"What great timing" I thought, seeing this week's edchatNZ topic, as this has been discussed at last weekend's Educamp in Hawkes Bay.
Due to me facilitating a blogging session on the Saturday, I was unable to attend the session around Modern Learning Practice and I was rightly exited to learn more.
My eFellowship inquiry last year, focused on Modern Learning Pedagogy and when following the chat, it was clear that many educators are starting to focus more on this.
However, I think that [at times] too many emphasis are being placed on the 'environments' rather than the practice.
In my opinion, UDL (Universal Design for Learning) could be incorporated into this context. I am looking forward to learning more in due course.
My Storify:
~ "Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." - Malcolm Z
I think you've "nailed it" .. too much emphasis IS being placed on environments rather than practice. It IS all abut the practice.. an the MOE focus on MLEs (with no authentic data/evidence) is worrying to say the least.
ReplyDeletehttp://challengingthinking.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/educational-mythology-wheres-ya-data.html
Kind regards
Robin
Thank you for your reply and the link to you post, Robin! I've enjoyed reading your thoughts around MLE's too!
ReplyDeleteI believe good or 'bad' teaching can happen in any space and I don't think that only a Modern Learning Environment will enable students to progress.
Exactly ... the 'space' isn't the determinant of what happens inside, and we have a LOT of work to do to get the human factors right. Poor quality physical spaces may impact on learning, but bad 'human' factors will impact negatively, poor learning practice likewise.
DeleteR
Agree with you about the good and bad. I also shared my thoughts on this as a parent and a teacher looking into this. I pulled my son out of a MLE mainly because it was more about the environment rather than the practice. http://takingthatrisk.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/do-mle-actually-raise-academic.html
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Ruth! I totally agree with your point that although some schools have and use the term MLE, not much have changed in their practice. I like that you too are thinking about the way you teach and how students should learn!
DeleteIt is important for us to be creative in the way we meet the need of our students and we have to teach students to make choices and managed their time. (http://goals-r-us.blogspot.co.nz/2014/09/what-are-we-learning-when-using.html)
This will enable students to be motivated and purposefully engaged in the learning process.
At times you can feel isolated with teaching in a single cell classroom as the sole practitioner, but just imagine the learning opportunities/possibilities you can give students! You could do anything whenever, because you just have to think about yourself, your teaching & how you’re guiding your students with their learning.
To get there (especially with juniors) is no easy feat! The main thing [for me] on my ongoing journey is to set realistic expectations for myself and to make sure I have sufficient support and given leeway for risk taking and failure. If this is not in place, it might happen that you revert to pedagogies you’ve been used to when you were at school or to “the way we’ve always done it”
Kia kaha!
Ruth .. that's really interesting. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard that. I should actually be keeping track.. that's data (sadly a biased sample).. LOL!!!
DeleteRobin