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.<\/p>\n
Meyer and Land’s book \u201cOvercoming Barriers to Student Understanding\u201d hit the nail on the head when they compared how students learn differently. When everyone said I was dumb, I wasn\u2019t; 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.<\/p>\n
Although it was a negative experience in my life, I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t get higher than a \u201cC\u201d in his \u201cRussian\u201d class and completely failed his \u201cEnglish\u201d 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\u2019s character.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t been easy for me. There\u2019s 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 \u201ctroublesome knowledge,\u201d which is described as a \u201cconceptually difficult, counter-intuitive experience.\u201d It\u2019s not a pleasant experience, but it\u2019s something everyone who is passionate about knowledge gets to experience.<\/p>\n
I have met both types of people: those who are obsessed with learning and those who struggle with it. Meyer and Land, in \u201cOvercoming Barriers and Student Understanding,” primarily focus on recognizing the emotional challenges associated with learning and addressing the human aspect of supporting students.<\/p>\n
Jan Meyer and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. (London, UK: Routledge, 2006)<\/p>\n
#DLGP04<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40202,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40195\/revisions\/40202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}