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Identity - Belief - Ability - Behaviour - Environment:

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" - Chinese proverb

It means it is way better to acquire your own ability rather than to wait for the environment to be bountiful. Performing the fishing behaviour, for example, is the result of a learning process, made of trials and errors, up to the mastery of the skill. Human beings live in an "environment", they "behave" and do stuff. Some actions are better labelled as part of a "skill". The sum of skills of a person is consistent with her/his "beliefs". The sum of beliefs constitutes her/his "identity". It means that, facing an outcome (generally a mishap while learning), criticisms and readjustments from the tutor can be targetted on the appropriate level: the environment level ("the weather is not good today"), the behaviour ("when you write you should take care of the punctuation also"), the ability ("your writing skill is good enough to start your own journal"), the belief ("a good writing skill is necessary in order to publish a good article in newspaper"), the identity ("I am a journalist to-be") (and the spirituality ("we are all creatures of God")).
When a student succeeds over peers, the efficient behaviour should be praised, the ability should be reinforced, some beliefs could be confirmed and sometimes the identity should be made stronger. It depends. Too much blind self-confidence is sometimes harmful. Some beliefs should not be too much reinforced and some abilities / behaviours are bad for the society, contrary to a good morality, Nature, Life, Earth, etc. This is why, when the student associates a meaning to an action, for example saying "I'm the best, you are all just a bunch of weak losers!", the tutor always reframes the meaning into something like "Your actions were well thought and the others could learn from it, would you be strong enough to share how you do it?" if the student has too much of a strong blind self-confidence, or reframe into "That was great, you're good at it, now you know how to do this" if the student needs a boost for self-confidence.

To develop knowledge, there are several levels of the human experience to consider, according to Bateson (in "The ecology of mind").
1. The IDENTITY level: briefly, the individual should consider her/himself as worthwhile, having a feeling of its own existence, as a whole person. If the student believes "I am a sportive athlete", it can be very different than "I am a researcher". In some cases, there is no use to stuff academic knowledge content; it just won't work. Rebuilding an identity is extremely difficult because it is the summary of all what a person is. Especially, it is the sum of all deep beliefs about oneself. Besides acquiring external aid, OakEdu could help influence the identity only over an extended period of time (10000+ hours, option psychotherapy, see feasibility phase).
2. The BELIEF level: this is the "I believe in". A student believing she/he's a sportive athlete could believe "I can't write poetry because only weak people write, but I am strong, I am a strong athlete". The beliefs are the collection of mental representations about how the world behaves, what are my abilities, what attitude is appropriate to what situation, etc. Believing "learning is fun, good, positive and, later on, leads to success" is an excellent belief. Believing you can do it is a prerequisite to learn in good conditions. Abilities can develop only if the overall individual believes this is good for her/himself; because the mind is a system, it will reject anything potentially too unbalancing. Because all beliefs of the student are the result of years and years of accumulated experiences, they are consequently difficult to change. However, OakEdu could bend some of them, curbing the edge of the most limiting ones, if given enough working time (8000+ hours).
3. The ABILITY level: the "know-how" consists in a collection of skills, that is how to add numbers in your head, math problem solving, how to drive a car, how to write an essay, how to... Given a stable identity and a set of good beliefs, the skillset is really what matters the most in any education. The capacities are slowly built up out of extensive behavioural practice all along life. The amount and quality of experience determine the level of the skill. OakEdu's pedagogy is focused on the skills, accumulation of efficient behaviours.
4. The BEHAVIOUR level: this is the "to do". The actions are performed, the operations are done, the talk is expressed and the body is put in motion. Typical behaviours are to read aloud accurately, to ask / listen to others, to run, to stop at a red light, to make an addition, to cite 5 countries in Africa, to write an essay in 5 pages. All educational activities of OakEdu are on this level, because everything starts when you do something.
5. The ENVIRONMENT level: this is the "where, when" and all the contextual parameters in which all behaviours are happening. This is the place where every individual is living, working, learning... This is the easiest level to change, because you can just change room or take the bus away. This is also the level which yields the least lasting results, the most superficial outcomes. Because some behaviours are more appropriate in some contexts than some others, OakEdu can change the environment if the option "outdoor" is selected in the feasibility phase. Else, OakEdu's environment is stable and knowledge-rich enough to justify no change of environment.
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