What does the Science of Learning say?

Broadly speaking there are 4 main learning styles according to the VARK model; 1. Visual, 2. Auditory, 3. Reading/writing and 4. Kinesthetic. There are many other ways of classifying learning styles. Visual and Kinesthetic are more common. A lot of people are multi-modal, meaning they learn well with a combination of two styles. BE a Scholar Tuition focuses on 3 of the 4 styles; 1. Visual through visual representation of information, 2. Reading/writing through the Reading and Writing clubs and 3. kinesthetic, which is about doing something to reach their aspirations. Pupils who learn well by Auditory only are relatively rare. Therefore the “know the pupil” template will help to identify the learning style and adapt the personalised study plan.

The McRobotface Robotics Club is an example of focusing on Kinesthetic, where children learn programming by using a physical robot. They use visual instructions to build robots and I provide auditory commentary, highlighting the key features and explaining the context. It is difficult to cover all four learning styles simultaneously, as time and resources are finite. However, covering 3 out of 4 is a good fit for most pupils as more people are multimodal learners.

Piaget’s model of cognitive development

Piaget’s model of cognitive development for ages 8 to 13 covers the Concrete Operational Stage (7–11 years) and Formal Operational Stage (11+ years). The two stages are most relevant to BE a Scholar Tuition.

In the Concrete Operational Stage, children begin thinking logically about concrete (real-world) events. They understand conservation and reversibility. They develop decentration (the ability to consider multiple aspects of a situation at once). The latter stages of the programming, where they think logically about a relatable event, like crossing the road, and debugging programming lines, and creating a robust behaviour for a robot to reach a goal with multiple solutions. In the Formal Operational Stage (11+ years), Abstract and hypothetical thinking emerges. The concept of energy is introduced at the Robotics Club. Bio-inspired robotics helps them to abstract concepts from nature. They can use deductive reasoning (drawing conclusions from general principles), which is a good time to introduce the Scientific Method. The BE a Scholar Tuition approach to focus on the approach to studying will help them to develop metacognition (thinking about their own thinking). The students can think about how their performance are measurable and monitored and improved with sustainable increment changes to their study routine.

Supervised and Unsupervised learning

The goal is to motivate the student to demonstrate unsupervised learning. Unsupervised learning can be a bit random and lack the explainability. BE a Scholar Tuition provides guidance on visual representations, classical rhetoric, and benchmark on King’s Scholarship exam questions to ensure competitiveness. The unsupervised learning are in the form of visual representation so another person can understand the abstraction layers in the unsupervised learning and the visual representation can be reformed through classical rhetorics for effective communications with others.

Would an admission officer prefer a pupil with great exam results with less of a personal portfolio, or a pupil with good results and a unique portfolio? Someone highly coached or self driven? How did the pupil get to that level? The ratio of Supervised and Unsupervised learning may be an interesting measure, but more importantly how to communicate that ratio to the interviewed. Therefore, BE A Scholar Tuition tries to minimise the supervised learning and ensure the unsupervised learning as efficient as possible.

In Summary

How to be a scholar? BE a Scholar Tuition believes through the Science of Learning, ensure one is learning effectively and efficiently, looked at the cognitive development of the age from 8 to 13 (for Kings Scholarship) and the focus on making the best use of unsupervised learning through minimising the supervised learning will enable students to each “Scholarship level”. BE a Scholar Tuition also focuses on the final step which is to ensure the student can communicate effectively on their achievements (The interview part).

BE a Scholar Tuition provides value by ensuring the students can fully demonstrate their academic level is achieved by unsupervised learning with minimal supervised learning. Basically, the students want to reach their aspirations.

Compare and contrast this post from Episode 1 dated 29 November 2022 shows the conceptual evolution 2 years and 2 months on.