Sit cross legged on the desk, close your eyes. Think clearness. Think about all that makes it what it is. ooommmmmmmmm. Gently strike the singing bowl. ooommmmmm.

“Zen uses the phrase “no-mind” to designate this state. No-mind does not mean a mindless state per se, it is a mind that is open to everything. It means that there is no conscious activity of the mind that is associated with ego-consciousness in the everyday standpoint. (Stanford – accessed March 9, 2021).

To paraphrase: no-teach does not mean a teachless state. Nor does it mean that there is no teaching. It means that there is no conscious activity of the mind in the learner about learning and being taught. It means that the instructor is not explicitly saying learn this, remember that, do it this way, here is how to think, here is what to think, be a parrot. We believe that the best learning is what you learn, absorb, assimilate, perhaps without knowing it in the moment. Using the new learning and thinking as a habit, by default. The student is ‘changed’ without necessarily recognizing or being aware of what was taught, what was learned. They use the new knowledge and skills without thinking about the actual teaching. This is in the beginning and the students can be made self-aware of the learning and the value of the learning in due course, and then do deliberate practice to improve their ability to use the knowledge and skills.

Depending on how self-aware and mindful a student is, they may or may not ever be aware of what they learned, how the no-teach method changed them. Often, we have had students say 'we learned nothing in that class', because there were no facts to recite, and no specific rules or recipes to follow without thinking. Without memorizing, there must not be any learning, right? When pressed about observed practices, behaviours, and problem-solving processes in later years, the light sometimes comes on; 'oh, you are doing xyz, where did you learn how to do that, think that way?... oh.

Observations…

• The cycles of no-teach and epiphany, raised consciousness can be relatively short within a lecture, activity, or across the term.

• Various methods are needed to do no-teach; the Socratic method, constructive failure, reflections, think-pair-share, peer instruction, narrative learning, flipping, blending, qualitative rubrics, and experiential learning.
• No-teach it is more akin to coaching and mentoring.
• No-teach is like a symphony with the instructor being the conductor, and those in the orchestra seeing the music for the first time, never having heard it before either; the conductor sets the stage, explains it to some degree, helps the orchestra interpret it, but doesn’t really teach it note-by-note to the orchestra members.
• The conductor needs to know how long to let the orchestra play something and then went to stop the orchestra, discuss what they have just done, provide guidance, and have another go at it.
• The conductor needs to have a general plan and an idea of what the journey is going to be, but be very flexible in terms of the sequence, backtracking, eating mistakes, and dancing the dance.
• In some ways a no-teach course is similar to a design or studio course where there may be no memorization of facts, no recipes to recite, but with the focus on foundational knowledge, understanding, comprehension, applying, analysing, synthesizing, and evaluation.
• There needs to be sufficient guidance and assessment methods to help structure the students’ learning, to reinforce, and to provide deliberate practice with all of the implications of feedback, forgiveness of early mistakes, and a supportive environment to “figure it out”.
• The assessments need to be designed so that at the end of the course the instructor is able to assess each student’s mastery of the learning outcomes baked into the process; there has to be enough points of assessment with a focus on both the how and the what, and a learning curve approach taken that discounts the early part of the term and emphasizes on what was learned by the end of the term.
• The assessments and rubrics must be designed so that the students understand what the baseline was for the assessment, what the better responses were, what common mistakes were made, and what they should work on for improvement.
• Some of the assessments where something is totally new to the students might have to be given full marks after the students have done the assessment; using the first assessment as a burner, and as a learning exercise. Not as part of the marks although the students should not know this at the time.
• It is about helping the students learn to learn, how to learn, be self-aware and mindful of their learning.
• To the students, there should be an element of surprise, uncertainty, lack of predictability, a sense of anticipation, but not to the extreme level that creates dysfunctionality. It should appear to the students almost chaotic and without planning even though everything may be planned by the instructor.
• It is important to have teaching assistants who are former students of the class, or have sufficient maturity and experience to participate in the no-teach method.
• At the beginning of term, the large journey should be shared with the students with full transparency with respect to learning outcomes, with the description and discussion about methodologies to be used.

• Reflections and reflections about reflecting will help the students as they go through the journey; helping them become self aware and mindful about what they are learning without you having to tell them what they are learning.
• It is necessary to do a class pledge and ask the students to do a pinky swear not to share the details of the course with future students or to post about the course process. The pledge is done at the beginning of the term, with a reminder during the term, and a discussion about the pledge and why it is important at the end of term. Some of the students will not share because they understand the learning process and that future students will not learn the same lessons if all the secrets are shared. Other students will not share because they want future students to suffer the same way. Either way, it works.
• It is likely that the major learning and value recognition does not occur until the end of term or even into the next term or even later; so this can impact teaching evaluations and merit reviews, and it is possible that the students will never actually recognize what they learned and where they learned it, they just learned it and used it.
• At the end of the term, there should be a major deliverable that the students did not think was possible at the beginning of the term but were able to pull off, without any explicit training or teaching by the instructor; this is discussed with the class and the learning outcomes from the term are also discussed, the students can take pride in what they were able to do and this helps with confidence and skills development.
• An instructor should not attempt no-teach until they have sufficient experience and skill at the various methods being used and the course material being taught.
• The students should not feel that the instructor is experimenting with the methods at the same time as no teach; while many students like to think that their institution and program is innovative and leading edge, they do not want to be the ones doing the innovating or leaving.
• If possible, an instructor trying the no-teach method should find a mentor and several other instructors to help provide guidance on the course design and delivery.
• Junior instructors should focus on the basic methods and probably get tenure or the equivalent before attempting a full no-teach model; it is not rocket science and you do not have to be really talented, but you need to be brave and willing to take the risks in a controlled way.

Further reading

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#:~:text=Zen%20uses%20the%20phrase%20%E2%80%9Cno,consciousness%20in%20the%20everyday%20standpoint.
• Vermunt, J.D.H.M. and F. A.W.M van Rijswijk (1988), Analysis and development of students' skill in selfregulated learning. Higher Education, 17, pp. 647-682.