Friday, April 3, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Reflections of Workshop #9
Response Workshop #9
Christine Jenkins
March 6, 2009
Education in the 21st century must make a fundamental shift in the academic experiences of students. We need to change our definitions of school and learner to fit with our technological world. The common practice of setting standards for learning and applying those standards in a traditional classroom, and then measuring student achievement with paper and pencil tests is not the course for student improvement. It does not make economic sense to perpetuate classrooms of the 1950’s when we live and communicate in a global community. Current classroom systems will not be effective in this global community so we need to think of a new community system where school exists as only one way to learn.
Publishers and educators who believe that there is a panacea cure for reducing long term literacy failure are heading off in the wrong direction. Literacy in the 21st century will not be simply about learning to read and learning from reading. Students will need to be able to use a variety of global connections to find and validate information. As they synthesis new information, they will also need to collaborate with others as they use the information to problem solve.
I was reminded of the brave Ontario high school student who used “facebook” to organize young teenage drivers across the province to collectively express their displeasure at proposed legislation for newly licensed drivers. The premier of the province recanted the proposed legislative changes as direct result of the electronic petition. The speedy and effective campaign was initiated by a single student who had learned how to think and how to take risks in a community system.
I am also reminded of the two high school students who used the internet to express their outrage after witnessing a peer being harassed and bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school. Their global connection was the beginning of the pink T –shirt campaign which allows everyone to take a stand against bullying.
The combination of global connections and a community system of learning is the way that literacy can bring about social change. As educators we can no longer think about literacy as learning the basics of reading and writing. We can no longer think of curriculum as a prescriptive approach to content learning. In schools of the 21st century, students need think, reason, make decisions and demonstrate values that are consistent with a democratic society. Teachers need to engage students in real-world problems and questions that matter. If educators use a student-centered collaborative approach, using schools as a way for students to come together for joint projects, then literacy may be a way to create social change and schools may meet the needs or marginalized or at risk students.
Christine Jenkins
March 6, 2009
Education in the 21st century must make a fundamental shift in the academic experiences of students. We need to change our definitions of school and learner to fit with our technological world. The common practice of setting standards for learning and applying those standards in a traditional classroom, and then measuring student achievement with paper and pencil tests is not the course for student improvement. It does not make economic sense to perpetuate classrooms of the 1950’s when we live and communicate in a global community. Current classroom systems will not be effective in this global community so we need to think of a new community system where school exists as only one way to learn.
Publishers and educators who believe that there is a panacea cure for reducing long term literacy failure are heading off in the wrong direction. Literacy in the 21st century will not be simply about learning to read and learning from reading. Students will need to be able to use a variety of global connections to find and validate information. As they synthesis new information, they will also need to collaborate with others as they use the information to problem solve.
I was reminded of the brave Ontario high school student who used “facebook” to organize young teenage drivers across the province to collectively express their displeasure at proposed legislation for newly licensed drivers. The premier of the province recanted the proposed legislative changes as direct result of the electronic petition. The speedy and effective campaign was initiated by a single student who had learned how to think and how to take risks in a community system.
I am also reminded of the two high school students who used the internet to express their outrage after witnessing a peer being harassed and bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school. Their global connection was the beginning of the pink T –shirt campaign which allows everyone to take a stand against bullying.
The combination of global connections and a community system of learning is the way that literacy can bring about social change. As educators we can no longer think about literacy as learning the basics of reading and writing. We can no longer think of curriculum as a prescriptive approach to content learning. In schools of the 21st century, students need think, reason, make decisions and demonstrate values that are consistent with a democratic society. Teachers need to engage students in real-world problems and questions that matter. If educators use a student-centered collaborative approach, using schools as a way for students to come together for joint projects, then literacy may be a way to create social change and schools may meet the needs or marginalized or at risk students.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
reflections of workshop 7 & 8
My theory of learning confirmed by the articles is that all literacy learning needs to be rooted in a foundation of authenticity and meaning. Literacy learning is an active process, a problem solving approach of getting messages from text and sending messages in dialogue or writing. Learning is an interactive process as learners bring their own experiences to text and come to new understandings. Learners build new understandings by making connections to prior knowledge within the context of their own culture. Learning is thinking and thinking is represented by language. My adjusted theory of learning now includes critical literacy or using literacy and language as the foundation of citizenship and an agent of social change.
