Recall an experience where another person preformed all kinds of teaching or training tasks designed to help you learn yet you still unable to learn, what it was that hoped you learn. apply the distinction between teaching as a task term and teaching as an achievement term to your experience and list the activities or tasks the person preformed designed to help you learn. Then try to identify the factors and variables that you believed prevented you from learning. What does your analysis suggest for your own teaching practice.

Working in a hairdressing salon we were always having to do training nights. We would have different teachers come to the salon and teach us the latest styles and colours. We would have to have our own model that we would cut or colour their hair to how the teacher taught us. This all sounded good in theory but often would come unstuck. Everyone was at different stages of their learning career which made it hard for the teacher. She taught us the cut then asked us to cut our models hair. I found even though she was a great hairdresser she found it hard to break down, step by step what she was doing. I was wanting to learn how to do a graduated bob, but really didn't get it the first time. With hairdressing it is a lot about practice. She could show you but not explain the steps to you. It is often hard to work in a big group when learning a new haircut or skill. The task was to teach us a graduated bob which she did. The achievement was not really met as I could not really do it. I learnt parts of the bob from other haircuts I knew eg. bob, concave bob, but the part of the graduation was difficult and will require practice. I had to observe then do. Maybe if we would have written down the cut and I had a visual picture I would have had more success. Also practice on head block at the different angles to hold your hands would have been useful. I think learning a new haircut takes lots of different teaching techniques, visual , seeing how the haircut is preformed. Then getting students to drawn haircut. Then practice different angles of holding hands and scissors. Lastly starting out with the teacher going thru the cut step by step with you. Sectioning hair and making sure that section is correct before moving on to next section . It was a good learning tool for me on how not to teach and how students need lots of different ways to learn. Lastly I would make sure there were plenty of opportunities for further practice on the cut just learnt.