Classical education movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UNC course catalog from June, 1819

 

Seal of the University of Pennsylvania from 1894

 

The classical education movement advocates a form of education based in the traditions of Western culture, with a particular focus on education as understood and taught in Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. The curriculum and pedagogy of classical education was first developed during the Middle Ages by Martianus Capella and systematized during the Renaissance by Petrus Ramus. Capella's original goal was to provide a systematic, memorable framework to teach all human knowledge. The term "classical education" has been used in Western culture for several centuries, with each era modifying the definition and adding its own selection of topics. By the end of the 18th century, in addition to the trivium and quadrivium of the Middle Ages, the definition of a classical education embraced study of literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, history, art, and languages.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has been used to refer to a broad-based study of the liberal arts and sciences, as opposed to a practical or pre-professional program.

There exist a number of informal groups and professional organizations which undertake the classical approach to classical education in earnest. Within the secular classical movement, in the 1930s Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins set forth the "Great Books" of Western civilization as center stage for a classical education curriculum. Also some public schools (primarily charters) have structured their curricula and pedagogy around the trivium and integrate the teaching of values (sometimes called "character education") into the mainstream classroom. There are several major societies and associations within the classical Christian education movement, including the Society for Classical Learning, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, Trinity Schools, and the CiRCE Institute.

The University of Pennsylvania seal (1894) depicted the trivium as a stack of books providing the foundation for a 'modified' quadrivium of mathematics, natural philosophy (empirical science), astronomy, and theology.

Three phases of modern education linked to classical education

Classical education developed many of the terms now used to describe modern education. Western classical education has three phases, each with a different purpose. The phases are roughly coordinated with human development, and would ideally be exactly coordinated with each individual student's development.

• "Primary education" teaches students how to learn.
• "Secondary education" then teaches a conceptual framework that can hold all human knowledge (history), fills in basic facts and practices of major fields of knowledge, and develops the fundamental skills (perhaps in a simplified form) of every major human activity.
• "Tertiary education" then prepares a person to pursue an educated profession such as law, theology, military strategy, medicine, or science.

Primary education

In classical terms, primary education was the trivium comprising grammar, logic, and rhetoric. 

Logic and rhetoric were often taught in part by the Socratic method, in which the teacher raises questions and the class discusses them. By controlling the pace, the teacher can keep the class very lively, yet disciplined.

Grammar

Grammar consists of language skills such as reading and the mechanics of writing. An important goal of grammar is to acquire as many words and manage as many concepts as possible so as to be able to express and understand clearly concepts of varying degrees of complexity. Classical education traditionally included study of Latin and Greek to reinforce understanding of the workings of languages and allow students to read the classics of western civilization untranslated. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this period refers to the upper elementary school years.

Logic

Logic (dialectic) is the process of correct reasoning. The traditional text for teaching logic was Aristotle's Logic. In the modern renaissance of classical education, this logic stage (or dialectic stage) refers to the junior high or middle school aged student, who developmentally is beginning to question ideas and authority, and truly enjoys a debate or an argument. Training in logic, both formal and informal, enables students to critically examine arguments and to analyze their own. The whole goal is to train the student's mind not only to grasp information, but to find the analytical connections between seemingly different facts/ideas, to find out why something is true, or why something else is false (in short, reasons for a fact).

Rhetoric

Rhetorical debate and composition are taught to somewhat older (often high-school-aged) students, who by this point in their education have the concepts and logic to criticize their own work and persuade others. According to Aristotle, "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic", concerned with finding "all the available means of persuasion." Students learn to articulate answers to important questions in their own words, to try to persuade others with these facts, and to defend ideas against rebuttal. The student learns to reason correctly in the Logic stage so that they can now apply those skills to Rhetoric. Traditionally, students would read and emulate classical poets in learning how to present their arguments well.

Secondary education

Secondary education, classically the quadrivium or "four ways," consist of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Arithmetic is Number in itself, which is a pure abstraction; that is, outside of space and time. Geometry is Number in space. Music is Number in time, and Astronomy is Number in space and time. Sometimes architecture was taught alongside these, often from the works of Vitruvius. 

History was always taught to provide a context and show political and military development. The classic texts were from ancient authors such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus.

Biographies were often assigned as well; the classic example being Plutarch's Lives. Biographies help show how persons behave in their context, and the wide ranges of professions and options that exist. As more modern texts became available, these were often added to the curriculum.

In the Middle Ages, these were the best available texts. In modern terms, these fields might be called history, natural science, accounting and business, fine arts (at least two, one to amuse companions, and another to decorate one's domicile), military strategy and tactics, engineering, agronomy, and architecture.

These are taught in a matrix of history, reviewing the natural development of each field for each phase of the trivium. That is, in a perfect classical education, the historical study is reviewed three times: first to learn the grammar (the concepts, terms and skills in the order developed), next time the logic (how these elements could be assembled), and finally the rhetoric, how to produce good, humanly useful and beautiful objects that satisfy the grammar and logic of the field.

History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present. A skillful teacher also uses the historical context to show how each stage of development naturally poses questions and then how advances answer them, helping to understand human motives and activity in each field. The question-answer approach is called the "dialectic method," and permits history to be taught Socratically as well.

Classical educators consider the Socratic method to be the best technique for teaching critical thinking. In-class discussion and critiques are essential in order for students to recognize and internalize critical thinking techniques. This method is widely used to teach both philosophy and law. It is currently rare in other contexts. Essentially, the teacher referees the students' discussions, asks leading questions, and may refer to facts, but never gives a conclusion until at least one student reaches that conclusion. The learning is most effective when the students compete strongly, even viciously in the argument, but always according to well-accepted rules of correct reasoning. That is, fallacies should not be allowed by the teacher.

By completing a project in each major field of human effort, the student can develop a personal preference for further education and professional training.

