Integrating+Theory+and+Practice

When looking at pedagogical theories it is important to note that many people take bits and pieces of each and implement together. It would not be uncommon to see teachers teaching very differently things in one class. Not every student will get the most benefit out of the same ideal.

=Social constructivism = Learners internalise their learning, that is often they are learning without realising it. When trying to work out what is real in their worlds they are influenced by things such as their background, culture and other funds of knowledge. Active learning is a big part of the social constructivist theory. Children learn by doing, either doing engaging hands on activities or getting out and learning in real environments. As educators it is vital for us to builds on what children already know and to be able to do that we need to FIND OUT what they know.

Dewey

 * Community aspect **
 * Believed the classroom should be a replication of the community
 * Children engage in authentic learning, playing out the roles of adults leading a child’s early development
 * He believed that children learn best through real life activities that provide the development of problem solving an critical thinking skills
 * Educators and education itself are vital to a child’s social wellbeing and to an extent that of the community

There are many incidences of the communal aspect of classroom structure seen in many classrooms. As with a wider community often children have roles to fulfil such as monitors or class captains, these arrangements help children to see the importance of people in a community fulfilling their role. If sally doesn’t take the lunch orders then those students wont be getting lunch.

Real life problems seen in the classroom include activities designed to mimic life. On rounds in a ¾ class I observed a maths activity where the students were each given money, at first $20 and they had to buy themselves and 3 friends lunch from the canteen working out how much they could spend. The follow up activity they were given $100 to plan a party including buying food and decorations.

Activities such as these had multiple advantages, the children realised that what they were doing was useful and as such were quite engaged. The skills they learnt in these lessons will be used throughout their lives from spending their pocket money then later on grocery shopping for their family.


 * Learning to learn **
 * Knowledge is attained by inquiry
 * Dewey believed that children need to learn how to learn, they need to be given the tools they need to solve problems and be taught how to think them through.
 * Self-directed learning guided by resources provided by teachers

Tools that I saw used out on rounds for students learning were varied. Students learnt tactics for their reading such as skim and scam and chunking. They had access to dictionaries and common word lists were up around the room so that if they were struggling with a word they knew how to find the correct spelling or meaning.

They all knew that their peers are a vital source of information and that if they were struggling they can talk though problems together. They used venn diagrams and linear timelines to assist their learning. Questioning is a vital part of students learning and by the 3/4 level they are comfortable with literal questioning and starting to move towards deeper levels of questioning.


 * Student voice **
 * Listening to students is vital. Children themselves are the best indicators of how to teach them, listen to them and tailor activities to what you hear
 * Talking about their learning is an incredibly powerful tool and helps to develop inter and intra personal development
 * Collaborate to learn as members of a community, including having a voice.
 * Dewey believed That a democratic Process was important teachers and students are both entitled to their beliefs and it is often useful to talk to students about their beliefs but that neither should try and push their own beliefs onto the other

On rounds the teacher made extensive use of the turn and talk strategy. The students did their independent reading and then had the minutes to tell the person next to them what was happening in their book. During this time we both wandered around listening and it was a really easy way to work out the level of comprehension.

Responses ranged from “Geoff went to school and had a bad day” to “it was awesome, they were in this cave and the floor opened up so they fell through to this other cave that had a HUGE lake in it. It was funny because the girl was scared because there were heaps of snakes in the water and then the guy leading them, you know the professor told her that purple water snakes aren’t dangerous…” obviously the child giving the second response is engaged in his book and has a good level of comprehension.

The child who gave the first response either had little comprehension of the book or was finding it quite boring, possibly both. If this response was out of the norm for this child it could point to other issues the child might be having.

Vygotsky
Vygotsky believed that cognitive and higher mental functions develop in stages and are influenced by maturation he stated that many of these processes appear first between people during shared activities and biological and social factors are equally important. As with Dewey he also reflects on the idea of internalised learning. The development of language particularly oral language is critical. It is through oral language that many of the higher cognitive processes are learnt. In the early years taking to ones self and private inner speech are vital for cognitive development.

