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Towards an expression of the spiritual in a secular curriculum by Monica Bini

January 1, 2015

Dealing with the issue of ‘spirituality’ is a very current concern for many people. The concerns raised and the difficulties identified still make this article worth reading today.

This article was written as a contribution to the now extant Australian Curriculum. However the author tackles the question of spirituality and what that might mean in a school curriculum. “The curriculum must allow for the kind of delivery that will support its intentions. The awakening and development of the spiritual is often going to be something that is difficult to plan for, and teachers need to be free to capture the teaching moment and be given flexibility to work with individual student needs. And it is an area which is an investment in students’ life journeys, where seeds planted during experiences at school may for some, only really begin to bear fruit at an unexpected time in the future. But with the support of this particular quality of education students may be lucky enough to have a relatively greater proportion of their lives that is fulfilling.”

Monica Bini – Curriculum Manager (Humanities), Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. July 2009.

Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008)

The Melbourne Declaration claims a place for spiritual wellbeing in education for all Australianswhen it declares that “confident and creative individuals have a sense of self-worth, self-awareness and personal identity that enables them to manage their emotional, mental, spiritual and physical wellbeing”. How can the development and management of spiritual wellbeing be expressed in curriculum beyond faith based settings, so that it is indeed supported for all Australians? This paper outlines and then uses a way of articulating the spiritual that is independent of adherence to religious tradition or belief in the divine, to inform themes of secular spirituality that could be manifested in secular curriculum, and the skills and capacities that can be brought to these themes. In doing so, it aims to capture what is distinctive about the spiritual in the context of curriculum.

The Melbourne Declaration goes some way to articulating a secular spirituality when it links spiritual wellbeing to self worth, self awareness and personal identity. It takes a position that there is something distinct from the emotional, mental and physical in what it is to be human. If secular curriculum wants to claim education of the whole person, then the curriculum needs to address this aspect of being human.

Developing the themes of secular spirituality

Stating what might be further said about the spiritual in a secular sense will inform how curriculum can give expression to this goal. Some of the literature avoids defining the spiritual, as it is not only complex, but partly an experience and therefore partly ineffable. However for the secular to stake a claim in the spiritual it is necessary to show how it can be conceived without an appeal to religion or the divine. For educators, it gives them the language needed to understand the thinking behind any spiritual themes in the curriculum and to support them in engaging in discourse on the spiritual.

The spiritual is something that is perhaps better experienced than explained. It is a particular quality of consciousness that responds to the awesome in nature and the awesome in human creation or expression, where paradoxically in the experience we are drawn out of ourselves and yet deeper within ourselves. It is that part of ourselves that we are not happy with characterizing as emotion. It is, at times, linked rather with a deep sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. This sense of satisfaction is often linked to goals that are in fact unattainable, for example perfect wisdom. And yet it responds to meaning and purpose and can create meaning and purpose. The spiritual is associated with a detachment, that is, a separation from the egotistical aspects of the self, rather than the world or the other.

The Melbourne goal speaks of having a sense of self that enables management of wellbeing, including spiritual. The term ‘management’ suggests cultivating a certain kind of discrimination or discernment that in the first instance begins to recognize the spiritual in the self, in response to particular kinds of experiences and then is ultimately used to make choices that support wellbeing and in turn refine the self. One of the most important contributions that curriculum can make is to assist students as they develop and attend to this faculty or key skill, in what is for most, a lifelong journey.

What follows links the broad conception of spirituality introduced above with ways that this may be manifest in the curriculum. It should be recognized that many of the areas overlap and that somewhat artificial distinctions have been made to draw out distinguishing characteristics of each area.

Themes of secular spirituality that could be manifested in the curriculum:

Awe and wonder:

– providing for engagement with the beautiful in nature and human endeavour, including the bigger or more profound stories, that may resonate, inspire or allow for moments of gratitude and appreciation.

– giving permission to wonder, not only intellectually but a deeper, reflective wonder.

Meaning and purpose:

– providing opportunities to serve something larger than oneself. By isolating such service from material gain, students have a chance to notice a different kind of satisfaction.

– enabling the development and expression of vision.

– engaging students with concepts such as truth, courage, including moral courage, honour and so on, and recognizing their contentious nature yet central role in human endeavour .

– allowing for meaningful self expression. In a wider sense this may be personal meaning realized in public contexts.

Being and Knowing:

– providing opportunities for students to integrate knowledge with action; to ethically bring both considered rational judgment and intuitive insight to bear on practical problems.

– engaging with concepts such as justice, compassion and other areas of ethics.

– assisting students to be aware of and attune the quality of their consciousness in action and thought, for example the level of integrity.

– supporting human dignity by for example valuing the welfare, learning journeys and stories of the students and giving them a voice in their education.

Developing the skills or capacities that can be brought to these themes

What the student brings to the opportunities for awe and wonder, meaning and purpose and exploring being and knowing is important. For example, being presented with the beautiful is enriched with a capacity to notice and attend to the response of the self. Students can build skills to assist in the interpretation of experience. The key skill here is a kind of discernment or discrimination. Developing the ability to discern or discriminate in the context of secular spirituality is particularly related to the following elements of the curriculum:

– building the capacity to notice and attend to the self and how it engages with and responds to certain experiences. For example, noticing different levels of fulfillment. This can occur not only through quiet reflection and silence but through dialogue.

– developing students’ capacity to engage with and express the ineffable, for example in powerful literary and visual metaphors and other non-verbal means of expression such as dance, or design and creative process.

– assisting students in developing the language to express to others and themselves what can be said about secular spiritual experiences.

