Category: Education Theory
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The Power of Metacognition in outdoor learning
Firstly what is metacognition? The act of thinking about thinking. It is being aware of yourself within the thinking and learning process. When you are able to be conscious of the learning taking place you are able to use that learning process as a toolkit to learn other things in other contexts. This is immensely…
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How Education is Broken: Blog Miniseries Part 2: “Education in the mainstream is fundamentally reductive in nature”
I firmly believe in constructivism in education, the epistemology that is based on the fact that what we know is based on our experience and context; as Wheatley (1991) says; “The theory of constructivism rests on two main principles. Principle one states that knowledge is not passively received but is actively built up by the…
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Experiential Learning: An Overview
Experiential learning is fundamentally based on engagement, the experience, and the relation of the learner to it is the formation of the learning, but it is important to understand first what the engagement is with. Bowen (2005) suggests 4 broad categories of engagement as being, In a broader sense there is a clear correlation here…
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A Holistic Approach to Education: An Introduction
A holistic approach is a theme that has consistently run through the previous sections, it is integral to the arguments made for the changes in education, however it is worth focus here to expand further on the benefits, pedagogy and purpose of making education holistic. Fundamentally the pedagogy suggests that a holistic approach should be…
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A Learner Led Approach: The Basics
If the holistic nature of education provided by experiential learning and a project based approach are assumed, then the focus of education is on the interplay between a cohesive model of learning, and the individual learning it. Experiential learning places the emphasis on holistic learning that by its nature focusses also on the moral, spiritual,…
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Why I’m not interested in trying to improve the current education system
Opinion Piece I’ve recently been talking a lot with educators about the potential to improve, and I get confronted almost exclusively with the following responses; “that’s lovely but idealistic” “that would never work in our setting” “we haven’t got the time/capacity/resources” or worst of all; “they don’t pay me to do that” I get it,…
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How can restorative behaviour management be used within the time constraints of a busy teaching day?
I was asked the question recently on Twitter; “Can you explain how a teacher who has a full timetable can have these therapeutic 1-1 conversations whilst teaching classes following each and every behaviour incident?“ This is an interesting question and makes some assumptions about behaviour that I think ned to be unpicked before we go…
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Project Based Learning: An Overview
Project based learning builds upon the foundation of experiential learning by following the pedagogy through to the level of what is being taught; where experiential learning forms the basis of a holistic view of learning where learners and learning are not seen as discreet, a project-based approach is the foundation of embedding this across the…
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How Education is Broken: Blog miniseries part 1. “It’s designed to work for everyone but the children”
Every generation of teachers has seemingly said that education is broken in one way or another, it’s a perennial problem that comes with an older generation trying to pass down knowledge to a new generation that sees the world differently. However, there are a number of flaws in education at the moment that need to…
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Outdoor Learning: Why it should be ‘as Standard’
For millions of years, throughout human history, all learning was outdoors. It is only relatively recently that we have decided in our culture to see learning in enclosed classroom spaces as somehow essential. It should not be the case that we educate in such a way as to make ease of teaching the central focus,…
Shevek Pring 