Tertiary education

Tertiary education was usually an apprenticeship to a person with the desired profession. Most often, the understudy was called a "secretary" and had the duty of carrying on all the normal business of the "master." Philosophy and Theology were both widely taught as tertiary subjects in Universities, however. 

The early biographies of nobles show probably the ultimate form of classical education: a tutor. One early, much-emulated classic example is of this tutor system is of Alexander the Great, who was tutored by Aristotle.

Modern interpretations of classical education

There exist a number of modern groups and professional organizations which take the classical approach to education seriously, and who undertake it in earnest.

Classical Christian education

There are several major societies and associations within the classical Christian education movement, including the Society for Classical Learning, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, Trinity Schools, the Classic Learning Test, and the CiRCE Institute.

These schools tend to rely for upon one or more of the visions of classical education represented by Dorothy Sayers essay "The Lost Tools of Learning", Mortimer Adler's Paideia Proposal, Alfred North Whitehead's The Aims of Education, or Susan Wise Bauer's The Well Trained Mind. 

Most classical Christian schools employ the trivium as three stages of learning which are linked to child development:

• Grammar: The fundamental rules of each subject
• Logic: The ordered relationship of particulars in each subject
• Rhetoric: How the grammar and logic of each subject may be clearly expressed

Classical Christian schools vary in their approach to the sectarian integration of Christian thinking. Some schools ask parents to sign a statement of faith before attending, some do not require this of parents but are clear in their sectarian teaching, others are consciously ecumenical.

Classical secular education

There exist a number of classical schools in the public/secular sector. These schools, primarily charter schools, also structure their curricula and pedagogy around the trivium and integrate the teaching of values (sometimes called "character education") into the mainstream classroom without involving any particular religious perspectives.

Methods of classical education have also often been integrated into homeschooling, particularly due to the publication of: "The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home," by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer (W.W. Norton, 1999), is a modern reference on classical education, particularly in a homeschool setting. It provides a history of classical education, an overview of the methodology and philosophy of classical education, and annotated lists of books divided by grade and topic that list the best books for classical education in each category.

Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, both of the University of Chicago set forth in the 1930s to restore the "Great Books" of Western civilization to center stage in the curriculum. St. John's College is an example of this type of classical education at the college level. Although the standard classical works—such as the Harvard Classics—most widely available at the time, were decried by many as out of touch with modern times, Adler and Hutchins sought to expand on the standard "classics" by including more modern works, and by trying to tie them together in the context of what they described as the "Great Ideas," condensed into a "Syntopicon" index and bundled together with a new "five-foot shelf" of books as "The Great Books of the Western World." They were wildly popular during the 1950s, and discussion groups of aficionados were found all over the USA, but their popularity waned during the 1960s, and such groups are relatively hard to find today. Extensions to the original set are still being published, encompassing selections from both current and older works which extend the "great ideas" into the present age and other fields, including civil rights, the global environment, and discussions of multiculturalism and assimilation.

Classical languages

A more traditional, but less common view of classical education arises from the ideology of the Renaissance, advocating an education grounded in the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The demanding and lengthy training period required for learning to read Greek and Latin texts in their original form has been crowded out in most American schools in favor of more contemporary subjects. 

The revival of "classical education" has resulted in Latin being taught at classical schools, but less often Greek. The Association of Classical and Christian Schools does require Latin for accreditation, and New Saint Andrews College requires both Latin and Greek to graduate with a four-year degree. A new group of schools, the Classical Latin School Association, does require Latin to be taught as a core subject. 

Such an approach—an education in the classics—differs from the usual approach of the classical education movement, but is akin to an education on "The Great Books" followed by St. John's College.

Parallels in the East

In India, the classical education system is based upon the study and understanding of the ancient texts the Vedas, a discipline called Vedanga, and subjects based upon that foundation, referred to as Upaveda and incorporating medicine (Ayurveda), music, archery and other martial arts. 

Similarly, in China, the fulcrum of a classical education was the study and understanding of a core canon, the Four Books and Five Classics.

In Taiwan, Classical Chinese takes up 35% of Chinese education in junior high school (7-9th grade, compulsory), and 65% in senior high school (10-12th grade).

For more on Chinese education see:

• Imperial examination
• Scholar-bureaucrats

For classical Islamic education see:

• Madrasah
• Ijazah

Self-regulated learning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is one of the domains of self-regulation, and is aligned most closely with educational aims. Broadly speaking, it refers to learning that is guided by metacognition (thinking about one's thinking), strategic action (planning, monitoring, and evaluating personal progress against a standard), and motivation to learn. "Self-regulated" describes a process of taking control of and evaluating one's own learning and behavior.

Self-regulated learning emphasizes autonomy and control by the individual who monitors, directs, and regulates actions toward goals of information acquisition, expanding expertise, and self-improvement”. In particular, self-regulated learners are cognizant of their academic strengths and weaknesses, and they have a repertoire of strategies they appropriately apply to tackle the day-to-day challenges of academic tasks. These learners hold incremental beliefs about intelligence (as opposed to entity, or fixed views of intelligence) and attribute their successes or failures to factors (e.g., effort expended on a task, effective use of strategies) within their control.

Finally, students who are self-regulated learners believe that opportunities to take on challenging tasks, practice their learning, develop a deep understanding of subject matter, and exert effort will give rise to academic success (Perry et al., 2006). In part, these characteristics may help to explain why self-regulated learners usually exhibit a high sense of self-efficacy. In the educational psychology literature, researchers have linked these characteristics to success in and beyond school.

Self regulated learners are successful because they control their learning environment. They exert this control by directing and regulating their own actions toward their learning goals. Self regulated learning should be used in three different phases of learning. The first phase is during the initial learning, the second phase is when troubleshooting a problem encountered during learning and the third phase is when they are trying to teach others.

