I'm doing 32 things
I’m not so new to the act of teaching, but feel very new the the language teachers and educational institutions use to talk about teaching. There are so many things I feel intuitively that I have to learn to express in a more educated & informed manor.
I’ve been frustrated with the lack of teamwork between teachers teaching in the Sustainable Studies program. In our one very short meeting after the first semester I was shocked to hear that the Foundations course should be thought of as a “facts & figures” class. That it should be about absorbing information rather than creating it. We should try to avoid project based work and activities should be lower on Bloom’s taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy is pretty new to me, and while I can appreciate the concept, the best parts of my own education don’t seem to follow the clear path up the pyramid. As an architect, I started by learning to think in a new way, as a creator and a designer, before being bogged down with the facts and figures I learned to apply later.
I want to build up a strong, informed rebuttal to these kind of statements. To me it seems like part of the old guard, the thing sustainability education is trying to overcome.
So I need to start collecting sources. Here are some quotes from deep learning and education for sustainability by Kevin Warburton, an article that Adrian sent me at the end of last semester:
“Deep learning can be encouraged by emphasizing principles and concepts rather than accumulated facts.Given the unusual breadth of the sustainability agenda, it is important to provide focus in the form of a unifying framework that permits meaningful dialogue across conventional disciplines. This can be done by identifying key concepts and considering interpretations and implications of each concept…
Conceptual frameworks should be developed in a clear and graphic fashion. Through enquiry, discussion and problem-based exercises students can make connections between key concepts and visualise these relationships in two-dimensional space as strings, networks or mind-maps…
In view of the importance of science to an understanding of environmental issues, the common failure of scientific education to stimulate deep learning represents a significant constraint on sustainability education…
Science students can be successfully encouraged to use deep learning approaches when provided with contextualised scaffolding and prompted to ask questions, make predictions and develop explanations. This can be more readily achieved in a cooperative, active learning environment than with a traditional lecture format…
Sustainable development is best represented as an ongoing process and as a way of asking better questions rather than as a set of irrevocable answers. Consistent with this view, the pedagogical process should be presented as a revelatory activity that builds individual awareness, rather than as one where pre-packaged information is to be absorbed. Through problem-based learning tasks, students can be encouraged to clarify assumptions, choose analytic techniques and examine value judgments. The meaning of abstract ideas should emerge organically through case studies.”
I get this stuff. I think I am pretty good at this as a teacher because I know that this is what I need as a student and what has helped me increase and expand my understanding of “sustainability”.
