Classroom management, including discipline and behavior management, can be seen to represent the role of adult authority over children, and repression, in general. The analogy to the relationship between citizens and their government is obvious, and therefore, it is important that teachers pay careful attention to how they are
Read MoreMany teachers in many countries do not have the luxury of small class sizes. When access to education is a priority, and the system is constrained by human and financial resources, something has to give. But I've seen plenty of evidence that good pedagogy is possible even with large class sizes.
The following was originally written in 2005 in the context of the bilateral Strengthening Capacity in Basic Education in Western China project, reposted here (English/Chinese) for the benefit of my colleagues in the RRU MAELM program.
Strategies for Using SCI with Large Class Sizes
Working with large classes can be challenging no matter what strategies are used. However, using SCI strategies with large groups can be particularly challenging. The following are some strategies to help deal with common issues encountered when
Read MoreThe Basic Concept
Pedagogy refers to the method or practice of teaching. In education circles the term is used in reference to things like instructional strategies and classroom management, essentially, the performance that the teacher puts on each day. But the idea need not be limited to these kind of direct behaviours. Many things which teachers do that don't involve direct interaction with students also have immense pedagogic potential. Montessori, for one, saw the pedagogic role of the students' learning environment, and devised an educational method which leveraged that potential through careful preparation of the environment to allow students freedom of choice while ensuring that those choices would result in meaningful experiential learning.
Functional Importance
Read MoreA fair bit has been written about political aspects of mainstream schooling in the west. Most of this is critical, exploring aspects of the hidden curriculum which undermine democratic participation and social justice by teaching students to be complacent, by priviledging certain knowledge over others etc. This is an important body of work, and I agree with most of it. But I've been frustrated by the overwhelming focus on critical over constructive perspectives. We need both. We need to acknowledge the shortcomings, but to envision a better way of doing things, we also need to step back and look at why things are the way they are. In theory, our educational policy and legal context have been established to underpin a certain approach to education which was deamed appropriate to the kind of country we wanted. I think it's time to revisit some of these underlying principles, especially in light of issues
Read MoreI'm becoming increasingly aware of the problem with how we understand curriculum. There was probably a time when curriculum related more clearly to the sum of experiences in schooling, but that time has passed. Back when I was doing my pre-service teacher education, I learned that curriculum referred to a set of documents.. the outline of what we were supposed to teach. I heard whispers every now and then about this thing called a hidden curriculum as well, but as exciting as that idea was at the time, I've come to think that both concepts are equally problematic--though for different reasons. These days the best we seem to be able to come up with is the idea of standards.
The problem with curricula, or standards, or syllabuses, is that they almost always reduce education to a set of things that students are supposed to learn. This then gets flipped
Read MoreWho Gets to Decide? Social Transformation and the Free School Movement
While many alternative schools, including Montessori schools, may afford students relative freedom compared to the mainstream, those considered part of the free school movement have adopted a much more libertarian approach, emphasizing freedom from coercion and participatory governance. While these schools do not have a single ideological or theoretical base (Gribble, 1998), they tend to share belief that the mainstream school system is unfit to meet the needs of children and society, or is even harmful to them (Graubard, 1972; Greenberg, 1995; Gribble, 1998), along with an earnest faith in the innate developmental potential of children (Greenberg, 1995; Gribble, 1998; Neill, 1992).
In general, free schools seek to remove artificial barriers to the natural development of
Read MoreStudents' schooling experiences are some of the strongest forces in their development. These experiences result not only in the learning of explicit subject matter associated with formal curricula, but also in a great deal of informal or tacit learning (Goodlad, 2004; Snyder, 1970). This tacit learning is more a function of cultivation or socialization than teaching in the colloquial sense, and has been described as a hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968). While such learning is seldom mentioned in explicit goals (Apple, 1990), it has a profound and lasting impact on students (Ghosh, 2008; Posner, 2003), as it helps to conditions students to certain patterns of behavior, manners of thinking, deeply held beliefs, and dispositions (Burbules, 2008; Snyder, 1970), and even their underlying assumptions about the world (Apple, 1990; Bowers, 1993). In short, “Children learn what they live” (Nolte, 1972).
Read MoreMontessori, Environmental Education, and the Educative Context
Maria Montessori should be considered among the first "environmental educators", but not in the conventional sense. Her concern related far more to the development of children's individual autonomy than the natural environment; however, her method was very much focused on the environment--the environment with which children are immersed day after day, the environment with which children interact, and hopefully, learn and develop.
In Montessori's view, children construct their understanding through interaction with their environment. She believed that young children have an innate drive towards development, and that freedom within a carefully prepared environment would allow them to maximize their developmental potential while cultivating their intrinsic drives (Kramer, 1976; Standing, 1957). Montessori observed that free choice played an
Read MoreCapacity development is mostly a racket. The problem is that despite how costly these programs can be, the actual developmental benefits are usually pretty limited. This is particularly the case with training programs and professional development sessions. A great facilitator can make things engaging, participatory and even practical, but at the end of the session, folks return to their jobs and the relevance is immediately eclipsed by other things. Unless we are talking about the really low hanging fruit, not a whole lot actually changes.
Part of the problem is that what these programs set out to deliver is not really what is needed in order to make real changes. Participants tend to be happy when they come out of a session feeling motivated. But motivation is almost never what is holding us back from making changes in our lives. Participants may come out embracing new values, or
Read Morei’ve written before about the idea of tacit teaching, and the important role which context (as opposed to explicit content) plays in the development of children. the idea is that we should be as intentional about context as we are about content, because what we immerse our children in matters, perhaps more than what we tell them during their immersion.
but in order to do something constructive with this idea, it is necessary to operationalize it. the idea of context can be broken down in a number of ways. in the context of schooling, it is we can conveniently talk about them in terms of three aspects: the physical, material environment and objects in it; the social context and interpersonal features; and the institutional landscape including formal and informal policies, which shape the course of experiences in that context. while these areas are not mutually exclusive, they provide a
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social transformation, education, and play