Phases of self-regulation

According to the review of six self-regulated learning models published by Panadero (2017), most models are compounded of three phases: preparatory, performance and appraisal. As stated by Panadero (2017, p. 18): "(a) preparatory, which includes task analysis, planning, activation of goals, and setting goals; (b) performance, in which the actual task is done while monitoring and controlling the progress of performance; and (c) appraisal, in which the student reflects, regulates, and adapts for future performances."

As one example, the model by Winne and Hadwin, self-regulation unfolds over “four flexibly sequenced phases of recursive cognition.” These phases are task perception, goal setting and planning, enacting, and adaptation. According to Panadero's classification, Task definition, goal setting and planning would belong to the preparatory phase, enacting to the performance phase, and adaptation to appraisal phase. During the task perception phase, students gather information about the task at hand and personalize their perception of it. This stage involves determining motivational states, self-efficacy, and information about the environment around them.

Next, students set goals and plan how to accomplish the task. Several goals may be set concerning explicit behaviors, cognitive engagement, and motivation changes. The goals that are set depend on how the students perceive the task at hand. The students will then enact the plan they have developed by using study skills and other useful tactics they have in their repertoire of learning strategies. 

The last phase is adaptation, wherein students evaluate their performance and determine how to modify their strategy in order to achieve higher performance in the future. They may change their goals or their plan; they may also choose not to attempt that particular task again. Winne and Hadwin state that all academic tasks encompass these four phases.

Sources of self-regulated learning

According to Iran-Nejhad and Chissom, there are three sources of self-regulated learning: active/executive, dynamic, and interest-creating discovery model (1992). Active/executive self-regulation is regulated by the person and is intentional, deliberate, conscious, voluntary, and strategic. The individual is aware and effortful in using self-regulation strategies. Under this source of SRL, learning happens best in a habitual mode of functioning.

Dynamic self-regulation is also known as unintentional learning because it is regulated by internal subsystems other than the “central executive.” The learner is not consciously aware they are learning because it occurs “outside the direct influence of deliberate internal control.”

The third source of self-regulated learning is the interest-creating discovery module, which is described as “bifunctional” as it is developed from both the active and dynamic models of self-regulation. In this model, learning takes place best in a creative mode of functioning and is neither completely person-driven nor unconscious, but it is a combination of both.

Social cognitive perspective

Self-regulation from the social cognitive perspective looks at the triadic interaction among the person (e.g., beliefs about success), his or her behavior (e.g., engaging in a task), and the environment (e.g., feedback from a teacher). Zimmerman et al. specified three important characteristics of self-regulated learning:

1. self-observation (monitoring one's activities); seen as the most important of these processes
2. self-judgment (self-evaluation of one's performance) and
3. self-reactions (reactions to performance outcomes).

To the extent that one accurately reflects about one's progress towards a learning goal, and appropriately adjusts the actions to be performed in order to maximize performance and foreseeable outcome; effectively, at this point one'self has become self-regulated. During a student's school career the primary goal of teachers is to produce self-regulated learners by using such theories as Information Processing Model (IPM). By storing the information into long term memory (or a live document like a Runbook) the learner can retrieve it upon demand and apply to tasks, becoming a self-regulated learner.

Involving stages

Zimmerman suggested that self-regulated learning process better with three stages.

1. Forethought, learners' preparing work before performance on their studying;
2. Volitional control, which is also called "performance control", occurs in the learning process. It involves learners attention and willpower;
3. Self-reflection, happens in the final stage when learners review their performance toward final goals. At the same time, focusing on their learning strategies during the process is also efficient for their final outcomes.

Information processing perspective

Winne & Marx posited that motivational thoughts and beliefs are governed by the basic principles of cognitive psychology, which should be conceived in information-processing terms. Motivation plays a major role in self-regulated learning. Motivation is needed to apply effort and continue on when faced with difficulty. Control also plays a role in self-regulated learning as it helps the learner stay on track in reaching their learning goal and avoid being distracted from things that stand in the way of the learning goal.

Student performance perspective

Lovett, Meyer and Thille observed comparable student performance between instructor-led and self-regulated learning environments. In a subsequent study, self-regulated learning was shown to enable accelerated learning while maintaining long-term retention rates.

Cassandra B. Whyte (Whyte, 1978; Lauridsen & Whyte, 1985) noted the importance of internal locus of control tendencies on successful academic performance, also compatible with self-regulated learning. Whyte recognized and appreciated external factors, to include the benefit of working with a good teacher, while encouraging self-regulated hard work, skill building, and a positive attitude to perform better in academic situations.(Whyte,1978) 

To increase positive attitudes and academic performance, expert learners should be created. Expert learners develop self-regulated learning strategies. One of these strategies is the ability to develop and ask questions and use these questions to expand on their own prior knowledge. This technique allows the learners to test the true understanding of their knowledge and make correction about content areas that have a misunderstanding. When learners engage in questioning, it forces them to be more actively engaged in their learning. It also allows them to self analyze and determine their level of comprehension.

This active engagement allows the learner to organize concepts into existing schemas. Through the use of questions, learners can accommodate and then assimilate their new knowledge with existing schema. This process allows the learner to solve novel problems and when the existing schema does not work on the novel problem the learner must reevaluate and assess their level of understanding.

Application in practice

There are also many practical applications for self-regulated learning in schools and classrooms today. Paris and Paris state there are three main areas of direct application in classrooms: literacy instruction, cognitive engagement, and self-assessment. In the area of literacy instruction, educators can teach students the skills necessary to lead them to become self-regulated learners by using strategies such as reciprocal teaching, open-ended tasks, and project-based learning.

Other tasks that promote self-regulated learning are authentic assessments, autonomy-based assignments, and portfolios. These strategies are student-centered and inquiry-based, which cause students to gradually become more autonomous, creating an environment of self-regulated learning. However, students do not simply need to know the strategies, but they need to realize the importance of utilizing them in order to experience academic success.