5 vital ideas

 * Children construct knowledge **
 * Children actively engaged in organising and exploring ideas
 * Hands on experiences, science experiments, building blocks
 * Encourage children to reflect on their thinking


 * Learning leads development **
 * If child given name “zebra” they will begin to understand animals are classed into groups.
 * When they see the animal represented in a book or at the zoo they will know they are the same animal
 * Will move on to exploring and classifying other animals

This point was demonstrated quite clearly when I was in a 1/2 class on rounds. The students were doing an inquiry unit on toys and the teacher brought up this image on the smart board. The children were asked what it was; they had not been told anything about it and didn’t know it was a toy. They started talking about how it looked either wooden or rusty but definitely old “because old things are rusty”. They tried to work out what it might be was it a weapon, something for cooking, a decoration a toy or a musical instrument. They thought if it was a weapon it was like a club a cave man used. It could be used for cooking because it looked “like the big wooden hammer mum uses for mashing the spuds”. It could be a decoration because “people like odd things” and a musical instrument because “they had very different instruments back then”. They decided it might be a toy seems they were doing a unit on toys. The two main theories were it was a baby’s rattle or a spinning top. Because they could see similarities. The teacher then revealed to them that it was a spinning top indigenous children used to play with in Cape York. Although this was an artefact they had never seen before they managed to figure out what it was combining and reorganising existing information.

These images are the modern day equivalents of what they children thought the artefact could be


 * Learning can’t be separated from its social context **
 * Peers assist and support the learning process
 * Having a common goal is vital for this support to pay off, each person must ask questions and bring in different points of view
 * The more knowledgeable other – Vygotsky believed that students can gain knowledge not only from the teacher but also from anyone with more knowledge on a particular subject.

The social aspect of learning was widely embraced in the classrooms I was in. there were a couple of very strong maths students in the class who would assist the other students when new concepts were introduced. The majority of the group work was tailored so that stronger students were grouped with weaker ones; there were a couple of quite bossy students who were put with the lazier students to get them doing their fair share. On a Friday morning the students tested their spelling and timetables, this was all done with other students. The stronger maths students would test the timetables and students next to each other would do their spelling tests.


 * Learning plays a central role in intellectual development **
 * Through language higher mental processes are communicated
 * Students originally develop communication skills socially an to communicate needs it is only then that they can move to using them to learn[[image:zpdimage.jpg width="323" height="532" align="right"]]


 * Zones of proximal development **
 * 2 levels of performance, independent capabilities and assisted capabilities
 * Also seen as the level a child is working at and can work up to with help
 * Modelled and shared activities aim above the ZPD in order to pushthe children to expand
 * Guided activities are in the upper end of the ZPD giving children prompts and cues to help them attain a higher level of achievement
 * Independent activities are towards their base level.
 * In the zpd is where real learning can take place; anything outside the ZPD will either be too easy or just too hard for the student.

Evidence of the zones of proximal development can be seen in any classroom. One of the examples I saw on rounds was reading books. Modelled readings tended tob be above the abilities of most of the students but introduced them to the more complex themes and language, a good example is reading harry potter to grade threes. Shared readings aimed slightly lower but still in the upper end of the ZPD, guided readings slightly below those as the teacher was able to hep the child with prompt they could read more complex books. Independent books where quite low on the ZPD as these had to fit into the unassisted capabilities.

Piaget
Piaget believed in biological maturation passing through developmental phases. Active learning particularly learning from the environment was the most beneficial and social experiences are also important in development. He spoke about the use of existing knowledge to create new knowledge particularly the adaptation and reorganisation.
 * Adapting existing knowledge to new stimuli
 * Develop new idea through combining and arranging knowledge to reach a new realisation

** Sensoimotor 0-2 **

 * Using touch and feel to learn about an object
 * Recognising object permanence and what is real
 * Begin to sort objects into categories

A good example is looking at toddlers playing with blocks, often by this age they will have a favourite colour and like to play with red blocks.

