Curriculum and “Learner Centered Ideology” Seminar Leaders: Davinder and Iren

“Anyone?” The Best Teacher Ever!

Introduction ● Curriculum: Although it is a slow movement, it is changing over time to cater for the changing needs in research, practice, society, enhanced scientific methods and technology. ● Learner Centered Ideology : We are aiming for the students to take initiative and leadership roles in the direction of their learning. Ideally we want to incorporate their social experiences and have them build on these. They bring in their own experiences where necessary and make understanding of their learning by relating it to their previous knowledge, culture, and social experience. ● Education: Education should offer opportunities for students to use and connect to their social consciousness in order to make meaning of their surroundings. ● Imagination : It can take a learner beyond what was intended, only if these opportunities are provided. ● Culture: Schools should offer opportunities to connect students to their past, demonstrating the beauty and charm of their traditions, language, and history represented by their parents.

“The situation would be very much the same if we should place a teacher who, according to our conception of the term, is scientifically prepared, in one of the public schools where the children are repressed in the spontaneous expression of their personality till they are almost like dead beings. In such a school the children, like butterflies mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place, the desk, spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired.” (Montessori)

The Underlying Values of the “Learner Centered Ideology” ●In your assigned groups, summarize the key underlying assumptions of this ideology in the articles (aims/purposes of curriculum, teachers/teaching, learners/learning, nature of knowledge, evaluation) ●Identify a quote from the text that encompasses these key values

Small Groups ●Simon, Joti, Carrie, Jenn Montessori, “A Critical Consideration of the New Pedagogy” ●Robyn, Todd, Kaitlin, Renuka Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed” ●Oli, Sharissa, Sheela, Amy Addams, “The Public School and the Immigrant Child” ●Belinda, Cherie, Angela, Peter Greene, “Curriculum and Consciousness”

Same Idea, Different Names ●1974: Eisner, Self-Actualization ●1992: Posner, Experiential and Cognitive ●1996: Schubert, Experientialist ●2004: Kliebard, Child Study ●2008: Schiro, Learner Centered

Key Values ●student-centered; learner as source of knowledge ●personal meaning; subjective reality ●student interests (internal/having worth) ●individualized ●freedom to choose ●learning environments focused on student interests

● Purpose: Schools should be enjoyable, stimulating, child-centered environments organized around the developmental needs and interests of children as those needs and interests present themselves from day to day. ● Teaching: Teachers should be aids to children, helping them learn by presenting them with experiences from which they can make meaning. ● Learning: Learning best takes place when children are motivated to actively engage in experiences that allow them to create their own knowledge and understanding of the world in which they live. ● Knowledge: The knowledge of most worth is the personal meaning of oneself and of one’s world that comes from one’s direct experience in the world and one’s personal response to such experience. ● Childhood: Childhood is essentially a time when children unfold according to their own innate natures, felt needs, organic impulses, and internal timetables. The focus is on children as they are during childhood rather than as they might be as adults. ● Evaluation: Evaluation should continuously diagnose children’s needs and growth so that further growth can be promoted by appropriate adjustment of their learning environment. It is primarily for the children’s benefit, not for comparing children with each other or measuring them against predetermined standards.

● focus not on the needs of society or the academic disciplines but on the needs and concerns of individuals; growth of learners is central ● schools should be enjoyable places where people develop naturally according to their own innate natures ● the goal of education is the growth of individuals, each in harmony with his or her own unique intellectual, social, emotional and physical attributes ● people contain their own capabilities for growth, are the agents who must actualize their own capabilities, and are essentially good in nature ● people are viewed as the source of content for the curriculum ● potential for growth lies within people; people are stimulated to grow and construct meaning as a result of interacting with their physical, intellectual, and social environments ● environments of work in which students can make meaning for themselves by interacting with students, teachers, ideas and things ● is the job of educators to create contexts which will stimulate growth in people as they construct meaning for themselves

Reflecting on Your Practice ●In your small groups, describe how this ideology is (or is not) practiced in your classrooms/schools/districts today ●If it is not truly practiced, be sure to identify external and/or internal factors that are inhibiting its practice

Out with the Old and in with the New?

To Be Continued… Next week will examine: ●dangers of compulsory, competitive schools ●learning by doing ●emphasis on freedom to think, do and be ●deschooling/unschooling ●free school movement/homeschooling (Holt and his personal experiences; Summerhill in England, Albany in New York)