According to Dweck and Master, "Students use of learning strategies – and their continued use of them in the face of difficulty – is based on the beliefs that these strategies are necessary for learning, and that they are effective ways of overcoming obstacles." Students who are not self-regulated learners may daydream, rarely complete assignments or forget assignments completely. Those who do practice self-regulation ask questions, take notes, allocate their time effectively, and use resources available to them. Pajares lists several practices of successful students that Zimmerman and his colleagues developed in his chapter of Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning: Theory, Research, and Applications. 

These behaviors include, but are not limited to, the following: finishing homework assignments by deadlines, studying when there are other interesting things to do, concentrating on school subjects, taking useful class notes of class instruction, using the library for information for class assignments, effectively planning schoolwork, effectively organizing schoolwork, remembering information presented in class and textbooks, arranging a place to study at home without distractions, motivating oneself to do schoolwork, and participating in class discussions. 

Examples of self-regulated learning strategies in practice: 

Self-Assessment: fosters planning, assess what skills the learner has and what skills are needed. Allows students to internalize standards of learning so they can regulate their own learning (Laskey & Hetzel, 2010).

Wrapper Activity : activity based on pre-existing learning or assessment task. This can be done as a homework assignment. Consist of self-assessment questions to complete before completing homework and then after completion of homework. This will allow the learner to draw their own conclusions about the learning process.

Think Aloud: This involves the teacher describing their thought process in solving a problem.

Questioning: Following new material, student develop questions about the material.

Reciprocal Teaching: the learner teaches new material to fellow learners.

Self-regulation has recently been studied in relation to certain age and socioeconomic groups. Programs such as CSRP target these different groups in order to increase effortful control in the classroom to enhance early learning.

Evaluation of SRL

Data available to ascertain efficacy of SRL is limited to studies on self-assessment, leaning opportunities/processes involvement and different contexts which learning occurs. For instance, a meta-analysis conducted in 2017 concluded that self-assessment interventions have a positive influence on students’ SRL strategies and self-efficacy and, interestingly self-assessment interventions showed larger impact on girls’ self-efficacy whereas self-monitoring has a larger impact in boys.

A qualitative study reported that learners use SRL effectively when provided with enhanced guided notes (EGN) instead of standard guided notes (SGN) by the instructor. Moreover, students tend to use shallow level processing strategies such as rote memorization, rehearsal, and reviewing notes which are largely related to learning culture that they have exposed to. Social influences such as group work and social assistance as a means of developing SRL engaging in self-reflection, not only by receiving help but also by providing help (reciprocal interaction), has also associated largely with the learning context. 

Therefore, it is a challenge for the researchers to develop a suitable framework to evaluate SRL, as learners tends to use particular strategies over the others with specific focus on SRL at different contexts.

Minimally invasive education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Minimally invasive education (MIE) is a form of learning in which children operate in unsupervised environments. The methodology arose from an experiment done by Sugata Mitra while at NIIT in 1999, often called The Hole in the Wall, which has since gone on to become a significant project with the formation of Hole in the Wall Education Limited (HiWEL), a cooperative effort between NIIT and the International Finance Corporation, employed in some 300 'learning stations', covering some 300,000 children in India and several African countries.

The programme has been feted with the digital opportunity award by WITSA, and been extensively covered in the media.

History

Background

Professor Mitra, Chief Scientist at NIIT, is credited with proposing and initiating the Hole-in-the-Wall programme. As early as 1982, he had been toying with the idea of unsupervised learning and computers. Finally, in 1999, he decided to test his ideas in the field.

The experiment

On 26 January 1999, Mitra's team carved a "hole in the wall" that separated the NIIT premises from the adjoining slum in Kalkaji, New Delhi. Through this hole, a freely accessible computer was put up for use. This computer proved to be popular among the slum children. With no prior experience, the children learned to use the computer on their own. This prompted Mitra to propose the following hypothesis: The acquisition of basic computing skills by any set of children can be achieved through incidental learning provided the learners are given access to a suitable computing facility, with entertaining and motivating content and some minimal (human) guidance.

In the following comment on the TED website Mitra explains how they saw to it that the computer in this experiment was accessible to children only:

"... We placed the computers 3 feet off the ground and put a shade on top, so if you are tall, you hit your head on it. Then we put a protective plastic cowl over the keyboard which had an opening such that small hands would go in. Then we put a seating rod in front that was close to the wall so that, if you are of adult height, your legs would splay when you sit. Then we painted the whole thing in bright colours and put a sign saying 'for children under 15'. Those design factors prevented adult access to a very large extent."

Results

Mitra has summarised the results of his experiment as follows. Given free and public access to computers and the Internet, a group of children can

• Become computer literate on their own, that is, they can learn to use computers and the Internet for most of the tasks done by lay users.
• Teach themselves enough English to use email, chat and search engines.
• Learn to search the Internet for answers to questions in a few months time.
• Improve their English pronunciation on their own.
• Improve their mathematics and science scores in school.
• Answer examination questions several years ahead of time.
• Change their social interaction skills and value systems.
• Form independent opinions and detect indoctrination.

Current status and expansion outside India

The first adopter of the idea was the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. In 2000, the Government of Delhi set up 30 Learning Stations in a resettlement colony. This project is ongoing and said to be achieving significant results.

Encouraged by the initial success of the Kalkaji experiment, freely accessible computers were set up in Shivpuri (a town in Madhya Pradesh) and in Madantusi (a village in Uttar Pradesh). These experiments came to be known as Hole-in-the-Wall experiments. The findings from Shivpuri and Madantusi confirmed the results of Kalkaji experiments. It appeared that the children in these two places picked up computer skills on their own. Dr. Mitra defined this as a new way of learning "Minimally Invasive Education".

