Differences in location
I still remember when my family moved from Minsk, Belarus, to Moscow, Russia. It was a huge change for us: a new country, city, and school. I was set to go into third grade. My parents sent me to one of the top schools in Moscow, not because I was a particularly smart kid, but because it was the most convenient choice for our family. When I stepped into my new classroom and listened to my new teachers, I vividly recall how difficult it was to grasp what they were trying to teach me. I was doing so badly in my classes that the school moved me from third to second grade. It was one of the most embarrassing things I experienced as a young kid. For years, I believed that I was a dumb person. I was the oldest in my class, the tallest, yet I had the worst grades out of everyone. Because everyone told me that I was dumb, I believed it; therefore, I always struggled in school.
Meyer and Land’s book “Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding” hit the nail on the head when they compared how students learn differently. When everyone said I was dumb, I wasn’t; I just needed more time to understand what they wanted me to know. It was difficult for me because it was a different environment with different expectations of school, culture, and learning style.
Although it was a negative experience in my life, I didn’t realize at that moment that the challenges I faced were only preparing me for my future when I had to move to another country again. Who would have thought that a struggling kid, who couldn’t get higher than a “C” in his “Russian” class and completely failed his “English” class, would one day be pursuing his doctoral studies in the USA while doing so in English! Overcoming Obstacles highlights these moments of how difficult experiences tend to build one’s character.
The wonderful thing about life for someone like me is that there is always hope. It can be hard to believe in yourself when you struggle with certain subjects, yet it is through failures that one finds growth. Understanding topics like philosophy, mathematics, physics, psychology, and biology hasn’t been easy for me. There’s a reason I am a pastor! Still, I am thankful that some people excel at what I was never good at. What I have learned is that through my efforts, the path to my calling became clearer, and my failures have refined my destiny and purpose in this world. The authors introduce the idea of “troublesome knowledge,” which is described as a “conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive experience.” It’s not a pleasant experience, but it’s something everyone who is passionate about knowledge gets to experience.
I have met both types of people: those who are obsessed with learning and those who struggle with it. Meyer and Land, in “Overcoming Barriers and Student Understanding,” primarily focus on recognizing the emotional challenges associated with learning and addressing the human aspect of supporting students.
Jan Meyer and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. (London, UK: Routledge, 2006)
#DLGP04
About the Author
Ivan Ostrovsky
2 responses to “Differences in location”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Ivan,
As someone who had to “repeat the second grade”, I can identify with the embarrassment that it caused you. But thankfully, the effort can pay off. Look at us now!
I appreciated your angle regarding the emotional aspect of learning and how it engages with the thresholds that we face. Do you think that there is a mindset or an approach that would help move troublesome knowledge from a “not pleasant experience” to something more palatable? Or, is the discomfort a propellent to help move us out of liminality?
Ivan,
You are right that different people learn in different ways. It’s unfortunate that you had to experience feeling dumb just because you hit a liminality. I also believed I was dumb for many years. I went to a large school and didn’t really understand what my teachers were teaching about. Like you, because I believed I was dumb, I stayed in that bounded thinking. I couldn’t get what was going on in my head to the paper in any understandable way. Reading “Affective Dimensions of Liminality” by Julie Rattray helped me to understand the psychological and emotional affect of threshold transformations. Our gained knowledge is not just cognitive but includes how someone feels about learning. They discovered that when a learner has hope, the personal ability to reach the goal, she has a better chance at learning success. Rattray writes of optimism, emotional security and resilience as positive ways towards transformation intellectually and emotionally.
You had the resilience to lead you past the negative learning experiences and to get you to a doctoral program in a second language. Hats off to you!
Rattray, Julie. 2016. “Affective Dimensions of Liminality” in Threshold Concepts in Practice. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers