[MUSIC] Welcome to this eighth and last of the courses in the program, and you have already been through weeks one and two. With Tony Townsend and Sherif. And underpinning I think everything I think that we've talked about so far is this issue of relationships. Relationships are key to everything that happens in the classroom. And beyond the classroom and the school and in the community relationships with parents relationships with the wider outside world but crucially here we're looking at relationships as they play out in the classroom with young people and what they teach us. So, first of all, I think what you have emphasized, Tony, for us throughout this, is that context matters. That when we talk about teaching and learning in Australia, we talk about teaching and learning in the Maldives. We're talking about very different kinds of cultural contexts, very different kinds of constraints, and very different kinds of opportunity. So, when we look at behavior, we look at not just the outward expression of what's happening, but we have to understand some of the deeper lying issues. Beyond these presenting symptoms that often teachers simply respond to rather then trying to get beneath what that behavior means to the young person themselves. And the roots of that behavior in their own personal psychology and their social interactions. With other people so if I come to you first of all Tony is that a fair reflection of what you have been saying over the course of these first two weeks. >> Thanks John I think what we're trying to do is to provide people with an understanding. That behavior is much more complex than perhaps some teachers recognize. And that behind a particular piece of behavior that a student displays, there is a lot of thinking that goes on as well. So, if we only respond to the behavior, and we don't try to work through what students are thinking, we're always going to be behind, the way in which we need to respond to students. And what I was suggesting in the course, is that, it's possible to address people's behavior by asking them to think in a different way. And one of the programs that we looked at was the power of positive thinking, and the power of positive questioning. And what I'm assuming is that the more we ask questions of students, the more we get to know them, the better we're able to respond to the types of the behavior that they display. >> In a very different context of the Maldives [INAUDIBLE] are these issues the same or do we need to understand them quite differently because we have a whole different set of constraints and opportunities? To be taken into consideration Raz. >> Well in in the mornings we have been ow our school system has been a very passive sort of teaching for a very long time the curriculum as well as the teacher training all has been based on. Where the teacher is the boss so, people have been reacting to behaviors for quite some time. However, with recent education and changes in in our curriculum, now we are more geared towards. Addressing certain behaviors through questioning and this has been a change that is brought about since the early 1990s in the morning curriculum. >> Great thanks thanks very much for that lets move on a little to. What you discussed laterally and again a kind of a key underpinning seam through all of these courses that is the issue of questioning, you recognize that, from anytime we have spent in school ourselves as pupils that's what teachers do. Teachers ask questions. Actually, do we? Did we as students, as pupils, ever ask the questions? It seems to be that that is the role of teachers. To ask the questions. And often, it would appear, to ask questions to which they already. Know the answers so that questioning becomes a bit of a guessing game. What's in the teachers head. So the issue is how do we as teachers create more of a dialog. More of an interchange in which we're seeking for meaning. Dialogue, dialogues, meaning flowing through it. Trying to get it the essential meaning of what we are learning. And that's a challenging issue for teachers I think because that q and a, question, answer, question, answer is really typical of classrooms and I guess not just. In Australia and not just in the Maldives, but just about everywhere else. How do you respond to that very challenging question of questioning? Tony. >> Well, I think that the situation in terms of asking questions is exactly the same as anything else in learning. That what we need to do is by starting out with less challenging questions by helping young people to understand how questions operate and how they create opportunities for us to think about new things and then as young people become more experienced. We can ask them more complex questions and we can ask them things that are perhaps a little bit more controversial. But I would suggest that if we're looking at questions, the most important thing that we do is to make sure that we ask questions that will enable a student to get a positive outcome. From their response. >> I mentioned that in, Maldives context, as we have seen in Ghana as we have seen in Malaysia often it seems to be a bit exposing. A bit unsettling for a teacher to ask questions to which they don't know the answer to open, to ask open-ended questions. And I wonder, to what extent, in the Maldives, that presents an issue for teachers. Would you care to comment for us? >> Well, that has been an issue, in, especially in the islands of the Maldives, where, there are less trained teachers. However, is, indication, is teacher training institutions, we actually try to encourage our teacher. Our student teachers to focus on questioning, and also to have an open mind. This has been sort of filtering into the system now. But. I wouldn't say that it's, it has filtered, into the, sort of remote areas of the country yet. However, in the capital, we see a lot of teachers nowadays, asking questions for which they wouldn't know the answers. And also confident enough to accept that, they don't know, the answers. So that there are these sort of practices now happening in the, in the capital. >> Right. Thanks very much to both of you. We'll be seeing you again at the end of Weeks Three and Four, and then again at the end of Weeks Five and Six. Thanks very much. [MUSIC]