At this point in time, International Finance Corporation joined hands with NIIT to set up Hole-in-the-Wall Education Ltd (HiWEL). The idea was to broaden the scope of the experiments and conduct research to prove and streamline Hole-in-the-Wall. The results, show that children learn to operate as well as play with the computer with minimum intervention. They picked up skills and tasks by constructing their own learning environment. 

Today, more than 300,000 children have benefited from 300 Hole-in-the-Wall stations over last 8 years. In India Suhotra Banerjee (Head-Government Relations) has increased the reach of HiWEL learning stations in Nagaland, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh... and is slowly expanding their numbers.

Besides India, HiWEL also has projects abroad. The first such project was established in Cambodia in 2004. The project currently operates in Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Swaziland, Uganda, and Zambia, besides Cambodia. The idea, also called Open learning, is even being applied in Britain, albeit inside the classroom.

HiWEL

Hole-in-the-Wall Education Ltd. (HiWEL) is a joint venture between NIIT and the International Finance Corporation. Established in 2001, HiWEL was set up to research and propagate the idea of Hole-in-the-Wall, a path-breaking learning methodology created by Mitra, Chief Scientist of NIIT.

Awards and recognition

• Digital Opportunity Award by the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) in 2008. Reason: "groundbreaking work in developing computer literacy and improving the quality of education at a grass root level."

Coverage in the media

The project has received extensive coverage from sources as diverse as UNESCO, Business Week, CNN, Reuters, and The Christian Science Monitor, besides being featured at the annual TED conference in 2007. 

The project received international publicity, when it was found that it was the inspiration behind the book Q & A, itself the inspiration for the Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

HiWEL has been covered by the Indian Reader's Digest.

In school

Minimally Invasive Education in school adduces there are many reasons why children may have difficulty learning, especially when the learning is imposed and the subject is something the student is not interested in, a frequent occurrence in modern schools. Schools also label children as "learning disabled" and place them in special education even if the child does not have a learning disability, because the schools have failed to teach the children basic skills.

Minimally Invasive Education in school asserts there are many ways to study and learn. It argues that learning is a process you do, not a process that is done to you. The experience of schools holding this approach shows that there are many ways to learn without the intervention of teaching, to say, without the intervention of a teacher being imperative. In the case of reading for instance in these schools some children learn from being read to, memorizing the stories and then ultimately reading them. Others learn from cereal boxes, others from games instructions, others from street signs. Some teach themselves letter sounds, others syllables, others whole words. They adduce that in their schools no one child has ever been forced, pushed, urged, cajoled, or bribed into learning how to read or write, and they have had no dyslexia. None of their graduates are real or functional illiterates, and no one who meets their older students could ever guess the age at which they first learned to read or write.

In a similar form students learn all the subjects, techniques and skills in these schools. Every person, children and youth included, has a different learning style and pace and each person, is unique, not only capable of learning but also capable of succeeding. These schools assert that applying the medical model of problem-solving to individual children who are pupils in the school system, and labeling these children as disabled—referring to a whole generation of non-standard children that have been labeled as dysfunctional, even though they suffer from nothing more than the disease of responding differently in the classroom than the average manageable student—systematically prevents the students' success and the improvement of the current educational system, thus requiring the prevention of academic failure through intervention. This, they clarify, does not refer to people who have a specific disability that affects their drives; nor is anything they say and write about education meant to apply to people who have specific mental impairments, which may need to be dealt with in special, clinical ways.

Describing current instructional methods as homogenization and lockstep standardization, alternative approaches are proposed, such as the Sudbury model schools, an alternative approach in which children, by enjoying personal freedom thus encouraged to exercise personal responsibility for their actions, learn at their own pace rather than following a chronologically-based curriculum. These schools are organized to allow freedom from adult interference in the daily lives of students. As long as children do no harm to others, they can do whatever they want with their time in school. The adults in other schools plan a curriculum of study, teach the students the material and then test and grade their learning. The adults at Sudbury schools are "the guardians of the children's freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn what they wish," creating and maintaining a nurturing environment, in which children feel that they are cared for, and that does not rob children of their time to explore and discover their inner selves. They also are there to answer questions and to impart specific skills or knowledge when asked to by students. As Sudbury schools, proponents of unschooling have also claimed that children raised in this method do not suffer from learning disabilities, thus not requiring the prevention of academic failure through intervention.

"If learning is an emergent phenomenon, then the teacher needs to provide stimulus — lots of it – in the form of “big” questions. These must include questions to which the teacher, or perhaps anyone, does not have the answer. These should be the sorts of questions that will occupy children’s minds perpetually. The teacher needs to help each child cultivate a vision of the future. Thus, a new primary curriculum needs to teach only three skills: 1. Reading comprehension: This is perhaps the most crucial skill a child needs to acquire while growing up. 2. Information search and analysis: First articulated at the National Institute of Technology in India by professor J.R. Isaac in the early 1990s — decades ahead of its time — this skill set is vital for children searching for answers in an infinite cyberspace. 3. A rational system of belief: If children know how to search, and if they know how to read, then they must learn how to believe. Each one of us has a belief system. How soon can a child acquire one? A rational belief system will be our children’s protection against doctrine. Children who have these skills scarcely need schools as we define them today. They need a learning environment and a source of rich, big questions. Computers can give out answers, but they cannot, as of yet, make questions. Hence, the teacher’s role becomes bigger and stranger than ever before: She must ask her “learners” about things she does not know herself. Then she can stand back and watch as learning emerges."

Unschooling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Unschooling emphasizes free, undirected play as a major component of children's education.

 

Unschooling is an informal learning that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschooling students learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, believing that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood and therefore useful it is to the child. While courses may occasionally be taken, unschooling questions the usefulness of standard curricula, conventional grading methods, and other features of traditional schooling in the education of each unique child.