– allowing the creation and expression of what is deeply satisfying for the student, for example in athletics, woodwork or social activism. Here the student can practice and test their developing discrimination. This may ultimately impact on their choice of life pursuits as well as in a more generic way.

Disciplinary or Interdisciplinary?

Spirituality can be triggered and nurtured by different things for different people and in this sense is interdisciplinary, where students are given the chance to widely explore and test where spiritual wellbeing may lie for them. Students can be invited to engage with facets of the spiritual in the context of a discipline or learning area. For example, service learning in Civics, aesthetics in Mathematics, ethics in Philosophy, or vision in History or Science. Key skills can also be developed in this way, for example through the study of poetry in English or participating in the design process in Technology. The extent to which the spiritual is brought in will be linked closely to pedagogy.

Bringing spirituality into the curriculum in this sense need not be so much about an addition to the curriculum but rather involves considering the disciplines through a particular qualitative lens. The nature of this qualitative lens does need separate documentation however, and this paper attempts to go some way towards supporting educators in this.

Early years learning framework (2009)

The themes of secular spirituality in this paper were used to inform the definition of spirituality in the national Early Years Learning Framework. The framework is built around the concepts of Being, Belonging and Becoming, recognizing that life is more than transactional. A range of groups gave strong feedback that spiritual aspects of young children’s lives should be recognized. In particular it was thought that the play experience for a child had a spiritual dimension. The groups identified a need to capture in a secular way the spiritual dimension of what it is to be human.

Recognition of the spiritual is not unusual at a higher policy level – for example both the 2008 Melbourne and the 1999 Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling, or the 1957 NSW Wyndham Report (naming spiritual values as one of eight key aims for the education of the individual). These high level statements aim at all sectors including faith based, but this aspect of the goals of schooling has not traditionally been picked up by the government sector in particular. One significant gap has been the lack of translation of this part of the goals into formal curriculum structures. This is a necessary part of the mechanism by which high level documents ultimately get delivered in the classroom. Creating a key definition of spirituality began to close the gap.

A definition of spirituality was proposed and welcomed :   “Spirituality refers to a range of human experiences including a sense of awe and wonder, a search for purpose and meaning, and the exploration of being and knowing.” A paper underpinning this definition was a valuable part of the process as it supported decision-makers in understanding that an interpretation of the definition compatible with the secular was possible. At the same time the definition does not exclude the faith based sector, while acknowledging that these settings may bring elements of their different religious traditions into how they interpret it.

Challenges

National Curriculum

The national curriculum will be accountable to the goals for schooling. ACARA’s Curriculum Design paper states at 4.2b that “the national curriculum documents will indicate how much learning in each area contributes to the national goals.” Articulating themes of secular spirituality may assist in the mapping of this aspect of the goals to the curriculum. Curriculum writers have been given some discretion beyond literacy, numeracy, creativity and ICT in how other general capabilities and indigenous, sustainability and Asia related cross curriculum perspectives will be embedded into the curriculum.

The spiritual is a qualitative aspect of the curriculum that cuts across disciplines, general capabilities and cross curriculum perspectives. In this sense it is likely to be more clearly expressed in content elaboration rather than content description, although content description sets the framework that allows particular teaching and learning activities to be developed. For example if students will learn to analyse indigenous history in Australia (as a content descriptor) then content elaboration could include learning about vision and Aboriginal people of vision in this context. In Science a content description derived from the content organizer of science as a human endeavour could be something like ‘students will learn to analyse and evaluate the role of science in human endeavour’ which in turn could lead to content elaboration regarding discussion of meaning and purpose within science or what concepts like moral courage might mean in scientific contexts. The curriculum has many demands placed upon it and selection of more overtly spiritual aspects needs to be not only well informed but judicious.

Spirituality is a personal journey and teachers must be given the flexibility to work with student needs and to allow time for and response to the student voice. A curriculum dense with prescriptive content would work against this.

Assessment

The question of the assessment of spiritual development in students is more broadly related to the question of assessment of those aspects of the curriculum concerned with dispositions, values and attitudes. Curriculum is tending more towards the provision of a holistic education while at the same time there is a growing assessment culture. Are there limits to what a teacher can confidently assess? Dr. Ruth Deakin Crick identifies four stations in the learning journey that are useful to consider:

“Using the metaphor of ‘learning as a journey’ there are four ‘stations’ which learners and their mentors attend to in the process of learning. The first is the learning self, with its particular identity, nested sets of relationships, stories and aspirations. The second is the personal qualities, values, attitudes and dispositions for learning….The third is the acquisition of publicly assessed knowledge, skills and understanding. The fourth is the achievement of publicly assessed and valued competence in a particular domain – such as being a competent citizen, or artisan, or carer.” (Deakin Crick, 2009, p.78)

The spiritual is clearly related to the first and second stations but there is interplay with the third and fourth as spiritual development occurs and is expressed. Deakin Crick has developed a self assessment tool of values, dispositions and attitudes of effective lifelong learners. The rationale for this being a self assessment tool is relevant to spiritual development too:

“the first two stations are personal and unique to the learner, and although formed in the context of community and participation, and thus not necessarily private, the authority to create and make judgments in these domains rests with the learners themselves.”(Deakin Crick, 2009, p. 78)

Assessment of learning belongs in the 3rd and 4th stations of the learning journey where authority to make judgments lies outside the self. This kind of learning is accountable in a public way that spirituality is not. It is fair to set achievement standards for these stations of the learning journey but somehow unfair, if not absurd, to grade students on their spiritual development. The difficulty in gathering direct evidence would also make this attempt invalid and unreliable and could indeed be counterproductive. It would be more coherent to undertake assessment of the educator’s provision of opportunities for deep learning and expression.

A partnership is necessary between all the stages of the learning journey to result in a holistic education. Deep engagement with learning is not guaranteed and neither should it be demanded, but rather invited. But it is important that the educator at least present the opportunity not only through good curriculum but also good pedagogy. Spiritual development is thus a well supported ‘hope’ of the curriculum rather than a demand. (Rossiter, 2006).

Conclusion

The curriculum must allow for the kind of delivery that will support its intentions. The awakening and development of the spiritual is often going to be something that is difficult to plan for, and teachers need to be free to capture the teaching moment and be given flexibility to work with individual student needs. And it is an area which is an investment in students’ life journeys, where seeds planted during experiences at school may for some, only really begin to bear fruit at an unexpected time in the future. But with the support of this particular quality of education students may be lucky enough to have a relatively greater proportion of their lives that is fulfilling.

References

NSW Government 1957, Report of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales (the Wyndham Report), p.40

Bigger, Secular Spiritual Education?, e-journal of the British Education Studies Association, Vol 1(1) August, 2008

Crawford and G. Rossiter, Reasons for living – education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality, ACER Press, 2006

Deakin Crick, Inquiry-based learning: reconciling the personal with the public in a democratic and archeological pedagogy, The Curriculum Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2009, 73-92

Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI), owned by the University of Bristol and the Lifelong Learning Federation, at http://www.ellionline.co.uk

Thomas and V. Lockwood, Nurturing the spiritual child: compassion, connection and a sense of self, Early Childhood Australia Inc., Research in Practice Series, Vol. 16., No. 2 2009

http://www.acsa.edu.au/pages/images/Monica%20Bini%20-%20secular%20spirituality.p

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Education is thinking and Thinking is education

January 1, 2015

Education is thinking; Thinking is education

The best child protection is a community that is engaged with providing a safe and stimulating place to facilitate holistic approaches to pedagogical practice that provides the best opportunities for people exercising their powers. This means mutually recognising and respecting our rights as adults to actively defend the right of children to be in a safe place. Mutual respect is made possible when the community’s members share a safe space to communicate with each other about the meaning and purpose of learning and teaching, and defining the place as a safe place for evolving and productive pedagogical practice.

Learning to be powerful; Powerful to be learning

To empower others implies that those who facilitate this historical and epistemological process are themselves exercising power. A highly engaging curriculum can only by provided by highly engaged teachers and learners. Highly engaged and knowledgeable learners and teachers are powerful people.

A highly engaging curriculum acknowledges human being as a species being – Nature, an objective, global, scientific view; and as an historical and epistemologically organised social construction – Second Nature, the subjective and particular cultural window with a landscape defined partially by the objective window of a global scientific view.

Appropriately localised curriculum content provides sequentially organised and integrated content that is meaningful and procedurally purposeful. This is achieved by defining essential concepts or Big Ideas that persist as from that are metaphorically intertwining, as expanding flux, that spirals out from beginning to end – K to 6.

Theory and practice.

It is worth noting that the key theorists associated with early childhood are not early childhood theorists as such. Rather there are theorists who most influence the practice of early childhood educators primarily because as theorists they have a cogent view of human cognitive and social development from birth to adult. There is a danger that others who were or are not directly engaged with early childhood and the compulsory years of education have less to offer. For example, Paulo Freire’s development of learning and teaching methods for adult literacy provided extraordinary insights into the social and political dimensions and purposes of education per se. Given his profound impact on pedagogy and practice it would be mistaken to exclude such figures from the early years ‘pantheon’. The same can be said for Malaguzzie of Reggio Emilia and Penelope Leach.

Developing empathetic systems.

As an approach that is both exemplary and comprehensive the Reggio Emilia experience has overwhelmingly the most to contribute to hypotheses and practices of Early Childhood practitioners and educators. The approach developed in Reggio Emilia for early childhood education can be defined as exemplary because as practitioners they have a system with a clearly defined purposes and goals, are able to operate and develop practice according to the needs of children, rather than the overt interference of any politician’s whim, and most significantly, out of reach of powerful social and economic forces that are antithetical to the interests of good child development and childhood.

This is most evident when here in Australia our current Minister of Education has expressed her government’s belief that education is to provide the means for the corporations’s single-minded pursuit of profits. In essence the approach developed by Reggio Emilia, while not a blueprint, provides an example of what it means to pay close attention to providing a safe place for pedagogical practice and in so doing demonstrating the provision of a child-centred antidote relatively free from the economic imperatives of corporate-mass-media-culture.

The social and cultural contexts of learning and teaching.

Understanding human activity as social and cultural provides the ‘philosophical’ foundation for child-centred pedagogical approaches to learning and teaching. Education ideally is a partnership between, educators, children, and parents all of whom are acting in the best interests of all children. Educators particularly take the greater share of this responsibility because they are to provide for needs and develop relationships not only within their own pedagogical space but those too of their immediate community and ultimately the system.

All good learning is driven by curiosity. Sharing, discovering and applying mutual concerns in regards to pedagogy assists to organise the curriculum and pedagogical activities, and ipso facto our learning community. Children too learn by asking questions about their relationships with others and their place within The World around them. As soon as they can speak coherently this curiosity is articulated as questions, Who, What, Where, When, How and Why? We know that children come to school with their own experiences and knowledge. Parents, and particularly early years educators should recognise and account for this in their pedagogical practice.

Valuing curiosity and imagination

Learning proceeds from experience and inquiry thereby providing the foundations for the ongoing development of intelligent cognitive and social behaviours, or habits, for the transition into the compulsory the middle to upper primary years.

Key Assumptions of Experiential and Inquiry learning. The place of Dialogue with Children and building strong foundations for good habits.

