Sense of Coherence

:) Today was strange. The lectures were kinda rubbish and the last one started weird too... But sort or half-way through it he got to the point (I think!) when he explained what he's line of research was all about and I went YES! OF COURSE! (not out loud ;))

The lecture was about school democracy, influence and learning and the lecturer's research had shown that children, students, lack a sense of purpose/meaning with their studies. They quite often ask slightly "strange" questions (or at least they would be in any other situation than a class room) like should we be taking notes? Will this be on the exam? etc. and so on without actually being aware of why or what for they are there. Most of us agreed to have asked the same things ourselves on more than one occasion...! :]

School isn't always the place of learning that it is supposed to be, a lot of the time is a place where we are told what and how to think and act and are forced to do exams before we are ready. So there's the cramming of information the day before the test and the test doesn't take into consideration if the students have actually learnt whatever they are being tested on or if they've just produced the "right" answers to pass. Why not test students when they know the material? Why limit knowledge to one right answer??
A very interesting thought...

There was lots of other specifics to his research to that I'll not bore you with but the point he made (I think ;)) was that there needs to be a sense of coherence (also known as Salutogenesis or KASAM in Swedish) to one's studies. And this is when I wrote a big fat Yes!! in my note book! :D

I've heard and read about salutogenesis before, but never put it into a studying context where it of course makes perfect sense! :) Naturally meaningfulness and a sense of purpose is of utmost importance in the learning process! :D
Amen!

So, this sort of rubbish day turned out to be quite inspiring! ;)

I hope you've had a good day too.
♥ E.