SHARE CONVENTION: "Off the Beaten Track: Unconventional Tasks for the 21st Century Classroom"

Off the Beaten Track: Unconventional Tasks for the 21st Century Classroom

By Mariano Quinterno

        This workshop was in charge of Mariano Quinterno. The main purpose of his workshop was to reflect about the activities that we use in the classroom and to see if they are really suitable for students of the 21^st century. Mariano began by saying: “There is no 21st century classroom, but 21st century classrooms”. That means that although the educational system has not changed so much throughout time, students´ interest and needs have really changed in the last decades.

  Descriptions of the 21st century classroom are overgeneralizations which do not take into account the huge number of educational contexts around the world. We as language teachers have to keep in mind that classrooms are not neutral territories.

   It does not matter what teaching method or approach we decide to use, it will not be effective if we design our lessons for an atemporal and decontextualized learner. He also said that each classroom and what happens inside has an impact beyond that particular context.

  Mariano mentioned the importance of using unconventional tasks since Why use unconventional tasks. It is really positive for our students because according to recent research in the field of neuroscience, novelty aids memory and contributes to meaningful learning. When educators use similar strategies too often, the classroom becomes a predictable environment and, as a result, learners´ motivation decreases easily. Besides, a region in the midbrain, which is responsible for regulating our motivation and reward-processing, responds better to novelty than to what is familiar.

Every time we decide to think of unconventional task, we need to keep in mind that these features have to be present in those tasks:

v  They must have both linguistic and educational value.

v  They must be divergent (i.e. they must encourage a range of possible responses).

v  They must be context-specific.

v  They must include an element of novelty.

v  They must encourage problem posing rather than problem solving.

    Finally, he showed us very practical examples of different unconventional tasks.

   I liked this workshop and I found it very interesting. I also liked the way in which the speaker presented the topic. He made me think that it is high time to start changing the conventional tasks, which normally appear on the course books we follow, because they are not suitable to students of the 21^st century. It seems that we do not take into account the reality they experience.  We should stop teaching about the Big Ben or the Tower of London because they are not meaningful to our students.