1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
We have learned the influence our schema has on the way we evaluate or understand a situation and it guides our recall. The learner-centered environment is structured around the student and is sensitive to the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs of the student.
The knowledge-center approach focuses on sense-making. When making sense of a situation we must use reasoning to help draw conclusions. In chapters 11/12 we learned a great deal about problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. This also is included in the community based learning.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I viewed the community-centered environments as being somewhat hard to incorporate at the elementary level. We can invite community people into our school to share their ideas and expertise. I guess another way to incorporate the community center environment is have projects within the school that the students could work on together as a team.
This approach kind of reminds me of student teaching/apprenticeship/internships-a learning environment structure where you learn by doing. I guess I just need to brainstorm ways to incorporate this environment into my teaching style.
I believe many community center ideas for younger students must come from the family itself. Examples: Does the family work on projects at home together? (yard work, garden caring etc.) Are the parents good examples of being community minded? Do their children observe their parents volunteering their services? Is the family involved in church organizations? Does the family encourage their young children to be involved in organizations that promote community? (scouts, 4H, etc.)
Also when reading about community I found it interesting that the Japanese students value listening to others and their reasoning. My students love to share their thinking but are not always polite(good) listeners when others are sharing. Also, I found it interesting how the cultures differ- the culture of the Japanese that they learn from errors, consider that a learner experience which deepens their understanding. I find that my students (in most cases) do not want to risk being wrong.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
Reviewing the different types of learning environments reinforced the positives that each environment has to offer. I am more of a balance type teacher. I do not believe in jumping on a particular bandwagon b/c I feel that a combination of approaches reaches more students. The effective teaching examples demonstrated good teaching practices. Keeping that in mind I am encouraged to try to incorporate a variety of learning environments in my own teaching practices.
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Your comments about community are so true! Our children rely on their families to show them the importance of being quality community members. Quite often, I expect my students to be able to work in a group or small community without regards to their experience doing this in other areas of their lives. I forget that some of the students have not had to be a productive member of a group or work with others. I need to remind myself to go over the expectations for the community before creating it.
ReplyDeleteI also know that my kids love to share, but when they are done, they are done. The children don't really want to listen to their friends. I wonder if this is because my students are so ego-centered at this age that they just can't move past their own thoughts. It takes some practice before they are able to really listen and comprehend to their peers.
I think that our students would benefit from learning from others' errors. We don't have to use names, but we can use misunderstanding to build learning upon. Sometimes, dialogue is discouraged because it can cause students to get off topic. But, in this case, with a facilitator guiding the conversation and bringing up the errors, everyone can participate and the students can possibly better understand each others' word usage because it is more on their level. They can problem shoot together and learn from each other in this fashion.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely on your comments about younger students and community centered learning. I think that the core of an environment such as this does start with families and a students home life. At our school we do a lot of programs such as mentoring and older community members coming to read with students, but it is so difficult to invite community members within a school these days because of how society is. Our school is on lock-down 24/7 and any volunteers who work directly with students have to undergo a full background check. Due to the struggle with this I do a lot of buddy work between grade levels to give our class the sense of community.
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