, confusion, questions, assumptions, and inaccurate interpretations of the work of the Call Taker or Dispatcher.

Step Three:  Create A Safe Learning Environment

Critical does not mean only finding errors in the work ,but also encouraging the trainee to detect practices or methods that worked well to accomplish the goal.  After analyzing call after call, the trainee begins to have a reservoir of experiences to recall for what works.  After meticulously analyzing five calls where the REASSURE call was not used and five calls where REASSURE calmed the caller, the trainee can then incorporate this into their ‘experiences’.

This type of critical thinking training is designed to cultivate a ‘truth-seeker,’ and therefore, it must be a safe environment in which to be wrong.  Wrong is welcomed as it allows the trainer to correct, reframe, redirect, and explain – modeling the desired thinking process.  If not asked, the trainee cannot reveal what they do not know, or what incorrect perceptions they hold.  If you want to know how they think, you must allow them to think in front of you safely.

 Step Four:  Put Thinking Into Action

To know how accurately a rookie officer shoots, you must take them to the range.  If they don’t hit the targe,t they will need correction and more practice.  To know if a Call Taker trainee has developed the ability to use good judgment, you must give them opportunities to use judgment in critical situations.  To correct poor judgment, you can work with the trainees’ work examples, encouraging self-assessment to help them extrapolate, isolate, and identify the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects.  This process offers the trainee to ‘practice’ thinking in simulation, self-evaluate, get feedback, and next recreate the exact same call with better aim.  Practice, evaluate, provide feedback, recreate, practice, evaluate, provide feedback, recreate, and practice to achieve the ultimate goal of transforming understanding into behavior.

Conclusion

Look around the workplace and try to notice some object you have never seen but has been there all the time.  Then begin to get curious about things that seem to bother you.  Ask yourself why this is like this, how it got this way, and what I have tried to do about it?  Find someone or something that has been playing negative on your mind.  Ask yourself to think differently about this situation or that person.  Challenge the authority of your own thinking.  Critical thinking doesn’t only apply to the work; it can apply to the workplace.  Trainers can use the process above to encourage critical thinking differently about those challenges that seem to be never-ending: gossip, social immaturity, negative behaviors, and devaluing one another.  Not only could trainees benefit from a dose of critical thinking in these areas.

 

The work of the Emergency Communications Trainer is to provoke thinking.  Adult learners often have preconceived notions when they enter the profession.  What are these thoughts, and will they lead to success, lead them to good judgment, proper decisions, and correct actions?  In not knowing what a trainee is thinking lies a potential for trouble if the trainee has been treated as a trained pony following the whip instead of their own experiences.  Experience is the key to developing a trained mind.  After all, the Telecommunicator has only their voice, head, and heart to accomplish success in the work.  This success can come in many forms, long before the person answers that first call.  What we don’t want in our training is to create a one-trick pony for a three-ring circus.

[1] Summary of a draft statement by Michael Scriven and Richard Paul for the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking

That’s Not My Style – Rethinking Adult Learning

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HIS MAY COME AS A SHOCK TO SOME AGENCY trainers, so hold on. People who come into the profession to be trained are not children. Agencies that continue to train adults with K-12 teaching techniques don’t mean they consider new employees to be

child- like, they just have not considered the different learning styles of children and adults. The educational terms for the two types of learning are andragogical and pedagogical.

 

When agencies struggle with high employee turnover rates, it may be time to re-evaluate

The training methods the agency uses may be useless and possibly detrimental to the adult learner. The following is a list of 30 considerations an agency should consider when rethinking its training program.

 

Motivation to Learn

  1. Expect high expectations from the trainee- Many adults seek out learning experiences to cope with specific life-changing events (e.g.. marriage. divorce, a new job, a promotion, being fired, retiring, losing a loved one, moving to a new city, ) Most people welcome learning when they begin a new job and come to a comm center with elevated expectations of the program and trainers.

 

  1. Understand the stress of learning: The more life-changing events an adult encounters, the more likely they are to seek out learning opportunities. Just as stress increases with the accumulation of life-changing events, the motivation to cope with change through engagement in a learning experience also increases. Realize that trainees may be excited, but also stressed about their new and exciting position.

 

  1. Encourage personal growth-The learning experiences that adults seek out on their own are directly related, at least in their perception, to the life-changing events that triggered the seeking. When entering a training course, many people feel they are growing as

 

  1. Acknowledge trainees’ transitions- Adults are generally willing to engage in learning experiences before, after, or even during the life-changing transition. Once convinced that the change is a certainty, adults will engage in learning that promises to help them cope with the transition. They come to training expecting this help.

 

  1. Make learning useful- Adults who are motivated to seek out a learning experience do so primarily because they have a use for the knowledge or skill being sought. Learning is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This means that when beginning each learning event, a trainee must know that the learning is useful in some way.

 

  1. Give positive feedback when due- Increasing or maintaining one’s sense of self-esteem and pleasure are strong secondary motivators for engaging in learning experiences. Nothing can downshift a trainee more than feelings of failure or low self-worth to the trainer or agency.

 

Training Design

 

  1. Focus on single concepts- Adult learners prefer single-concept, single-theory courses that focus heavily on the application of the idea to relevant problems. Most trainees are willing to do what it takes to learn it.

 

  1. Value past trainee experience – Adults need to be able to integrate new ideas with what they already know to retain and apply the latest ideas. The trainees’ prior experiences must be valued.