Education is essentially learning to think. Young children live imaginatively and have ideas largely unburdened by facts. It is critical to keep curiosity and the desire to learn from this curiosity alive. The desire to know, ask questions and seek answers underlies the key purpose of all our learning.

Educational play-based -productive (cognitive) activity is an important element of our classrooms. A ‘play-based’ approach provides for the use of the arts in all aspects of their learning wether it is literacy, numeracy or imaginative play. The Philosophy with Children program adds an equally important ingredient to all aspects of their learning and our teaching.

By encouraging the skills of respectful and sincere dialogue between children and their teachers, and the teachers themselves, the importance of dialogue, questioning and thinking are emphasised and explicitly stated and connected. Equally there are profound connections between inquiry, philosophy, the arts, the natural environment and becoming literate. Education is essential for active citizenship and productive democracy.

The Development of children: there are two distinct lines of development:

the Natural and Cultural.

  • Natural – biological growth and maturation of physical and mental structures.
  • Cultural – learning to use cultural tools and development of human consciousness that emerges through cultural activity.
  • Children’s cultural development occurs first as social or interpersonal plane and then on the individual or psychological plane.
  • People are social-beings and the creations and makers of their social, cultural, and historical contexts.
  • Social interaction and participation in authentic cultural activities are necessary for development to occur.

The place and role of language and dialogue in human culture

The acquisition of language is the most significant milestone in children’s cognitive development.

  • Language is the primary cultural tool used to mediate activities and is instrumental in restructuring the mind and informing higher order and self-regulating thought processes.
  • Language plays a crucial role in forming minds as it is the primary means of communication and mental contact with others.
  • Language is the major means for representing social experience and is an indispensable part of our thoughts.
  • Language is the bridge between our social-cultural worlds and individual mental function.
  • Mental abilities develop out of the need to communicate and function as a collective.
  • The development of the individual and complex, higher mental functions occur through social interaction

Education, Development and Sociability

  • Formal education and other cultural forms of socialisation are key to developmental pathways toward adulthood
  • Thinking is contextualised and collaborative – it emerges from particular activities and social experiences. Forms of thinking are products of specific contexts and cultural conditions. Higher forms of thinking are socially and culturally contextual – members of these contexts share them.
  • To understand the development of individuals it is necessary to understand the social relations of which the individual is a part.
  • Social influences are ever-present in cognitive skill development.
  • Social engagement is a powerful force in transforming children’s thinking.
  • School and associated literacy and numeracy activities are a powerful context for shaping and developing thinking and action.
  • Mastery of academic tasks assist in transformations of memory, concept formation, reasoning, problematising and problem solving.

Zone of Proximal Development or Scaffolding and other minds.

  • The social and cognitive are essential aspects of each other.
  • Ways of understanding reality are similar across human beings we all have the same biological equipment for interpreting experience: The human brain and body.
  • Thinking is not bounded by the individual brain or mind and body inseparably joined (intertwined) with other minds.
  • Thinking is a profoundly social phenomenon. Social experiences shape the ways we interpret and think about the world.

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Encouraging a critical dialogue and defining meaning and purpose for our children

January 1, 2015

Encouraging a critical dialogue

To encourage a critical discussion about the current concerns that teachers within the public education system are dealing is of profound importance. Any discussion about education and attempting to define its meaning and purpose for our children and society proposes the need to provide an analysis of our society. That we live in an age of mass production and culture should be a given but what then are the implications for our educations within a mass-culture? Presumably we must also talk about education generally as mass-education for the masses. My idea is that an educator’s aim should be to encourage each other to be autodidacts. Where we are able to learn for ourselves and learn from each other. Such an idea partly addresses the question, who educates the educator?

My assumptions are those that argue that the primary objective of public education is to promote and foster wholistic human development of the individual with the understanding that human beings are fundamentally social animals. ‘Life long learning’ is an essential characteristic of human beings’ development; therefore Education should be directed toward developing our capacities to educate each other and ourselves in the manner of the autodidact. It should not be seen in the negative sense of constant retraining to meet the changing demands of the corporate economic and political system.

There should be a constant focus on understanding how we learn. How we learn is a question we should always keep asking and attempting to define. In this regard we need to ask who is asking and for whom? We know something about human cognition from a scientific point of view but there is increased interest in a holistic understanding of learning and teaching, and consequently that good personal relationships make a significant contribution to effective teaching and learning.

Is the role of the teacher is then not to reproduce the next generation of ‘wage slaves’ ready to provide their labour power for the benefit of the capitalist economic system and their ‘enterprises’? We need to be able to critically appraise the prevailing industrial model and the corresponding transference of its ‘values’ into the public education system. Standardisation through systemetised outcomes and testing; terms such as value adding; line managers; classroom management are contrary to the previously stated aims of education in that they are management tools which have little to contribute to teachers’ pedagogical concerns or the social and emotional development of children in the positive sense. Education is overtly about building cooperative caring teams as communities of inquirers.

The purpose of a curriculum

A curriculum provides the framework for effective teachers, and pedagogy. A curriculum should support integrated and inquiry approaches that supports this holistic understanding of learning, education, and our purpose as teachers. Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate, are useful reminders of the understanding that we learn best when we are allowed to work out explanations for ourselves over time, through a variety of learning experiences structured by both learners and the teacher. Making sense and meaning of our experiences and connections between new information and our prior knowledge in relation to the natural and cultural worlds should be the intent of a curriculum framework.

Teaching is most rewarding when there are opportunities to provide for, and participate in learning experiences with students. Younger children particularly enjoy time in the garden when they are digging, collecting and sharing their observations with their peers and teachers. Older students can be more difficult to engage when they have not had the opportunity of these early playful foundational experiences.