The term "unschooling" was coined in the 1970s and used by educator John Holt, widely regarded as the father of unschooling. While often considered a subset of homeschooling and homeschooling has been subject to widespread public debate, little media attention has been given to unschooling in particular. 

Critics of unschooling see it as an extreme educational philosophy, with concerns that unschooled children will lack the social skills, structure, and motivation of their schooled peers, while proponents of unschooling say exactly the opposite is true: self-directed education in a natural environment better equips a child to handle the "real world."

History

The term "unschooling" probably derives from Ivan Illich's term "deschooling", and was popularized through John Holt's newsletter Growing Without Schooling. In an early essay, Holt contrasted the two terms:

GWS will say 'unschooling' when we mean taking children out of school, and 'deschooling' when we mean changing the laws to make schools non-compulsory...

At this point the term was equivalent with "home schooling" (itself a neologism). Subsequently, home schoolers began to differentiate between various educational philosophies within home schooling. The term "unschooling" became used as a contrast to versions of home schooling that were perceived as politically and pedagogically "school-like," using textbooks and exercises at home, the same way they would be used at school. In 2003, in Holt's book Teach Your Own (originally published in 1981) Pat Farenga, co-author of the new edition, provided a definition:

When pressed, I define unschooling as allowing children as much freedom to learn in the world as their parents can comfortably bear.

In the same passage Holt stated that he was not entirely comfortable with this term, and that he would have preferred the term "living". Holt's use of the term emphasizes learning as a natural process, integrated into the spaces and activities of everyday life, and not benefiting from adult manipulation. It follows closely on the themes of educational philosophies proposed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Paul Goodman, and A.S. Neill.

After Holt's death a range of unschooling practitioners and observers defined the term in various ways. For instance, the Freechild Project defines unschooling as:

the process of learning through life, without formalized or institutionalized classrooms or schoolwork.

New Mexico homeschooling parent Sandra Dodd proposed the term "Radical Unschooling" to emphasize the complete rejection of any distinction between educational and non-educational activities. Radical Unschooling emphasizes that unschooling is a non-coercive, cooperative practice, and seeks to promote those values in all areas of life. These usages share an opposition to traditional schooling techniques and the social construction of schools. Most emphasize the integration of learning into the everyday life of the family and wider community. Points of disagreement include whether unschooling is primarily defined by the initiative of the learner and their control over the curriculum, or by the techniques, methods, and spaces being used.

Dr Peter Gray suggested the term self-directed education, which has fewer negative connotations.

Motivations

Unschoolers question schools for lessening the parent/child bond and reducing family time and creating atmospheres of fear, or atmospheres that are not conducive for learning and may not even correspond with later success.

Often those in school have a community consisting mainly of a peer group, of which the parent has little influence and even knowledge. Unschoolers may have time to share a role in their greater community, therefore relating more to older and younger individuals and finding their place within more diverse groups of people. Parents of school children also have little say regarding who their instructors and teachers are, whereas parents of unschoolers may be more involved in the selection of the coaches or mentors their children work with and with whom they build lasting and ongoing relationships.

According to unschooling pioneer John Holt, child-led learning is more efficient and respectful of children's time, takes advantage of their interests, and allows deeper exploration of subjects than what is possible in conventional education.

"...the anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know."

Others point out that some schools can be non-coercive and cooperative, in a manner consistent with the philosophies behind unschooling. Sudbury model schools are non-coercive, non-indoctrinative, cooperative, democratically run partnerships between children and adults, including full parents' partnership, where learning is individualized and child-led, and complements home education.

Teaching methods / philosophy

Children are natural learners

A fundamental premise of unschooling is that curiosity is innate and that children want to learn. From this an argument can be made that institutionalizing children in a so-called "one size fits all" or "factory model" school is an inefficient use of the children's time, because it requires each child to learn specific subject matter in a particular manner, at a particular pace, and at a specific time regardless of that individual's present or future needs, interests, goals, or any pre-existing knowledge they might have about the topic.

Many unschoolers believe that opportunities for valuable hands-on, community-based, spontaneous, and real-world experiences may be missed when educational opportunities are limited to, or dominated by, those inside a school building.

Learning styles

Unschoolers note that psychologists have documented many differences between children in the way they learn, and assert that unschooling is better equipped to adapt to these differences.

People vary in their "learning styles", that is, the preference in how they acquire new information. However, research has demonstrated that this preference is not related to increased learning or improved performance. Students have different learning needs. In a traditional school setting, teachers seldom evaluate an individual student differently from other students, and while teachers often use different methods, this is sometimes haphazard and not always with regard to an individual student.

Developmental differences

Developmental psychologists note that just as children reach growth milestones at different ages from each other, children are also prepared to learn different things at different ages. Just as some children learn to walk during a normal range of eight to fifteen months, and begin to talk across an even larger range, unschoolers assert that they are also ready and able to read, for example, at different ages, girls usually earlier, boys later. In fact, experts have discovered that natural learning produces far greater changes in behavior than do traditional learning methods, though not necessarily an increase in the amount of information learned. Traditional education requires all children to begin reading at the same time and do multiplication at the same time; unschoolers believe that some children cannot help but be bored because this was something that they had been ready to learn earlier, and even worse, some children cannot help but fail, because they are not yet ready for this new information being taught.

Essential body of knowledge

Unschoolers sometimes state that learning any specific subject is less important than learning how to learn. They assert, in the words of Holt:

Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever must be learned.

It is asserted that this ability to learn on their own makes it more likely that later, when these children are adults, they can continue to learn what they need to know to meet newly emerging needs, interests, and goals; and that they can return to any subject that they feel was not sufficiently covered or learn a completely new subject.

Many unschoolers disagree that there is a particular body of knowledge that every person, regardless of the life they lead, needs to possess. Unschoolers argue that, in the words of John Holt, "If children are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world than anyone else could make for them."