 

  1. Ensure information is timely – Information that conflicts with what is already believed to be true, which forces a reevaluation of the old material, can confuse a trainee. It helps to find out what a trainee must unlearn before moving forward; otherwise, trainees may appear to be slow or resistant to learning new information.

 

  1. Incorporate new material- Information that has little conceptual overlap with what a trainee already knows needs to be acquired The use of metaphors and previous experience works well to help trainees process new material (e.g.. “Like when you…”).

 

  1. Keep an even training pace- Fast-paced, complex, or unusual learning tasks can interfere with learning. Instead of using the “sink or swim” method, allow trainees to learn one step at a time.

 

  1. Don’t rush- Be aware that adults tend to overcompensate for being slower in some psychomotor learning tasks by being more accurate and making fewer trial-and-error ventures. These trainees may sometimes appear clumsy when they are simply being cautious.

 

  1. Encourage risk-taking- Adults tend to take errors personally and are more likely to let errors affect self-esteem. Therefore, they tend to apply tried-and-true solutions and take fewer risks. To risk, they must feel safe, not criticized.

 

  1. Ask trainees for feedback- First, trainers need to know what trainees think, so it helps to ask. Too often, trainers provide a DOR (daily observation report) of what they observe trainees have learned, but never ask the students about their own beliefs and learning needs. This can be a big mistake.

 

  1. Personalize training methods – Programs should be designed to accommodate viewpoints from individuals in different life stages who hold diverse value sets. This requires some two-way communication. Center training often is rigid and does not allow learners to be part of the review and design process.

 

  1. Understand each individual’s needs – A concept needs to be tailored for the individual being served. For example, does the person play golf? If so, using golf examples may help him understand a new concept.

 

  1. Encourage independent learning- Many adults prefer self-directed and self-designed learning projects to group-learning experiences led by a teacher. For example, have trainees ride with responders and create a project involving that experience so students can learn more than the officer’s opinion of dispatch.

 

  1. Don’t substitute one-on-one learning-Although books, programmed instruction, and the Internet have become popular training tools for adults in recent years, they are only one way of learning. Adults must interact with others to purge old knowledge and reflect

on what they have learned. Although every agency is looking for the magical quick fix to training time, there is none. There is no substitute for one-on-one instruction with a trainer.

 

  1. Try simulation training- Many trainers have found that simulation and step-by-step educational methods are effective in creating a safe environment to grow strong

 

  1. Don’t equate self-direction with isolation– Studies indicate that self-directed projects involve an average of 10 people who serve as resources, guides, encouragers, and even the professed self-directed learner gives lectures and short seminars positive ratings, especially when these events give the learner face-to-face, one-on-one access to an expert. Bring in experts from other fields to expose a trainee to multiple resources.

 

Training Atmosphere

  1. Create a comfortable learning environment – The learning environment must be both physically and psychologically comfortable. Consider what is happening on the floor, what trainees are hearing without permission, how others treat trainees, and if trainees are getting enough rest.

 

  1. Acknowledge boundaries Self- esteem and ego are on the line when trainees are asked to risk trying a new behavior in front of peers and demanding trainers. Bad experiences, feelings about authority, and the preoccupation with events outside the classroom affect long-term employment.

 

  1. Define expectations – It is critical for trainers to take the time early in the training to clarify and articulate all expectations before delving into the content. The trainer can assume responsibility only for their own expectations, not for those of the students. Trainers must be clear about their roles and provide a safe atmosphere for learning it is up to the trainee to learn.

 

  1. Encourage dialogue with peers- Adults bring a great deal of life experience into the classroom, an invaluable asset to be acknowledged, tapped, and Adults can learn well and much from dialogue with respected peers.

 

  1. Ask the right kind of questions- Instructors who tend to hold forth rather than facilitate can hold that tendency in check-or compensate for it-by concentrating on the use of open-ended questions to draw out relevant student knowledge and experience. This works!

 

  1. Learn from each other- New knowledge has to be integrated with previous knowledge and students must actively participate in the learning experience. The learner is dependent upon the trainer for confirming feedback on skill practice. The trainer is dependent on the learner for feedback about curriculum and in-class performance.

 

  1. Create a balanced learning environment. The key to being a successful trainer is that the trainer must balance presenting new material, moderate debate and discussion, and sharing relevant student experiences against the ticking of the clock. Ironically, it seems that trainers are best able to establish control when they risk giving it up. When they set aside their egos and resist the tendency to be threatened by challenges to their plans and methods, they gain the kind of facilitative control needed to effect adult learning.

 

  1. Moderate disagreements- The trainer has to protect minority opinion, keep disagreements civil and unheated, make connections among various opinions and ideas, and keep reminding the group of the variety of potential solutions to. The trainer is less an advocate than an orchestrator.

 

  1. Be patient with trainees – the integration of new knowledge and skills requires a transition time and focused effort on application. This is when you see stalling or gaps-it’s natural and

 

  1. Don’t stick with just facts– Learning and teaching theories function better as ways to understand and motivate rather than facts to disprove.

 

Conclusion

An agency seldom suspects that the methods it is using to educate and train adults are ineffective and even detrimental to the learning process. Agency managers must recognize that human resources are precious and that each person who comes to the profession willing and eager to learn should have the opportunity to do so. The work of the agency trainer and training program is to create an adult-learning atmosphere that is safe and supportive. If such an atmosphere is created and maintained, then, and only then, is it the responsibility of the adult to thrive

 

Ref: The Adult Learner 9th Edition by Malcolm S. Knowles (Author)