My observations and experiences with children in such learning environments convince me that when we allow possibilities for exploration, experiment, observation and questions students generally become, and are, actively engaged in learning. A young third grade boy, unsettled and made anxious by his first two years of ‘schooling’ elsewhere, remarked to his mother, “It doesn’t feel like work because it is fun”. Described as experiential learning, this approach provides the means for serious but ‘playful’ engagement in the learning process and the childrens’ self-development and self-understanding as active learners with an emphasis on their social context. Emergent and integrated inquiry learning and teaching relies on an ongoing, evolving dialogue, a narrative constructed over time by the community of students and their teachers.

The pursuit of knowledge

Accepting that knowledge is socially constructed means that purposeful, and meaningful engagement with ideas and concepts is only possible when they connected to, and are built out of our own experiences. If we accept that learning is the struggle for knowledge then we need to then accept that teachers need to provide a learning environment and situations that provide students’ with the possibilities, and the means, to construct knowledge for themselves. Because knowledge is socially produced childrens’ ideas become particularly meaningful when they are shared with others and have arisen out of common events and shared experiences.

As knowledge is socially constructed and reconstructed then the way we learn, and thereby gain knowledge of the world does not change fundamentally as we progress from infant to adult. What does change is the degree of sophistication of our understanding of elements, processes, and the complexity of our conceptual descriptions. Our subjective commonsense, everyday beliefs and opinions are invalidated or validated as we seek to discriminate by finding evidence for objective judgments.

This is also the case for teachers’ professional development. Leading the evolution of a program that provided for students’ participation in a kitchen garden, and developed their appreciation and involvement in the surrounding natural environment, was key to fruitful and meaningful engagement with these learning process precisely because they were central and common experiences for both students and teachers.

Implications for educators and learners

Understanding teaching practice as an imagined continuum, as an evolving project, benefits from being alert to opportunities provided by our collective experiences. Through an inquiry approach allows for the evolution of a child-centred, emergent, and integrated curriculum. Given the many demands of teachers’ time and other issues around ‘covering the curriculum’, careful attention must be given to building connections between concepts and activity in all these areas by demonstrating how they can be developed in an integrated way.

An example of this was the evolution of my students’ mould project. During one of our forays into the garden we had plucked from it a very large squash. The children were amazed by its size and we set to weighing, measuring, drawing and writing about it. We had also noticed that the skin had been punctured. Over the following weeks we observed that mould had begun to grow over the puncture mark. The children continued to observe and record the changes that were taking place over time. Many weeks later our large squash had been reduced to a small, hard, and unrecognisable disc about the size of a fifty-cent piece. These observations provided no end of discussion and speculation

Questions and hypotheses abounded as we struggled for plausible explanations. This all lead to further mould experiments and back into the garden of course to discover even more about life within a compost bin. For teachers’ creating interest in the mundane, everyday world, could at first appear uninteresting. However this story alerts us to what it actually means to ‘localise’ the curriculum, and as well provide meaningful learning that connects to, and builds on childrens’ experiences. The complexity of any curriculum framework can be made manageable by uncovering the interrelationship of knowledge. It is critical to appreciate that the development of any program that involves cultural change within a community takes time. It requires bringing everyone involved on the journey with you.

Localising the curriculum

Understanding the intention of any curriculum framework as defined by education departments is an absolute given, but the significant challenge is the interpretation of that ‘abstract’ framework into one that is localised and gives meaning to the term authentic learning and teaching for both students and teachers.

A ‘localised curriculum’ must meet both the education department’s and the school community’s expectations. It is necessary to continually remind ourselves that the purpose of the teacher, and teaching, is primarily to provide opportunities for meaningful experiences, and carefully introduce and develop substantive content in an engaging way for students. It is difficult to improve teaching practice personally and generally when it is compromised by misinformed parental expectations, and demands to satisfy political and commercial agendas that have little to do with the welfare and education of students.

Negotiating the daily demands of creating a productive and engaging classroom program with the students’ involvement provides the educator with rich learning experiences too. My ongoing participation in subject associations, the Teacher Environment Network and the Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools have all reinforced for me the evolving nature of the educational process for both students and educators, and as well, the importance of collegiate teams and peer-to-peer learning.

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A critical discussion about the current concerns in the public education system

January 1, 2015

The purpose of this document is to encourage a critical discussion about the current concerns that teachers are dealing with in the public education system. I am a practicing primary school teacher in a state system so consequently the emphasis is on early childhood and primary education; however I am sure that many of the issues raised have implications for the middle years of compulsory education – Grade 5 to year 9. While the concerns outlined below are mainly those of teachers I also encourage anyone who has an interest in public education and pedagogy to participate with their comments.

Any discussion about education and attempting to define its meaning and purpose for our children and society proposes the need to provide an analysis of our society. That we live in an age of mass production should be a given but what then are the implications for our educations within a mass-culture? Presumably we must also talk about education generally as mass-education for the masses. I have an idea that an educator’s aim is to encourage each other to be autodidacts. Where we are able to learn for ourselves and learn from each other. Who educates the educator?

Finally, before you proceed a point needs to be emphasised.

The following article is informed by the following assumptions.

