I believe that learning is life-long. When we observe babies, we notice they are always busy. Babies are like little learning machines, curious and eager to know. The challenge for learning-leaders is to keep children interested to continue learning. We must be careful not to squash the spark that keeps them busy and curious. I believe that inspiring people to remain curious enough to keep learning throughout their lives is the key challenge and responsibility of educators. When we consider school age children, we must find ways to help them develop habits of exploration and investigation while also giving them sufficient tools and base knowledge to know where look and what to look for. There must be a careful and considered balance between “directed learning” and “constructed learning.” Trying to express a learning approach that includes the essence of these divergent methods is difficult. I am not a trained classroom teacher. I have more passion than experience and my observations are limited to my own children.
I certainly believe children should be given the freedom to “construct” their own learning. Children must be permitted to follow their individual passions and form themselves into citizens who make the contributions they were put on this earth to make. If our society is to continue to thrive, we must provide students with opportunities to “generate their own knowledge through experience-based activities.”1 This is the guiding philosophy of the constructivists. These experiences of learning through exploration are crucial for learners of all ages, but perhaps especially for young children. This is the learning that keeps that spark of curiosity alive and what drives them to learn more.

However, I also know that learning takes time and effort. I have observed that our schools often do a poor job providing sufficient scaffolding to support future learning.  For example, when my son was in third grade, he received homework requiring multiplication facts. He had never been given a multiplication chart nor had he been instructed to learn the multiplication table. “They can complete these exercises by skip counting,” I was told. Now that my son is in fifth grade, there are new concerns. Since he never mastered his multiplication table, we are told that my son must spend time at home in the evening practicing, because he cannot compute quickly enough (by skip counting in his head) and must have the facts memorized so that he will do well on the standardized test. So, in this case, letting him construct the multiplication facts on his own was not effective: There was clear need for directed learning. The idea of providing knowledge building blocks is not new, but I have come to agree with much of the thinking of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. as the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation: “…that for the sake of academic excellence, greater fairness, and higher literacy, elementary and middle schools need a solid, specific, shared core curriculum in order to help children establish strong foundations of knowledge, grade by grade.”2 The kind of learning Mr. Hirsch refers to is directed learning of specific content. One example is math facts: They are not naturally acquired, but must be learned by “repetitive practicing.”  Mr. Hirsch notes that “math is a powerful instrument precisely because it is unnatural.”3 Indeed, rote memorization of certain facts is essential, especially when we consider the amount of information we are faced with absorbing.

I believe that teaching is mostly a process of creating opportunities to learn. It is important to realize that teachers cannot make students learn, they can only provide experiences, materials, guidance and instruction which will lead to learning. This is true whether the learning is “constructed” or “directed”.  As more is understood about learning theory and cognitive science, we come to understand that there are different approaches to teaching and that different people learn differently. Applying the findings and theories of various philosophers and educators such as Bloom4, Papert5, Piaget6, and others, in combination, we can manifest an environment where most (or all?) of the students thrive and are inspired to learn the material being presented. Using the math example, we can consider that a student could “construct” an understanding of the concept of multiplication. Manipulating objects in matrices or group large quantities of objects like beans or pennies into groups of threes or fives illustrates the concept clearly. But the learning-leader cannot leave the process at that point. In order to complete the learning opportunity offered, there should also be some “direct instruction” to demonstrate the short cut of expressing “fifty piles of ten beans each” as 50 x 10. Out of that information is derived the opportunity to instruct the student to learn their ten times table. In this way there are offered several opportunities to learn about multiplication, appealing to different learning styles and balancing both constructivism and direct instruction. I believe that it is critical for students to have explorative opportunities balanced with skills and content based instruction.

How does technology play into this? Well, I believe that a critical error we make as learning-leaders is to view technology as separate from our teaching. We are at a point on our teaching/learning continuum where we are evolving our methods and traditions about teaching/learning and therefore we see technology as something that needs to be added to our educational environments. The reality is that technology is already encroaching into our learning environments. Our daily lives are infused with technical innovations: iPods, computers, fax machines, web cameras, cellular telephones and digital imaging, naming just a few. As educators, we must realize that these innovations are inseparable from our learning environments and that it is more a question of how to use these technologies effectively to enhance learning and no longer a question of whether we should include technology in our teaching. It is when we begin to view our lives as seamlessly integrated with technological tools, and to view our educational environments as an extension of our lives, that we will begin to understand how these tools can be naturally incorporated into our teaching and learning. Technology is integral to our educational lives, because it is integral to our lives.

I came to this program with a passion for teaching and learning, and a solid background in technology. I knew I would see these two worlds become intertwined, and it is thrilling to watch the process. It is exciting to hear from my colleagues using course management systems that students are retaining more information and collaborating more effectively as a result of the implementation. Faculty, who at one time thought they would never need anything more than chalk on a chalkboard have now fully integrated web-based materials into their teaching and expect to be assigned into media classrooms with computer, projector and Internet access. As learning-leaders, we must continue to find ways to motivate, inspire, intrigue and excite learners so that they will continue learning throughout their lives. Our children are our future, and it is our responsibility to lead them to what they can learn, so they can take us to the solutions and adventures of our future.

Concept Map of Learning Beliefs
Concept Map (jpeg format)

References:

¹ Roblyer, M. D., and Jack Edwards. Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 2000. pp. 49-53.

² About Core Knowledge. “What is Core Knowledge?” Core Knowledge Foundation. Copyright, 2006. October 16, 2006. http://www.coreknowledge.org/CK/about/index.htm.

³ Hirsch, Jr., E. D. “Romancing the Child.” Education Next. Spring, 2001. Hoover Institution. October 16, 2006. http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3390946.html.

⁴ Learning Skills Program. University of Victoria, Counselling Services. Copyright, 2005. October 16, 2006. http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html.

⁵ Roblyer. p . 64.

⁶ Roblyer. p . 61.