Pre operational 2-7

 * Requiring concrete props to aide leaning
 * Self centred view of the world
 * Respond best to short instructions actions are always useful (phonetic actions in prep class)

On my observation tin a prep class I noticed the teacher using actions to demonstrate phonetic sounds. She explained that many of the children relied on these actions to associate letters and sounds. And often upon transitioning to grade one where they didn’t use the actions many of the students struggled. Through these actions children could see that Annie started with the same letter as ape because both actions represented ‘a’.

Concrete Operational 7-11

 * Some children this age still require concrete props
 * Brief readings and presentations
 * More complex ideas can be introduced to children using familiar examples
 * Logical analytical thinking problems are introduced

I noticed on rounds that particularly with math’s activities there still some threes and even fours that relied on having props such as counters to work out problems, there were others far advanced working on yr 7 math’s. when it came to a new subject if the supervising teacher could link it back to a familiar experience she would. One of the examples I saw was looking at adding decimals she used money and a canteen price list. “If I wanted a pie and milk how much would it be?” she then pointed out that money has a decimal point and did another example with straight decimals.

Formal Operational 11+

 * Exploration of hypothetical questioning
 * Deep understanding of others point of view

The idea of personalised relates to configuring a learning program based on an individual child’s needs. It is often see as one on one learning and requires the setting of individual goals (reading goals Joy) Targeting needs teaching is a spin off of this idea, if there is a small group of children all struggling with the same aspect take them aside and work in that small group until the difficult aspect no longer proves an issue.
 * Personalised learning **

Along with 250 school leaders Professor David Hargreaves compiled the nine gateways to personalised learning. These gateways were designed to act as a frame work to help schools move towards personalised learning. Many of Piagets, Vygotskys and Deweys theories are clearly seen in this framework. These nine areas were chosen because they are applicable to all schools and no school has developed mastery of all areas.

These 9 gateways can be classfied into 4 catagories or deeps, deep learning, deep support, deep leadership, deep experience


 * Gateways to **** Perso **** nalised Learning: **

Deep Learning : Assessment for learning
 * As educators it is vital that we know what our students already know in order to know what needs to be taught
 * This assessment must not be a one of thing but information needs to be rechecked
 * Assessment should not be a stressful experience

Learning to learn
 * Students must be taught tactics to be effective learners
 * in my eyes this continues right through to adulthood look at all the study skill workshops deakin runs.
 * What skills, tools do students need to have?

Relevance of student voice / talk
 * Not only do we need to hear our student’s opinions but pay attention to them
 * Students need to be able to converse with their peers stratergies such as turn and talk are great learning tools
 * social skills need to be developed early the more positive interaction s young people have the better

Deep Support: Advice and guidance
 * Vital for students parents and teachers alike
 * Not only academic advice but health medical and social advice
 * Important that schools are approachable

Mentoring and coaching
 * New teachers may need the extra support in their first few years
 * Older teachers may need some help coming to terms with new strategies and technologies
 * All teachers will encounter different issues in their classroom but peer mentoring means they might be able to get advice from a teacher who had previously dealt with the same scenario

Deep Leadership: School design and organisation
 * Team teaching is on its way up
 * Bigger class sizes and more teachers
 * Composites are becoming the norm
 * How do all the other gateways work together

Workforce reform
 * often teacher roles will need to be altered
 * teachers may need to be suited to specific roups ie male teacher boys health class
 * staff may need to take on more then one role, academic co-ordinators may need to merge into more patrol roles to help struggling students feel better as well as do better

Deep Experience: Curriculum
 * Must be relevant,
 * An engaging curriculum is a must
 * Where possible let students contribute and teach what they want to learn

New technologies
 * Smart boards
 * Laptops
 * Class blogs
 * Communication opportunities with friends family and peers
 * Rather than as many parents do running from technology embrace it, it’s here make the most of it teach students how it should be used.
 * Let the children immerse themselves in the new techno world