  • That the primary objective of public education is to promote and foster wholistic human development of the individual while understanding that human beings are fundamentally social animals.
  • That there should be a constant focus on understanding how we learn. How we learn is a question we should always keep asking and attempting to define. In this regard we need to ask who is asking and for whom? We know something about human cognition from a scientific point of view but there is increased interest in a holistic understanding of learning and teaching, and consequently that good personal relationships make a significant contribution to effective teaching and learning.
  • That ‘life long learning’ is an essential characteristic of human beings’ development. That education should be directed toward developing our capacities to educate each other and ourselves in the manner of the autodidact. It should not be seen in the negative sense of constant retraining to meet the changing demands of the corporate economic and political system.
  • The role of the teacher is then not to reproduce the next generation of ‘wage slaves’ ready to provide their labour power for the benefit of capitalists and their ‘enterprises’. We need to be able to critically appraise the prevailing industrial model and the corresponding transference of its ‘values’ into the public education system.
  • Standardisation through systemetised testing; terms such as value adding; line managers; classroom management are contrary to the previously stated aims of education in that they are management tools which have little to contribute to teachers’ pedagogical concerns or the social and emotional development of children and adolescents in the positive sense. overtly about building cooperative caring teams are an – language such as communities – communities of inquirers
  • That Citizenship – benign and abstracted from contemporary circumstances- for what a parliamentary democracy a participatory democracy? – what does empowerment, taking action, making a difference mean? Service charity etc
  • The Victorian Governments Blueprints for Victorian Government Schools, The Victorian Essential Learning Standards and the Principles of Learning and Teaching provide the framework for effective teachers, and teaching and learning. The Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority supports integrated and inquiry approaches that supports this holistic understanding of learning, education, and our purpose as teachers.
  • In addition to the Victorian Essential Learning Standards and the Principles of Teaching and Learning the approach provided within the series Primary Connections produced in collaboration with the Academy of Science: Linking Science with Literacy using the ‘5Es’ teaching and learning model; Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate, supports the understanding that we learn best when we are allowed to work out explanations for ourselves over time, through a variety of learning experiences structured by both learners and the teacher. Making sense and meaning of our experiences and connections between new information and our prior knowledge in relation to the natural and cultural worlds is the intention of this content framework.

Teaching is most rewarding when there are opportunities to provide for, and participate in learning experiences with students. Younger children particularly enjoy time in the garden when they are digging, collecting and sharing their observations with their peers and teachers. Older students can be more difficult to engage when they have not had the opportunity of these early playful foundational experiences.

My observations and experiences with children in such learning environments convince me that when we allow possibilities for exploration, experiment, observation and questions students generally become, and are, actively engaged in learning. A young third grade boy, unsettled and made anxious by his first two years of ‘schooling’ elsewhere, remarked to his mother, “It doesn’t feel like work because it is fun”. Described as experiential learning, this approach provides the means for serious but ‘playful’ engagement in the learning process and the childrens’ self-development and self-understanding as active learners with an emphasis on the social context. Emergent and integrated inquiry learning and teaching relies on an ongoing, evolving dialogue, a narrative constructed over time by the collective, or community of students and their teachers.

Accepting that knowledge is socially constructed means that purposeful, and meaningful engagement with ideas and concepts is only possible when they connected to, and are built out of our own experiences. If we accept that learning is the struggle for knowledge then we need to then accept that teachers need to provide a learning environment and situations that provide students’ with the possibilities, and the means, to construct knowledge for themselves. Because knowledge is socially produced childrens’ ideas become particularly meaningful when they are shared with others and have arisen out of common events and shared experiences.

Because knowledge is socially constructed and reconstructed the way we learn, and gain knowledge of the world does not change fundamentally as we progress from infant to adult. What does change is the degree of sophistication of our understanding of elements, processes, and the complexity of our conceptual descriptions. Our subjective commonsense, everyday beliefs and opinions are invalidated or validated as we seek to discriminate by finding evidence for objective judgments.

This is also the case for teachers’ professional development. Leading the evolution of a program that provided for students’ participation in a kitchen garden, and developed their appreciation and involvement in the surrounding natural environment, was key to fruitful and meaningful engagement with these learning process precisely because they were central and common experiences for both students and teachers.

Understanding teaching practice as an imagined continuum, as an evolving project, benefits from being alert to opportunities provided by the It has been through of an inquiry approach for the evolution of a student-centred, emergent, and integrated curriculum that evolved Given the many demands of classroom teachers’ time and other issues around ‘covering the curriculum’, careful attention must be given to building connections between concepts and activity in all these areas by demonstrating how they can be developed in an integrated way and arts program

An example of this was the evolution of my students’ mould project. During one of our forays into the garden we had plucked from it a very large squash. The children were amazed by its size and we set to weighing, measuring, drawing and writing about it. We had also noticed that the skin had been punctured. Over the following weeks we observed that mould had begun to grow over the puncture mark. The children continued to observe and record the changes that were taking place over time. Many weeks later our large squash had been reduced to a small, hard, and unrecognisable disc about the size of a fifty-cent piece. These observations provided no end of discussion and speculation. Questions and hypotheses abounded as we struggled for plausible explanations. This all lead to further mould experiments and back into the garden of course to discover even more about life within a compost bin.

For teachers’ creating interest in the mundane, everyday world, could at first appear uninteresting. However this story alerts us to what it actually means to ‘localise’ the curriculum, and as well provide meaningful learning that connects to, and builds on childrens’ experiences. The complexity of any curriculum framework can be made manageable by uncovering the interrelationship of knowledge and skills across the three strands and sixteen domains in regard to VELS. It is critical to appreciate that the development of any program that involves cultural change within a community takes time. It requires bringing everyone involved on the journey with you.

Understanding the intention of any curriculum framework as defined by education departments is an absolute given, but the significant challenge is the interpretation of that ‘abstract’ framework into one that is localised and gives meaning to the term authentic learning and teaching for both students and teachers.

