the petrified forest... The Banking Concept of Education the contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process…to become lifeless and petrified (Freire 57) based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness… (Freire 61) driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things. (Fromm)

the petrified forest... Wasteland of the Comprehensive High School The need for a high degree of engagement & personalization (Darling-Hammond, Sizer, Goodlad) Stronger sense of personal efficacy (Wood) Learning that is more learner-centered and more experiential and relevant to the outside world (Wood)

The Problem …in the name of the preservation of culture and knowledge we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture (Freire 63) and offers little opportunity for learners to engage in the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (Freire 58) the disconnect of schooling and student experience and reality, resulting in what Goodlad calls the extraordinary degree of student passivity.

The Problem KNOWLEDGE (something static and inorganic) + LEARNERS (inanimate receptacles for knowledge) the barren landscape of education

Essential Questions What should be the goal of education? What is necessary to achieve this goal? the learner the learning environment the process & product The Emerging Theory

Education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing. (21) …education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. (22) Dewey, 1938 Foundations of Theory What should be the goal of education?

Education as the practice of freedomas opposed to education as the practice of dominationdenies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from men. (Freire 64) Foundations of Theory What should be the goal of education?

the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (Freire 58)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the learner... Self-efficacy … the belief in ones capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations. (Bandura, 1995)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the learner... Learners and learning are part of a cycle: It is a movement from experiencing, to reflecting, to conceptualizing, to tinkering and problem solving, to integrating new learning with the self. (McCarthy, 2000)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the learning environment... an atmosphere in the classroom and the school where students feel secure and confident enough to interrogate their own realities, see them in a different light, and act on their developing convictions to change their own social reality. (Peterson 367)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the process and product... The principle that development of experience comes about through interaction means that education is essentially a social process…. (Dewey 1938)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the process and product... I assume that amid all uncertainties there is one permanent frame of reference: namely, the organic connection between education and personal experience…. (Dewey 1938)

Foundations of Theory What is necessary to achieve this goal? for the process and product... …a mode of analysis that stresses the breaks, discontinuities, and tensions in history all of which become valuable in that they highlight the centrality of human agency and struggle while simultaneously revealing the gap between society as it presently exists and society as it might be. (Giroux 51)

In summary... education is the practice of freedom, the questioning of our own realities, the interaction of the learner and the learning education must acknowledge and address the connectedness and transformative relationships of the leaner to his or her world education must be built on experience and within an ever-changing context

Curriculum, good curriculum, is like a forest. It is affected by the living organisms that inhabit it and it, in turn, affects them. It is not linear; events within and without a forest are transformative in a decidedly non- linear fashion. Learners interact with their learning environment, shaping their context, shaping themselves…transforming and transformed, for a better tomorrow..