Here is a train of insightful thoughts by Ariel Lindner on the AIV master. Please add your own testimony, either at the AIV master or in other place that shares some of these educational principles. – bzg

[…] the AIV dynamics is recreated every year and the sets of 'rules' emerges spontaneously within the group. This results in a group adoption of 'natural laws', minimising to absolute minimum (and in successful sessions/years) to zero any need for enforcement. True, we are there to guide this process, yet the guidance is very delicate, almost fragile (a quick thought… if anything I would write down set of rules' for the teachers/mentors and not for the AIV as a whole…).

There's much discussion in the literature concerning non-directive' teaching and obviously it's not a black/white definition. Guided by our intuition at first and spending long time together as researchers and friends enabled us, much like jazz or theatre improvisation, to be in tune as teachers and, most importantly, with the students. Indeed, part of a successful AIV session has to do with the fact that there is not on but 2-3 teachers with certain overlap but distinct background that create the right checks and balances to maintain the session both lively and enjoyable ('enjoyment' is critical…).

Deep listening is a key in this process. The other is to lead students as individuals within a group context to form their own ideas and extend them as much as they possibly can. This means to give just enough information in a dialogue so that the student feels he climbs the ladder on its own (this means also to 'protect' him from students around (and occasional teachers..) who are used to jump with the answers…). Very fast, if it works well, we reach the top of scientific knowledge and that's where things start to be exciting as all the group can contribute to chart the invisible/unknown steps ahead… It also means let everyone talk; by the third week students start loughing when we start a 'round table' dynamics (that surely is practiced in beida as i write…).

Too often we are focused on what we (students and teachers alike) know', and feel comfortable (to say the least) to share it with others. Expressing what we don't know is self-taken as ignorance, leading to uncomfortable feeling 'out-of-place', shame and shyness. This is emphasized even further when asymmetry between teachers and students is accentuated. At AIV, students literally don't enter the class if they did not expose their question on the subject of the session beforehand within the master's collaborative web platform. Teachers contribute their questions in the same manner to the same forum and often spike it as well as the 'live' session's discussion with 'naive' ('stupid') questions. At AIV, the barriers are easier to dismount as every student is a 'specialist' in his own domain, practically everyone in the room know something that others don't (including the teachers). Boosting their confidence in what they know and strengthening their 'home domain' is a resourceful way to get enough confidence to confront openly what they do not understand. (many argue persuasively that this is true for any one at any age).

Last aspect of AIV I briefly relate to (already got carried away, I promised myself 2 minutes writing…) is the notion of scales. Working in a dual mode of zooming-in-and-out and finding the right temporal dynamics to shift between the two scales (depending on the students, the subject, the day…) is again delicate and presents another layer of guidance' in our teaching. While the exercises on a year scale are organised in a zoom-in, zoom-out and finally in-and-out, at the session scale it is constantly at play. It allows the students to understand better the 'why we need to know this?' 'how to choose what we need to know about?' as well as 'how it works?'; each students feels better in a different scale, leading him to more perceptiveness at the scales in which he is less comfortable with.