According to Brandsford, Brown, and Cocking, a well designed learning environment is student and community centered with just the right amount of knowledge and assessment centered perspective, all properly aligned to support each other. While it makes sense as a model for individual learners, how this looks in a classroom or library seems daunting to imagine, much less design. The Venn diagram (Figure 6.1) is only marginally helpful, since the four perspectives are impossibly asymmetrical in importance and that lovely center pocket is as elusive as it is undefined. Finding the best balance for one student would be an achievement. How then, does a teacher align 25-30 of those diagrams in one learning environment? Can a teacher set goals for individual students based on individual needs and assess each student individually, urging each toward an ideal standard that nudges upward each generation?
That's always been the challenge of public education, and is reemphasized in 21st century learning initiatives--teachers are asked to build on each student's prior knowledge and intellectual abilities, set high but achieveable goals, and differentiate learning in such a way that all students improve. It's a lofty goal for educators, but I agree with HPL that community norms and high expectations are huge motivators, and raising the bar for public education nudges the system upward as well. It was an interesting reminder that at the turn of the last century the challenge of educating an increasingly broad range of students was much the same, yet the goals considered achieveable were modest by today's standards. That's encouraging if it means that current goals, like critical evaluation and transfer of knowledge for instance, will someday be as fundamental as reading for content information.
I was also not a huge fan of the Venn diagram. It was a little discouraging to see how tiny the overlap was because it made it seem like there is a very small chance of a teacher actually accomplishing a full overlap. But maybe I was looking into it too much. Anyways, I thought it was very interesting that you pointed out the difficulty of aligning a whole classroom's worth of diagrams. I didn't even think about how the "perfect" balance of the centers would be different for each student! That makes the whole thing seem more intimidating.
ReplyDeleteI think a solid portion of the mission to improve learning environments is just in acknowledging the issues that exist and beginning to think about them. I like the questions you're asking here, even though I have no idea how they would actually be answered.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to sound heretical here, but I am not convinced that our current educational system can support the level of individuation that you reference here (e.g., different textbooks, different assignments, different tests). But it CAN support projects that naturally adjust themselves to the level of an individual learner. Research projects, reader's workshop, writer's workshop, inquiry-based science, project-based learning ... all are examples of student-centered work where the work can grow to accommodate the skills of the learner involved. For me, that's a much gentler kind of differentiation that actually acknowledges the humanity (and human limits) of teacher and student. Just my two cents. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a thoughtful critique! Even though I also struggled with how to reach that sweet spot of learner-, community-, knowledge-, and assessment-centered learning environment, I think that if we just keep each of those things in mind when designing learning spaces and activities we'll be going in the right direction. Teachers know the content thoroughly (in theory), should know what the learning goals are and how to assess them (in theory), and are striving to get to know their students as individuals and the community/ies from which they come (hopefully). I don't think the ideal learning environment described by Bransford, Brown, and Cocking occurs regularly, but I think it's still something we can work toward (and we definitely have it easier in the schools than our public librarian colleagues do!).
ReplyDeleteI really, really like your assessment about the history of education standards and what that means about today's seemingly-unreachable goals. I do hope we see that same pattern over the next hundred years so that it seems inexcusable for any student not to be an information literate critical thinker, etc.