A ‘localised curriculum’ must meet both the education department’s and the school community’s expectations. It is necessary to continually remind ourselves that the purpose of the teacher, and teaching, is primarily to provide opportunities for meaningful experiences, and carefully introduce and develop substantive content in an engaging way for students. It is difficult to improve teaching practice personally and generally when it is compromised by misinformed parental expectations, and demands to satisfy political and commercial agendas that have little to do with the welfare and education of students.

Negotiating the daily demands of creating a productive and engaging classroom program with the students’ involvement provides the educator with rich learning experiences too. My ongoing participation in subject associations, the Teacher Environment Network and the Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools have all reinforced for me the evolving nature of the educational process for both students and educators, and the importance of collegiate teams and peer-to-peer learning in this regard.

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Challenging assumptions about play

January 1, 2015

 In the book Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood: Bending the Rules, authors Sue Docket and Marilyn Fleer challenge four assumptions about play.

The assumptions they challenge are:

  • Play is a characteristic of childhood (Play is a characteristic of childhood. However, thinking of play only in this way may result in a view of play as immature and childish. p.107)
  • Play is carefree and free of constraints (Play is rarely free of constraints. Adults constrain play through the environment they create and the time, space and resources they commit to play as well as though their attitudes towards play. Children place constraints on play when they follow social obligations, set and enforce rules or adhere to patterns displayed by their peers. In addition, adult’s expectations of children, derived from a conceptualisation of childhood as innocent and relatively ignorant, constrain play. p110)
  • Play is pleasant (Many play experiences are pleasant for the players. However, if we are serious in our study of play, we need to recognise the potential negative effects, as well as the positive effects, and to consider what this means for our promotion of play as a universally positive experience for all young children. p.112)
  • Play is characterised by stages of development (Understanding children’s development may provide some useful guidance to understanding children’s play and planning suitable play environments. However, we need to be wary of expecting to see particular patterns of play and then fitting our observations in with our expectations, and wary of ignoring the great diversity among children. p.114)

What evidence supports these assumptions?

What evidence contradicts these assumptions?

Can you identify any other assumptions about play?   What evidence do you find to support your assumptions? What evidence contradicts your assumptions?

Reference:

Dockett, S., & Fleer, M. (1999) Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood: Bending the Rules. Harcourt Brace. Australia.

Some thoughts on challenging assumptions about play

Is play only a characteristic of childhood or is it indicative of a fundamental human trait? Something childlike does not mean it is immature because that would depend on the child and where our particular observation corresponded to a general schema to guide our understanding of human development.

I am immediately reminded of a quote from Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist; the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”. I take this to mean that an artist would equate play with intellectual activity, imagination, discovering, and enjoyment of the journey even when it requires effort. To describe play this way is to remove it from notions of immaturity. To think of play in this way is to think of ourselves as an artist and the inextricable link between defining an educator as an artist, as a creator, rather than simply a transmitter and technician.

Play is not carefree and free of constraints; it is an aspect of human behaviour that allows is to appreciate that there are limits that impinge on us whether they be naturally or socially imposed limits. Limitations are a fact of life. Most of what makes us human is culturally communicated and transmitted. Play for children is one of the ways they explore their personal and social world but within an environment that is relatively safe. In this world limits can be tested other children and adults. It is the world of play that allows adults to observe and appreciate the imaginative and social development and maturation of children without the direct imposition or immediate constraints of an adult perspective.

Should play be pleasant; should it be a universally positive experience for young children? The question is begged, what is a ‘positive experience’? A negative or unpleasant experience can be a positive for children’s development. We know that an important aspect of educating is to develop personal resilience and the social understanding that the world is not the pleasant place we might like it, or expect it, to be. One of the roles of the educator, at any stage of development, is to assist this appreciation of the world around us. This is important for developing human agency, and equally, it informs our ideas about the causes of injustices and our need for establishing rights. So, play does not have to be pleasant or positive in the sense that we try to avoid conflict. Through meeting resistance and understanding conflicts we are provoked to ask questions and learn from mistakes.

Play provides the context for observing indicators of social and cognitive development. Professionals have used these indicators to characterise stages of development, and observe behaviours that may indicate that a child has a problem that may need to be addressed if it is to be happy and flourish. The environment for productive play is not one that is imposed by the adults but rather one that supports the understanding that education is communicating, and participating in a dialogue with children. What we consequently discover can assist us to realise opportunities for extending children’s understanding.

Response to Challenging Assumptions about Play and Changing Childhoods: A Changing World.

As the economic world changes so does the social world. This may be stating the obvious but it is important to keep that in mind as it can be seen very clearly in the super- politicised world of the compulsory years of education. There are tendencies within society that can support both positive and negative conceptualisations of childhood. It is not unreasonable to say that to work with children in a supportive and constructive way means to challenge the status quo.

The status quo can be broadly defined as that which is defined by pro-corporate capitalist economic models and pro-corporate formal political systems both of which do not encourage reasonable and sensitive attitudes toward children, and provide their particular construction of childhood. This has been clearly stated by the current federal government in the EYLF which states that the intention is to provide for a more productive nation. Given the prevailing dominance of the free market economy this means maximizing corporate profits. Concurrently the corporatisation (popularly misnamed ‘privatisation’) of childcare puts profit making at the centre of their concerns and the mass media culture assists in the commodification of children and childhood which all impinge on families, children, and practitioners and educators.

The changing patterns of work and life remind us that they are increasingly fragmented or atomized. More mothers and fathers, single and coupled, are participating in part-time and full time work, the absence of child care places, and the cost of childcare create particular expectations of what early childhood education is and should provide. The anxieties of adult social life impact on children and our adult expectations. Many parents understandably see education as a race up the rungs of the ladder of opportunity, and feel that their child must receive appropriate preparation for this race. This is particularly evident in North America where the pressure on children to ‘succeed’ and for testing for that success is virulent. This view negatively impacts on the playful practice of early childhood education.

