What I believe about how students learn
Students learn in many different ways. Gardiner's multiple intelligences gives some guidance, but only a little, the important thing is that they do learn in different ways and need to be given as many entry points or hooks as possible for learning.
Students construct mental models or understandings (1), the way students do that is highly individual. That means that students need to be given as many possible representations of the subject area as practical. We cannot predict the order or manner in which they will construct their understandings, that is why it is best if students are exposed to a rich set of learning materials and that they have some degree of autonomy in what order they engage with those materials.
For these reasons believe in self directed and project based learning. But I do abhor the occasional excesses of constructivism. There is a time for teaching content. Students cannot be expected to discover content just by being placed in an enriched environment, some stuff just has to be taught. Content is the building block for higher order thinking, unless students have a rich set of building blocks, they cannot do meaningful higher order thinking or problem solving.
The rate of discovery of human knowledge is increasing. Most of what is known has been discovered in our lifetimes. Our ability to access this knowledge base has increased with the Internet. It has been predicted that the sum of human knowledge will soon fit on a USB key (9). As a consequence, the teaching of content will become less important and the role of schools will be more about teaching students to be good problem solvers and learners (6).
Many of the problems that students will have to solve haven't been thought of yet. The skills that they most need are to be independent learners and to be able to solve ill-structured problems (7). Real world problems are ill-defined, they have poorly defined goal states, are multidisciplinary and have multiple or possibly no solutions. Schools should be equipping learners to solve real world problems. The real transfer issue for learning is, “does school learning transfer to real life?”, not “does project based learning X transfer to mathematics scores on standardised tests?”. This means that schools' horizons for self evaluation should extend far further than the end of year test results.
My vision for managing classes of students
I believe that education is best when it is authentic and relevant. Not all learning can be authentic and relevant, if it's the times tables, you just have to learn them, but when education can be authentic and relevant, it should be.
By relevant I mean important to self, by authentic I mean important to others. When you add the right tools and a collaborative environment you get the optimum situation for learning, a zone of proximal development, (4) or a state of flow (5).
Learning is best when it crosses subject boundaries, I believe the VELS (6) has got it right with its emphasis on multidisciplinary learning.
So my ideal classroom has students engaged in project based learning which crosses curriculum boundaries. Summative assessment is de-emphasised and collaborative learning is the norm (8). Students are working on projects which are relevant and authentic.
This may sound idealistic but I have run many classes which were like this (3) (8) (10) (11). Where students are disengaged from school, it is harder to involve students in project based learning. Greater levels of instruction and scaffolding are required but the goal remains the same, to move the students to a position where they are motivated to be independent and life long learners.
Tony Forster
17/5/08
Footnotes
http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/Game+programming%2C+the+...
(4) Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development
(5) Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's theory of flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
(6) The Victorian Essential Learning Standards http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/index.html
(7) Jonassen holds that the solving of ill-defined problems should be one of the main goals of education Towards a design theory of problem solving
http://www.springerlink.com/content/tnk3716r532x0827/
(8) In Energy Efficiency and Demand Management, part of the Masters of Sustainable Energy which I lecture, I award 15% of course marks for contributions to Blackboard discussions. Collaborative work is encouraged, there is no penalty for receiving help on the discussion forum.
(9) I can't locate this assertion, it was quoted at the MCEETYA conference on educational games. I think it may have been Dianne Oblinger quoting Marc Prensky.
(10) http://rupert.id.au/schoolgamemaker/computerclub/index.html
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