mirroring

during the question and answer period after last week’s talk at MICA someone brought up this post (improved interface design, not instinct), and asked if i knew anything about mirroring as a technique in early education and how it had been, according to the person asking the question, minimized as a technique over the past twenty years, and how some educators are attributing certain undesirable, difficult and minimally empathic behaviors in young people to this lack empathy in the technique of their teachers.

interesting.

here’s a link describing mirroring from an educator’s point of view.

mirroring is an interactive technique of listening, imitating, and adapting, for both student and teacher that seems to foster a sense of empathy. in brief, the idea seems to be one of implementing a lesson plan by using the vocabulary of a specific student.

take a moment and think about all your gripes about our current young generation.

take another moment and think about what you’ve been attributing those behaviors to: music, drugs, popular culture, ‘the computer’, ‘the internet’, ‘technology’, many, many other factors.

in addition to the lack of mirroring, the past twenty years also featured removal of civics classes from public schools, as well as the removal of art and music whenever the budget got tight.

the person who raised this point also went on to say that educators are concerned that they’ve ‘lost’ (her word) two generations, as the current younger crew will impart their values on their own kids.

mirroring is now becoming popular again in masters of education programs.

i didn’t catch the person’s name who raised these points, but i want to thank her.