Play is not a ‘free-for-all’ as non-practitioners, and educators who work beyond the early years often suggest. Play in early childhood allows the practitioner to work with the individual child, and as well, their combined or collective interests. Children bring with them their particular construction of the world, which by virtue of being a social being correspond in many ways with the constructions of others.

Play provides opportunities for children to explore and build on their own interests at their own emotional, and cognitive pace. That is, when there is a readiness to move beyond where they may currently be at any moment in those respects. It is this idea that informs the Zone of Proximal Development suggested by Vygotsky. This approach also corresponds with the Reggio Approach developed with Loris Malaguzzi. Equally this play approach is a critical teacher for the educator. Careful observation and critical regard of children’s emerging ideas and activity informs practice and where the direction of content, mindful of their playful environment, should proceed.

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Reggio Emilia Principles, Philosophy with Children, and Inquiry Learning.

January 1, 2015

An introduction to Reggio Emilia Principles and Approaches and Philosophy with Children and Inquiry Learning.

Schooling is a partnership between the teacher, children, and parents all working in the best interests of children. Teachers also share this responsibility they are also aware of the needs and relationships within the whole classroom and the larger school community. By discovering and sharing our mutual concerns in these regards our activities as a school community can only be strengthened.

What is Learning? Valuing curiosity and imagination

Education is essentially learning to think. Young children live imaginatively and have ideas largely unburdened by facts. It is critical to keep the desire to learn from their curiosity alive. The desire to know, ask questions and seek answers underlies the key purpose of all our learning. All learning, regardless of age, is driven by curiosity and doubt. Very early on, as soon as children can speak with any coherence, they constantly ask, Why? Children come to school bringing with them their own knowledge and experiences. Building on this apparently innate desire to learn the early years – Prep to Grade 4 – provides the foundations for the continuing development of intelligent behaviours or habits in the middle to upper primary years and establishing the capacity for independent learning and self-regulation in secondary and post-compulsory education.

By building strong foundations good habits are developed

Formal, school based learning requires a period of transition for young children. Play and game based approaches to learning is an important aspect of the classroom. Many aspects of our culture ignore the authentic needs of children. Specifically our culture tends to define all of us as consumers rather than creators. This is also perhaps best explained by understanding that young children should not feel pressured to perform to predetermined standards and outcomes but rather encouraged to appreciate a love of learning. Consequently the emphasis is on building understanding and meaning by using their own activity, thoughts and reflections on their everyday experiences.

Reggio Emilia principles and approaches seek to build on children’s strengths and understand children as they are rather than what we want them to be or think they should be thereby acknowledging that personality and character are developed by social interactions and the relationships between themselves and adult co-inquirers. Reggio teachers equally regard themselves in this way too; we do not walk in front or behind but alongside students as co-inquirers. Such an approach explicitly acknowledges children’s personal and collective intellectual efforts to make sense of their world and the place of learning within it.

Reggio Emilia educational theory and practice is informed by many years of international collective research based on observing and listening to children in early years settings. While it is very influential in preschool settings we believe that the principles and approaches can be, and should be, extended into primary education. While the emphases may shift The arts are at the center of all aspects of their learning whether it is literacy, numeracy or imaginative exploration and discovery. Philosophy with Children has a similar approach to Reggio Emilia and describes its model as a process of creating a community of inquirers where the object is “thinking about thinking” or meta-cognition.

The combination of these approaches makes possible a powerful foundation for what is commonly defined as Inquiry learning. By encouraging the skills of respectful dialogue between the children themselves and their teacher the importance of questioning and thinking is also emphasised along with direct instruction of ‘thinking tools’ and processes that the discipline of philosophy provides. These two approaches also provide for learning that is slow and deep.

Creating a community of learners

Learning to get along with each other, developing routines and responding to a variety of situations is an important aspect of early years education. Learning how to be with others and value them is a significant theme throughout the early years.

Understanding who they are and where they belong in the world begins to develop in a self-conscious way through the awareness of others as they move from a predominantly egocentric view of the world.

Children are encouraged to actively make, and think, about their world. By exchanging their own stories, speaking and listening, reading and exchanging opinions, and questioning each other’s stories they are encouraged to be critical self-conscious thinkers.

Creating a sense of common purpose and cooperation.

A multi-age classroom offers many opportunities for formal and informal peer learning and teaching. Relationships between adults and children are nurtured. The quality of this relationship is an important element of the children’s self-understanding and development as a learner and teacher. For this reason the active participation of parents and other significant adults in the classroom is encouraged across all programs.

Teacher judgment.

The teacher is the authoritative adult who acts with the best interests of the individual child and the children as a whole. Learning and teaching in this environment expects to encourage dispositions that assist independent and cooperative learning. A self-critical or self-reflexive attitude that does not rely on rewards and punishment is encouraged at all times.

In Conclusion.

It is not possible to do justice to these approaches on paper other than to reiterate that other than their own intrinsic worth these approaches significantly support learning in all areas of the curriculum. The thinking and manipulative skills developed positively impact on literacy – language, reading and writing, story telling, drama – feelings, emotions, other points of view, numeracy and mathematics – quantifying, recognising patterns and their expression in mathematical language.

Equally it provides the basis for significant and profound approaches to the social nature of learning and knowledge by using explicit strategies to build behaviour that is appropriate to sharing and exchanging opinions and knowledge with those around them. In this way children are not merely the passive recipients of values but actively participate in developing and understanding our shared expectations as individuals, and as a community.

 

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