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| BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING BY DISTANCE LEARNING | |
| SAMPLE COURSE SECTION | |
Here is some sample material from Unit One. As a first Unit, this provides an introduction and overview to the whole course. It focuses on orientating students to the mode of learning and on encouraging students to look at their styles of learning. It also lays the ground for the course, by starting to look at the Buddhist context and its rich history of studying the mind. Each Unit of the course is divided into four sections. Each of these contains written information and textual material, journal exercises to consolidate learning, discussion questions to be responded to on the student egroup. Unit one consists of thirty seven pages, Contents of Unit One are as follows: A sample from the beginning of Unit One follows. This constitutes part of the first section, which introduces the concept of learning. In the unit, this piece is followed by a quotation from Dr Carl Rogers's writing on student centred learning and further discussion questions. Please note that this sample shows text from the course and the formating of this web page is not the same as the original course. |
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SECTION 1: GETTING INTO LEARNING This section invites you to reflect on the process of learning. In undertaking this programme, you will need to be aware of your own learning process and your patterns of study and reflection. The section includes a quotation from the book "Freedom to learn" by Carl Rogers, a leading western theorist on both psychology and education and originator of the person-centred approach. This extract provides an interesting comparison with Buddhist thinking on learning and the development of awareness. To complete this section, - Read the introductory material on the learning process. - Complete Journal Exercises 1.A and 1.B - Complete Unit Exercise 1 - Read the extract from Freedom to Learn - Complete Unit Exercise 2 THE LEARNING PROCESS Undertaking a distance learning programme can be exciting, challenging, or it may be lonely. The process by which we learn is complex, and during this course we will be encouraging you to reflect on your own learning process. To begin, think about your previous experiences of education. You have probably experienced many types of teaching, formal and informal. You have almost certainly experienced school. This probably included formal classes, lectures, set exercises, solitary study periods, group activities, research projects. You will also have experiences of being taught as an adult: Driving lessons, adult education classes, demonstrations, correspondence courses, sports tuition, counselling training. You will also have many experiences of learning. Some will have arisen from the teaching you received, but learning and being taught are not always concurrent. Sometimes we feel we have been to a class and learned nothing. This is probably not actually true, but we may not have learned what was intended. Much learning is unplanned and incidental. Someone makes a remark and we have a sudden moment of realisation. We struggle with a new gadget and suddenly learn how it functions. We switch on the television and find ourselves rivetted by a documentary. Often learning is many levelled. We learn, say, how to bake a particular cake in a cookery class, but we probably also learn how to judge cooking temperatures, how to relate to our fellow students, the lay out of the building where the class happens, how to pass on a skill, both as demonstrated by the teacher and, perhaps, as we think we might do it better. What we learn is partly a function of what is taught, but also of what we are "warmed up to". If I am a teacher myself, I am more likely to watch the cookery teacher's teaching method. If I am a public health inspector, I may watch whether she uses her implements in unhygienic ways. In this way we naturally tend to specialise. Being "on a course" also warms us up to certain things. Recently I took a course on supervision and as a consequence found myself far more aware of the supervision process both when seeing my students and supervisees and when meeting my own supervisor. I found myself learning a lot about supervision just from the knowledge that I was "on the course", quite apart from what I was taught. Divide a page of your journal into two lengthways. Head one column "teachings received" and the other "learnings received". In the left hand column "brainstorm" (list in a fast, spontaneous, uncensored way) significant experiences of being taught, and then in the right hand column work out what learning you gained from those experiences and also list other experiences of learning. Reflect upon your two lists and the connections between how you learn and the teaching you receive. In particular, identify your own patterns of learning, and ways in which you can use distance learning to create a stimulating learning environment for yourself. Awareness of the learning process can in itself help us to learn. The development of a reflective approach accelerates our learning because we recognise what we have learned, thus reinforcing it. We also recognise learning opportunities, seeing life through different eyes. We may then be moved to seek out those situations which enhance learning. Buddhist method offers much that can practically be applied to the education process. In Buddhism we experience many types of learning. There are formal teachings. Buddhist practice is, however, experiential. It is a "learning by doing" approach in which direct experience is the route to understanding and learning from verbal transmission, though valued, is seen as secondary. So, there are parallels between experiential learning methods and Buddhist practice. Mindfulness practices involve "keeping in mind" a wholesome object (often the Buddha). Such practices bring awareness and learning by "warming us up" to wholesome possibilities. If we approach life with the Buddha or the Pure Land in mind, that is what we will perceive in our surroundings. We will learn to see that which is wholesome and growth promoting by holding wholesome subjects as the focus of our minds. The following questions can be used for reflection. Take one of the following questions and sit with it for a while. Perhaps hold it in your attention as you go through the day, or let it be a seed in a meditation. Record your impressions. - What is learning? - How is learning like Buddhist practice? - What have I learned today? - How do I know when I have learned something? Approaching this course, then, requires a number of skills. Some are introspective: self-discipline, reflection, study. Others are to do with the ability to communicate, to network and to sustain relationships even over large distances. With a world-wide catchment area, and a grounding in Buddhist practice, the course has the potential to create a rich, multi-culture environment in which we can all go beyond the limits of our individual experiences. e-group discussion: to start the egroup discussion on learning, please write a short paragraph on How I will learn on this course (200 words) and send it to the course egroup. Other people will also be sending their paragraphs. Read these and respond to them. In particular: a) ask other students questions that will help sharpen your understanding of what they mean. b) comment on similarities and differences between styles of learning c) comment on whether your answers point to characteristically Buddhist forms of learning. We will return to this discussion later in the course. |