Friday, June 02, 2017

Standardization or creativity / Henry Ford 'factory schools' or John Dewey experiential learning

'We don't need your education' Pink Floyd

Education Readings for Creative Teaching

By Allan Alach

I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it to me at allanalach@inspire.net.nz

Fidget spinner fad may point to deeper problem in the classroom
‘We need to look at making the curriculum more engaging so that fewer kids need fidgeting toys. Fidget spinners are the hottest new gadget among school children, and while they're billed as useful tools to help kids focus, a University of Ottawa professor believes schools need to better accommodate students who get fidgety and need to move.’

Arts-Based Research: Surprise and Self-Motivation
‘A sense of delight in learning comes as much from encountering what you hadn't expected as it does from seeing a project shake out the way you intended it. I love project-based learning for the sense of accomplishment it engenders in students, but I miss the sense of surprise -- the notion that anything can happen. While it's important to help kids see the path that will enable them to succeed, I also want them to get lost from time to time -- not to take the road less traveled, but to leave roads altogether in favor of the forest.

Education Technology as 'The New Normal’
I’m well known, I think, for fierce criticisms and cautions about education technology, and what I’ve prepared today is perhaps even darker and more polemical than I’d like, strikingly so on this beautiful campus. I confess: I am feeling incredibly concerned about the direction the world is taking – politically, environmentally, economically, intellectually, institutionally, technologically. Trump. Digital technologies, even education technologies, are implicated in all of this, and if we are not careful, we are going to make things worse.

Boxing Creativity
‘There is a major difference between telling someone they can be creative and telling someone how to be creative. I'm firmly in the Everyone Is Creative camp. I don't even mean that with the qualifier, "Until it's beaten out of them by school/work/life/the Trunchbull." I mean every single person on Earth, and everyone living in the secret moon base established by NASA in the '70s, has the innate ability to be creative. And every one of us uses that ability on a regular basis.’

OPINION: It’s time to stop the clock on math anxiety. Here’s the latest research on how
Jo Boaler
Jo Boaler:
‘Unfortunately math continues to be taught in ways that are far removed from the research evidence on ways to teach well, and many ineffective classroom practices – timed tests, speed pressure, procedural teaching – are the reasons for the vast numbers of children and adults with math anxiety. They are also the reason that so many high-achieving students leave not only mathematics but the numerous STEM courses that require mathematics.’

Contributed by Bruce Hammonds:

Personalized Learning Pathways & the Gig Economy
Students need to be prepared for short-term jobs and not expect full-time employment. How empowering is that?  Sounds like the goal of this radical re-imagining of education is to produce workers willing to eek out a precarious existence in the gig economy.’

The Loose Parts Movement: Bringing Adventure, Nature and Imagination Back to Children’s Play Time
From Wayne Morris:
This is what is missing
‘It is a disappointing thing to see new playgrounds developed in city spaces sit there empty each day, or to walk in the park and hear no laughter. What is missing here is not the children per se, but materials and environments that create challenge, imagination, and creativity that make children want to play outdoors. The absence of such play environments is not only influencing the quantity and quality of children’s play, but also affecting children’s health and well-being.’

Sight Words Are So 2016: New Study Finds the Real Key to Early Literacy
This article supplied by Anne Mace  relates to what creative teachers in NZ  believe. Simply put, children who used invented spelling developed stronger reading skills over time, regardless of their existing vocabulary, alphabetic knowledge, or word reading skills.So, what exactly is invented spelling? Invented spelling refers to a young child’s beginning attempts to spell words. Using what they know and understand about letters and writing, children who use invented spelling are encouraged to create their own spellings based on their own phonetic knowledge.

Efficiency Can Cost Education
There are very good reasons to resist (or at least be skeptical of) efforts to drive "efficiency" in public education.
‘One of the biggest reasons is that any attempt to maximize efficiency automatically elevates
Efficiency kills creativity!
some might say inflates – the role of performance metrics. Once we decide which indicators are going to define success and then set people off to find the swiftest and cheapest way to get those outcomes, we can begin to distort complex enterprises. Other outcomes become expendable, even if those outcomes are important.

From Bruce’s ‘goldie oldies’ file:

Written in 76 - so what is new?
John Holt - still relevant
Making use of students own experiences, question and concerns as the basis for learning is still an important issue, as is making full use of the immediate environment. This is all the more important these days as far too many children spent too much time receiving a second hand edited world through TV and computer screens.From their own questions and concerns, and through environmental explorations, 'emerge' real reasons to write , read, to count and measure, and to make art. All students need are teachers with the 'artistry' and confidence to take advantage and amplify such learning opportunities.

Need to savoir the experience
Slow food movement - and teaching as well!
We need an educational equivalent of the ‘slow food’ movement
‘We now need an educational equivalent of the ‘slow food movement’ so as to value the richness and relevance of any learning experience. Students need to appreciate that the act of learning is at the very heart of their identity and a high quality life and as such should not be rushed.The standardized ‘fast education’, as exemplified by the curriculum statements of the past decades, has resulted in a loss of appetite for real learning. There is just no time.’

Putting the heart back into teaching.
‘Learning is about relationships. Relationships with content and with people who help us acquire it.
It is about having mind changing experiences that tap into our desire to make meaning and express what we know.To be attracted to an area of learning relates to what attracts our attention and whether or not we want to put in the energy in to learn more. Curiosity is at the basis of all learning.’




Time to end educational standardization  !

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