Done Learn Yerself Real Good
Educators get pulled in a lot of different directions. We gotta teach, we gotta coach, we gotta professionally develop, and we gotta put out more brushfires than Smokey the Bear.
One thing that is always pulling on teachers is the curriculum, the massive document that dictates what we, as educators, are professionally obligated to teach. You get to know that document well, and you keep knowing it well until it gets totally overhauled, which seems to happen once too often or not often enough, depending on the subject.
You love to hate it and hate to love it, the curriculum. It's nice to have a guiding document that sets out exactly what you should be doing in the classroom, but it also feels rigid and unyielding, like the bars of a cage. And like a cage, you can see right through it while you're trapped inside, watching freewheeling and experimental methods of teaching fly by unencumbered.
We hear a lot about letting students take charge of their own learning, and yet that curriculum is always hovering like a vulture, reminding you about the consequences of stepping out of line.
See what I mean about being pulled in different directions? Idealistic aims, often espoused at expensive professional development courses, run headlong into what the education system has relied on for centuries: a carefully (you'd hope) described and defined set of skills and information that everyone needs to know. What exactly are we supposed to do here?
Daniel Dillon's talk to our class emphasized self-directed and inquiry-based learning, and the exciting outcomes they can create. Who wouldn't want to teach in a school based entirely on those principles?
I am left, however, with questions. Should our education system totally move over to this kind of learning, at least in the upper years? What would be the logistical challenges of doing that? If only certain "experimental" schools use this system, and it proves to be more beneficial than standard teaching, then are we disadvantaging the large numbers of students who do not get to attend such schools?
Let me know your thoughts.
-cg
One thing that is always pulling on teachers is the curriculum, the massive document that dictates what we, as educators, are professionally obligated to teach. You get to know that document well, and you keep knowing it well until it gets totally overhauled, which seems to happen once too often or not often enough, depending on the subject.
You love to hate it and hate to love it, the curriculum. It's nice to have a guiding document that sets out exactly what you should be doing in the classroom, but it also feels rigid and unyielding, like the bars of a cage. And like a cage, you can see right through it while you're trapped inside, watching freewheeling and experimental methods of teaching fly by unencumbered.
We hear a lot about letting students take charge of their own learning, and yet that curriculum is always hovering like a vulture, reminding you about the consequences of stepping out of line.
See what I mean about being pulled in different directions? Idealistic aims, often espoused at expensive professional development courses, run headlong into what the education system has relied on for centuries: a carefully (you'd hope) described and defined set of skills and information that everyone needs to know. What exactly are we supposed to do here?
Daniel Dillon's talk to our class emphasized self-directed and inquiry-based learning, and the exciting outcomes they can create. Who wouldn't want to teach in a school based entirely on those principles?
I am left, however, with questions. Should our education system totally move over to this kind of learning, at least in the upper years? What would be the logistical challenges of doing that? If only certain "experimental" schools use this system, and it proves to be more beneficial than standard teaching, then are we disadvantaging the large numbers of students who do not get to attend such schools?
Let me know your thoughts.
-cg
Great questions - I hope a few brave classmates give their thoughts
ReplyDeleteThese are questions with no easy answers. I hesitate to attempt answering without studies to back up my ideas, but I will attempt to speculate. I do think that at least somewhat of a move towards self-directed learning would be a good idea. Giving students a greater degree of choice as to what they learn and what projects they undertake would help to foster their passions for learning and increase their engagement. The logistical issue, in my opinion, is that as students' learning becomes more and more self-directed, having all of the students in the same classroom, working on the same activity, becomes less and less useful. Assessment becomes difficult because of the diversity of the nature of what students produce; it is not easy to design a rubric that can be fairly applied to both a robotics project and a multimedia presentation. Certainly, a higher teacher-to-student ratio would ensure more explicit instruction and one-on-one teaching. If an experiment in self-directed learning proves to be advantageous, then perhaps it could be seen as disadvantaging students left out of the experiment, but it may be necessary in order to eventually make the educational experience as good as it can be for all students. Self-directed learning may very well be the best solution for education, but we need to test it in the real world to make that determination. More research into this subject is definitely warranted.
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