Not only do learners construct their own knowledge by making connections between known and new but they form that knowledge from their own perspective under the influence of what they value or through the filter of their own culture. Learning is a problem-solving, interactive process of making knowledge fit with prior knowledge. Teachers must teach from the perspective of the learner and assume nothing. Teachers must be wary of prescriptive programming, and even more wary of claims made by research conducted in a laboratory. Teachers must also be aware of how their own preconceptions such as the role of phonics or how their own middle class perspectives influence their thinking.
Learning is an interactive process carried out in a meaningful context. Learning is not a sequence of parts that come together to produce whole thinking. Literacy rooted in social practice highlights the merits of reading as a message getting and writing as a message sending activity. Message sending and message getting activities can be very complex when the social component is considered. Deeper understandings become possible in the context of authentic, purposeful negotiations of meanings. Deeper understandings mean thinking about the text or beyond the text not just within the text.
Talking is a representation of our thinking. As we interact with talk and explain our thinking, we can bring ourselves to new understandings as we negotiate meaning in dialogue with others. It reminds me of Vygotskian theory-Cognitive growth is “more likely when one is required to explain, elaborate, or defend one’s position to others as well as to oneself: striving for an explanation often makes a learner integrate and elaborate knowledge in new ways.” Vygotsky 1978
My theory of how we teach is driven by how we learn. Children come to school socialized to the task learning that is consistent with the primary culture of their home and family. Some students may have been socialized into a home environment where the parents value explicit teaching of item knowledge like the students from Roadville who are taught how to talk. Others may arrive at school from a home culture that values modelling like the students from Trackton who learn how to talk as a function of their environment. Gee, 1990, described two processes, learning and acquisition. It is as if Roadville parents represent learning and Trackton parents represent aquistion. As presented in Health’s article, ‘What No Bedtime Story’, neither process in isolation demonstrates long term positive outcomes in the secondary culture of school. It is more likely that a balance of showing and telling might represent the best instructional model of effective instruction. However, the balance of instruction might be very different for each child based on their home culture. The teacher needs to consider the social context and culture of prior learning to support the unique balance needed for new learning.
In addition, the primary socialization of children may be consistent or in stark contrast to the culture of the classroom. Orienting the child to a new culture, while valuing and supporting the primary culture is of utmost importance. Teaching from the perspective of the child, means understanding and valuing the child’s cultural perspective. I believe that school is very easy for children whose primary socialization is consistent with the culture of the school or the teacher. This thinking gives merit to the idea of the new ‘black” school soon to be coming in Toronto.
The culture of the classroom becomes the filter and the foundation for learning in school. Learning is fundamentally social so the classroom culture must support participation in cooperative learning activities and a safe environment to express ideas or questions. The language or the discourse of the classroom is representative of the thinking and therefore the culture. Teachers help students to develop the language that encourages critical thinking and reflects a democratic culture. Discourse that values the perspectives of others, words that encourage imagination, and phrases that suggest an equal distribution of power would be evident in a classroom culture that values citizenship and character education.
If the essential outcome of literacy is citizenship and social change then the culture of the discourse needs to be democratic. It could be said that citizenship, like learning, is a active, problem solving process serving as a catalyst towards social change. The discourse of the classroom becomes the language of the citizen. I believe that the character education focus in Ontario’s school might be much more successfully implemented if it was connected more clearly with Osbourne’s description of critical pedagogy.
My own teaching has been influenced
· The importance of process over content and product
· Creating dialogue with equal balance of power
· Supporting risk-free active participation
· Using dialogue to get to robust thinking
· Selecting resources representative of a pluralistic society
I was reminded of a quote from O’Reilley’s, The Peaceable Classroom, 1993, ‘I had gone off to be a teacher, asking myself from time to time if it might be possible to teach English in such a way that people would stop killing each other.’ The quote has a new meaning for me.