The role of parents

Parents of unschoolers provide resources, support, guidance, information, and advice to facilitate experiences that aid their children in accessing, navigating, and making sense of the world. Common parental activities include sharing interesting books, articles, and activities with their children, helping them find knowledgeable people to explore an interest with (anyone from physics professors to automotive mechanics), and helping them set goals and figure out what they need to do to meet their goals. Unschooling's interest-based nature does not mean that it is a "hands off" approach to education. Parents tend to involve themselves, especially with younger children (older children, unless new to unschooling, often need less help finding resources and making and carrying out plans).

Paradigm shift

Unschooling opposes many aspects of what the dominant culture insists are true, and it may be impossible to fully understand the unschooling philosophy of education without both active participation and a major paradigm shift. The cognitive dissonance that frequently accompanies this paradigm shift is uncomfortable. New unschoolers are advised that they should not expect to understand the unschooling philosophy at first. Not only are there many commonplace assumptions about education, there are many unspoken and unwritten expectations. One step towards overcoming the necessary paradigm shift is accepting that, "what we do is nowhere near as important as why we do it."

Home education

Unschooling is a form of home education, which is the education of children at home rather than in a school. Home education is often considered synonymous with homeschooling.

Unschooling contrasts with other forms of home education in that the student's education is not directed by a teacher and curriculum. Unschooling is a real-world implementation of "The Open Classroom" methods promoted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, without the school, classrooms or grades. Parents who unschool their children act as facilitators, providing a range of resources, helping their children access, navigate, and make sense of the world, and aiding them in making and implementing goals and plans for both the distant and immediate future. Unschooling expands from children's natural curiosity as an extension of their interests, concerns, needs, goals, and plans.

Socialization

Concerns about socialization can be a factor in the decision to unschool. Some unschoolers believe that conditions in conventional schools, such as age segregation, the ratio of children to adults, or the amount of time spent sitting, are not conducive to proper education.

Unschooling is claimed to broaden the diversity of people or places an unschooler may be exposed to. Unschoolers may be more mature than their schooled peers on average, and some believe this is a result of the wide range of people they have the opportunity to interact with. Opportunities for unschoolers to meet and interact with other unschoolers has increased in recent years, allowing unschoolers to have interactions with other children with similar experiences.

Branches of unschooling

• Worldschooling, in which families travel around the world and learn through traveling and experiencing other cultures.
• Project-based homeschooling, which holds that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges, problems and projects that they can do in their own time.

Complementary philosophies

Some unschooling families may incorporate the following philosophies into their lifestyles.

• Unconditional Parenting and Punished by Rewards, parenting and education books by Alfie Kohn.
• The Continuum Concept, Attachment Parenting, and Attachment Theory, theories and practices attempting to encourage the child's development.
• Voluntaryism: the idea that all forms of human association should be voluntary, as far as possible. Consequently, voluntaryism opposes the initiation of aggressive force or coercion.

Other forms of alternative education

Many other forms of alternative education also place a great deal of importance on student control of learning, albeit not necessarily of the individual learner. This includes free democratic schools, like the Sudbury school, Stonesoup School and "open learning" virtual universities.

General criticisms

Questions about the merits of unschooling raise concerns on its absence of the following qualities, compared to established systems:

• Socialization – schools provide a ready-made group of peers, but unschooled children need other ways to make friends in their age group.
• Isolation – a child might not encounter people of other cultures, worldviews, and socioeconomic groups if they are not enrolled in a school. Of course, a school is not necessarily a place that is guaranteed to provide such a range of experiences, either.
• Qualifications – some parents may not have the skills required to guide and advise their children in life skills or help them pursue their own interests.
• Development – children won't learn what they need to know in their adult lives.
• Standardization – a child may not learn the same things a regular-schooling peer does unless an educational professional controls what material is covered. In a 2006 study of five- to ten-year-olds, unschooling children scored below traditionally schooled children in four of seven studied categories, and significantly below structured homeschoolers in all seven studied categories.

International status and statistics

In the United States, each state has the right to set its own requirements for homeschooling, so regulations vary by state. Some states require that the parents conducting homeschooling have a high school diploma or that they be capable of teaching. States might also require that certain subjects be taught or that participants are assessed on a regular basis. Additionally, some may require vaccinations or may prohibit homeschooling by parents with certain kinds of criminal records.

Holistic education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Holistic education, a relatively new movement, began taking form as an identifiable area of study and practice in the mid-1980s in North America. It is a philosophy of education based on the premise that each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to humanitarian values such as compassion and peace. Holistic education aims to call forth from people an intrinsic reverence for life and a passionate love of learning, gives attention to experiential learning, and places significance on " relationships and primary human values within the learning environment". The term "holistic education" is often used to refer to the more democratic and humanistic types of alternative education.

Key historical contributors

It is difficult to map the history of holistic education, as in some respects its core ideas are not new but "timeless and found in the sense of wholeness in humanity's religious impetus".

The explicit application of holistic ideas to education has a clear tradition, however, whose originating theorists include: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Johann Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Fröbel. 

More recent theorists are Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Francis Parker, John Dewey, Francisco Ferrer John Caldwell Holt, George Dennison Kieran Egan, Howard Gardner, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, and Paulo Freire.

Many scholars feel the modern 'look and feel' of holistic education coalesced through two factors: the rise of humanist philosophies after World War II and the cultural paradigm shift beginning in the mid-1960s. In the 1970s, after the holism movement in psychology became much more mainstream, "an emerging body of literature in science, philosophy and cultural history provided an overarching concept to describe this way of understanding education – a perspective known as holism."

