May 3, 2012 – 3:06 pm
02. EDUCATION
Today’s challenge is to come up with ideas about the learning process. It might be something to do with how to learn things, ways in which testing could be improved, innovations in the classroom, ideas for topics that should be introduced, ways of getting smarter or tools for managing lesson plans. Completely over to you.
Having been involved in lots of conversations about pedagogy and curriculum recently, I get the sense that this is an area ripe for fresh ideas and new ways of thinking. So let’s hear what you’ve got!
We’re using a Creative Commons licence: Attribution, non-commercial, share alike. That is, you can use any of the ideas presented in the comments of this series of blog posts for any non-commercial use, as long as you give credit for whose idea it is, and that the thing you make is also shared in the same way..
But to make things easier for people who DO want to pick up any of the ideas here and run with them on a commercial basis – you have permission, so long as you ensure that you cut the person whose idea it is in for ONE PERCENT (1%). That’s only fair.
Look forward to seeing your ideas in the comments…
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I’m not educated about the history of education, but has anyone implemented learning systems based on personality types? Meyers-Briggs stands out, but I’m sure there are other great personality type tests, or perhaps learning styles (auditory, visual, etc.). For example, I can imagine walking in on the first day, meeting one-on-one with a counselor, taking tests, and being grouped with other ENFPs. Classes would lend themselves to be designed for those personality types. Classes could be arranged around pairing with other personality types and learning how to work together well. Emotional intelligence is highly underrated – it’s often not about what you know, but how you communicate with others and treat others that leads to problem solving, Wouldn’t knowing how you are wired and knowing how you best interact with others,that be a wonderful tool to leave schooling with?
The single most disruptive element in policy forming around education seems to be trust, or the lack of it. The need to constantly be metrically measuring the progress of every student in every subject has meant that ‘non-metric learning’ – all the importa stuff – gets abandoned. OFSTED have feedback in their assessments for the development of students, but it still has to fit on a form and be measured collectively, and be given a mark. None of which means anything for any individual student and their right/need to learn their own way. So, how do we bring trust back into education? How do we understand the shift away from trust? Is it just metricization, or is it about overly restrictive risk assessments? an emerging culture of litigation in education?
I’m very aware that my own teaching approach is utterly broken the minute a student (or their over-eager parents) want some way of measuring their progress with other people that doesn’t just involve ‘getting out there and making some music’. The graded exams for popular music are largely nonsense, but serve as a fabulous example of how metricisation breaks trust-based education.
…I’m running out of steam, and there’s soup waiting for me here, so I’ll be back later with more. Or ‘praps we’ll just do a podcast about it :D
@Steve Lawson:
Yes indeed, trust has been lost in education. Schools don’t even trust parents to read with 5-year olds, so the kids are sent home with books to read as ‘homework’. That, for me, takes part of the pleasure away from a child’s development, and the important child/parent relationship suffers if that really special bed time read is looked upon as ‘homework’.
So, I don’t have any innovation to suggest, but let’s bring back the trust.
I’ll rephrase one idea we heard on the streets of New York. A guy who’s making a nice career in the field said Visual Arts should be introduced and taught seriously to kids in grade school. As it is now, the “art teacher” often comes in once a week and therefore kids look at it as a hobby or something not that serious. If art (design, graphics, etc) was taught it would lead to more thoughtful and provocative leadership. He said it’s a viable way to make a living and should be considered as important as any other subject.
We liked that idea.
Not a teacher, but a parent. I loved school, how many kids say that now? In juniors every afternoon the teacher read aloud to us, we put our heads on the desk and relaxed listening to the lion the witch and the wardrobe and other classics, that fed my love of reading. Now they are tested on everything, no learning is for pleasure. In senior school they are given guided answers when studying text, their opinion is not required. All to get good grades. We had countless after school activities that enabled us to build a trusting relationship with teachers outside the classroom, we left school calm and relaxed, not hyper because we had been force fed all day with stuff that we don’t find relative to our lives now and pressurised and stressed in case we don’t get A* s in every subject. Working together is seen as cheating or collusion somthye have no team working skills when they get a job, there is a brilliant TED talk on this, which I will post if you are interested.
Read aloud groups are run all,over the country, and instead of dissecting texts, the emphasis is on enjoyment, relaxation and reflecting on what has been read, sharing personal experiences too. When we finish a novel, we know the characters, have lived their lives, and know more than anyone studying it at school will. Young offenders who are full of bravodo are listening to Dickens, and finally ‘getting it’ , older people, people from other cultures and faiths are sharing their experiences with people would never have met if they had not come to the grip. This is real learning, not the sausage factories we call schools. The ‘arts’ are there to be enjoyed, not endured.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html
I’m slightly biased here, given what we’re doing with Planzai in Higher Education. I think an area / idea that needs attention is motivating learners. There seems to be a large group of people who go to University but actually lack the motivation to learn, or it drains away. I think its down to a lack of inspiration that arises from a 1toN classroom and structure that doesn’t allow for tailoring. Is there a way to personalise teaching to continually inspire learners?
My idea is that schools begin to offer learning tracks apart from the written word.
Conventional education is skewed towards the reader– really giving an advantage in life and society to students who are good readers. The deck is stacked. Poor or lackluster readers are thought to be less intelligent and so on. Well, my point, might be best illustrated by an assembly manual. Some people prefer to read directions; some people prefer to see pictures of how something’s built and go from there. If it were school — the reader would have been honored and promoted. The person who relied on pictures? They would have faced the stigma about not being able to read. But they LEARNED how to put the thing together just as well (maybe better) than the reader.
The world is changing. Schools must catch up. (When I want to learn something these days I usually SEE how it’s done on youtube).
This is just an idea…a debate, I suppose is warranted. But not here.
@Dan: Personality types and learning styles pigeon hole students in my (and several other’s) opinion and have been widely discredited in the classroom. I also think that its healthy for differing personality types to engage with one another. I do think that its important for people to understand their personality type but know actually what it means rather than just being told you’re an ENTP for example.
We should stop boxing kids into being analytical and allow them to engage creatively. What benefit is an essay and a presentation that a story and a film couldn’t tell? Keep them jumping through the hoops of academia but in as an expressive way as possible! Especially in this digital, participatory age.