Not only do learners construct their own knowledge by making connections between known and new but they form that knowledge from their own perspective under the influence of what they value or through the filter of their own culture. Learning is a problem-solving, interactive process of making knowledge fit with prior knowledge. Teachers must teach from the perspective of the learner and assume nothing. Teachers must be wary of prescriptive programming, and even more wary of claims made by research conducted in a laboratory. Teachers must also be aware of how their own preconceptions such as the role of phonics or how their own middle class perspectives influence their thinking.
Learning is an interactive process carried out in a meaningful context. Learning is not a sequence of parts that come together to produce whole thinking. Literacy rooted in social practice highlights the merits of reading as a message getting and writing as a message sending activity. Message sending and message getting activities can be very complex when the social component is considered. Deeper understandings become possible in the context of authentic, purposeful negotiations of meanings. Deeper understandings mean thinking about the text or beyond the text not just within the text.
Talking is a representation of our thinking. As we interact with talk and explain our thinking, we can bring ourselves to new understandings as we negotiate meaning in dialogue with others. It reminds me of Vygotskian theory-Cognitive growth is “more likely when one is required to explain, elaborate, or defend one’s position to others as well as to oneself: striving for an explanation often makes a learner integrate and elaborate knowledge in new ways.” Vygotsky 1978
My theory of how we teach is driven by how we learn. Children come to school socialized to the task learning that is consistent with the primary culture of their home and family. Some students may have been socialized into a home environment where the parents value explicit teaching of item knowledge like the students from Roadville who are taught how to talk. Others may arrive at school from a home culture that values modelling like the students from Trackton who learn how to talk as a function of their environment. Gee, 1990, described two processes, learning and acquisition. It is as if Roadville parents represent learning and Trackton parents represent aquistion. As presented in Health’s article, ‘What No Bedtime Story’, neither process in isolation demonstrates long term positive outcomes in the secondary culture of school. It is more likely that a balance of showing and telling might represent the best instructional model of effective instruction. However, the balance of instruction might be very different for each child based on their home culture. The teacher needs to consider the social context and culture of prior learning to support the unique balance needed for new learning.
In addition, the primary socialization of children may be consistent or in stark contrast to the culture of the classroom. Orienting the child to a new culture, while valuing and supporting the primary culture is of utmost importance. Teaching from the perspective of the child, means understanding and valuing the child’s cultural perspective. I believe that school is very easy for children whose primary socialization is consistent with the culture of the school or the teacher. This thinking gives merit to the idea of the new ‘black” school soon to be coming in Toronto.
The culture of the classroom becomes the filter and the foundation for learning in school. Learning is fundamentally social so the classroom culture must support participation in cooperative learning activities and a safe environment to express ideas or questions. The language or the discourse of the classroom is representative of the thinking and therefore the culture. Teachers help students to develop the language that encourages critical thinking and reflects a democratic culture. Discourse that values the perspectives of others, words that encourage imagination, and phrases that suggest an equal distribution of power would be evident in a classroom culture that values citizenship and character education.
If the essential outcome of literacy is citizenship and social change then the culture of the discourse needs to be democratic. It could be said that citizenship, like learning, is a active, problem solving process serving as a catalyst towards social change. The discourse of the classroom becomes the language of the citizen. I believe that the character education focus in Ontario’s school might be much more successfully implemented if it was connected more clearly with Osbourne’s description of critical pedagogy.
My own teaching has been influenced
· The importance of process over content and product
· Creating dialogue with equal balance of power
· Supporting risk-free active participation
· Using dialogue to get to robust thinking
· Selecting resources representative of a pluralistic society
I was reminded of a quote from O’Reilley’s, The Peaceable Classroom, 1993, ‘I had gone off to be a teacher, asking myself from time to time if it might be possible to teach English in such a way that people would stop killing each other.’ The quote has a new meaning for me.
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