In July 1979, the first National Holistic Education Conference took place at the University of California at San Diego. The conference was presented by The Mandala Society and The National Center for the Exploration of Human Potential and was titled, Mind: Evolution or Revolution? The Emergence of Holistic Education. For six years after, the Holistic Education Conference was combined with the Mandala Holistic Health Conferences at the University of California, San Diego. About three thousand professionals participated each year. Out of these conferences came the annual Journals of Holistic Health.

Philosophical framework

Any approach to education must ask itself, what is the goal of education? Holistic education aims at helping students be the most that they can be. Abraham Maslow referred to this as "self-actualization". Education with a holistic perspective is concerned with the development of every person's intellectual, emotional, social, physical, artistic, creative and spiritual potentials. It seeks to engage students in the teaching/learning process and encourages personal and collective responsibility.

In describing the general philosophy of holistic education, Robin Ann Martin and Scott Forbes (2004) divided their discussion into two categories: the idea of ultimacy and Basil Bernstein's notion of sagacious competence.

Ultimacy

1. Religious; as in becoming "enlightened". You see the light out of difficulties and challenges. This can be done through increased spirituality. Spirituality is an important component in holistic education as it emphasizes the connectedness of all living things and stresses the "harmony between the inner life and outer life".
2. Psychological; as in Maslow's "self-actualization". Holistic education believes that each person should strive to be all that they can be in life. There are no deficits in learners, just differences.
3. Undefined; as in a person developing to the ultimate extent a human could reach and, thus, moving towards the highest aspirations of the human spirit.

Sagacious competence

1. Freedom (in a psychological sense).
2. Good-judgment (self-governance).
3. Meta learning (each student learns in their "own way").
4. Social ability (more than just learning social skills).
5. Refining Values (development of character).
6. Self Knowledge (emotional development).

Curriculum

Various attempts to articulate the central themes of a holistic education, seeking to educate the whole person, have been made:

• In holistic education the basic three R's have been said to be education for: Relationships, Responsibility and Reverence for all life.

• First, children need to learn about themselves. This involves learning self-respect and self-esteem. Second, children need to learn about relationships. In learning about their relationships with others, there is a focus on social "literacy" (learning to see social influence) and emotional "literacy" (one's own self in relation to others). Third, children need to learn about resilience. This entails overcoming difficulties, facing challenges and learning how to ensure long-term success. Fourth, children need to learn about aesthetics – This encourages the student to see the beauty of what is around them and learn to have awe in life.

• Curriculum is derived from the teacher listening to each child and helping the child bring out what lies within oneself.

Tools/teaching strategies of holistic education

With the goal of educating the whole child, holistic education promotes several strategies to address the question of how to teach and how people learn. First, the idea of holism advocates a transformative approach to learning. Rather than seeing education as a process of transmission and transaction, transformative learning involves a change in the frames of reference that a person might have. This change may include points of view, habits of mind, and worldviews. Holism understands knowledge as something that is constructed by the context in which a person lives. Therefore, teaching students to reflect critically on how we come to know or understand information is essential. As a result, if "we ask students to develop critical and reflective thinking skills and encourage them to care about the world around them they may decide that some degree of personal or social transformation is required."

Second, the idea of connections is emphasized as opposed to the fragmentation that is often seen in mainstream education. This fragmentation may include the dividing of individual subjects, dividing students into grades, etc. Holism sees the various aspects of life and living as integrated and connected, therefore, education should not isolate learning into several different components. Martin (2002) illustrates this point further by stating that, "Many alternative educators argue instead that who the learners are, what they know, how they know it, and how they act in the world are not separate elements, but reflect the interdependencies between our world and ourselves". Included in this idea of connections is the way that the classroom is structured. Holistic school classrooms are often small and consist of mixed-ability and mixed-age students. They are flexible in terms of how they are structured so that if it becomes appropriate for a student to change classes, (s)he is moved regardless of what time of year it is on the school calendar. Flexible pacing is key in allowing students to feel that they are not rushed in learning concepts studied, nor are they held back if they learn concepts quickly.

Third, along the same thread as the idea of connections in holistic education, is the concept of transdisciplinary inquiry. Transdisciplinary inquiry is based on the premise that division between disciplines is eliminated. One must understand the world in wholes as much as possible and not in fragmented parts. "Transdisciplinary approaches involve multiple disciplines and the space between the disciplines with the possibility of new perspectives 'beyond' those disciplines. Where multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry may focus on the contribution of disciplines to an inquiry transdisciplinary inquiry tends to focus on the inquiry issue itself."

Fourth, holistic education proposes that meaningfulness is also an important factor in the learning process. People learn better when what is being learned is important to them. Holistic schools seek to respect and work with the meaning structures of each person. Therefore, the start of a topic would begin with what a student may know or understand from their worldview, what has meaning to them rather than what others feel should be meaningful to them. Meta-learning is another concept that connects to meaningfulness. In finding inherent meaning in the process of learning and coming to understand how they learn, students are expected to self-regulate their own learning. However, they are not completely expected to do this on their own. Because of the nature of community in holistic education, students learn to monitor their own learning through interdependence on others inside and outside of the classroom. 

Finally, as mentioned above, community is an integral aspect in holistic education. As relationships and learning about relationships are keys to understanding ourselves, so the aspect of community is vital in this learning process. Scott Forbes stated, "In holistic education the classroom is often seen as a community, which is within the larger community of the school, which is within the larger community of the village, town, or city, and which is, by extension, within the larger community of humanity."

Teacher's role

In holistic education, the teacher is seen less as person of authority who leads and controls but rather is seen as "a friend, a mentor, a facilitator, or an experienced traveling companion". Schools should be seen as places where students and adults work toward a mutual goal. Open and honest communication is expected and differences between people are respected and appreciated. Cooperation is the norm, rather than competition. Thus, many schools incorporating holistic beliefs do not give grades or rewards. The reward of helping one another and growing together is emphasized rather than being placed above one another.