Discovering Yourself

FROM CREATIVE EDUCATION TO SOMOL

SOMOL is an acronym standing for; ‘Self-Awareness Orientation Model for Learners’. SOMOL aims to answer the question: ‘which learners are we educating?’ From experience, the ‘who’, that is, the uniqueness and differences of learners in terms of their specific intelligences, values, interests, personalities, and learning styles, are hardly ever addressed as a priori prerequisites for the selection, orientation, teaching, learning, assessment of learners, and curriculum design for education programs.

In other words, there are hardly any pre-selection tests, educational guidance and counselling of learners, to determine their unique intelligences and learning styles (what learners can do), their values, interests, and personalities (what learners like doing or emotion control skills). In other words, learners are ‘squeezed into one-size-fits-all educational straitjackets’ in terms of teaching, learning, and assessment approaches.

SOMOL proposes on the contrary; an inclusive and equitable philosophy of education, tests for quickly and efficiently discovering learners’ intelligences, learning styles, values, interests, and personalities, and proposes multiple teaching-learning-assessment approaches, and accompanying policy reforms. It is hoped that the application of SOMOL will make education programmes more efficient and effective by facilitating learner self-directedness, self-control, self-motivation, and self-actualization.