The Caring Communities of Learners: Five Interdependent Principles:
1. Warm, supportive, stable relationships. Schools are set up so that all members of a school community - students, teachers, staff, parents - know one another as people and view each other as collaborators in learning. Teachers carefully examine their approaches, asking, "What kind of human relationships are we fostering?"
2. Constructive learning. Good teaching fosters children's natural desire to understand their world by providing experiences that help children become more skillful, reflective, and self-critical in their pursuit of knowledge. Rather than focusing on rote learning, teachers help children make discoveries, struggle to find explanations, and grapple with evidence and views different from their own.
3. An important, challenging curriculum. Curriculum development should be driven by major long-term goals, not just short-term coverage concerns. These goals should be broadly conceived to include children's development as principled, humane citizens.
4. Intrinsic motivation. Educators need a curriculum that is worth learning and a pedagogy that helps students see why it is worth learning. Teachers introduce topics in a way that piques students' curiosity and helps them make personal connections.
5. Attention to social and ethical dimensions of learning. Everything about schooling - curriculum, teaching method, discipline, interpersonal relationships - teaches children about the human qualities we value. Teachers scrutinize disciplinary approaches to promote children's responsible behavior over the long run. Teachers engage children in shaping the norms of the class and school, so that they see that these norms are not arbitrary standards set by powerful adults, but necessary standards for the well-being of everyone. Teachers also help children develop collaborative approaches to resolving conflict, guiding them to think about the values needed for humane life in a group.
Source: Lewis, C., Schaps, E., & Watson, M. (1996, September). The Caring Classrooms' Academic Edge. Educational Leadership, pp. 16-21.
Teaching for Understanding and Learning as Understanding
Authentic pedagogy is at the center of a caring community. According to Newmann and Wehlage (1995), a learning situation is authentic if students engage in higher order thinking, develop a deep understanding of subject matter, participate in classroom discourse to build shared understanding, and can relate their knowledge to public issues or personal experience.
Our standards emphasize teaching that requires students to think, to develop indepth understanding, and to apply academic learning to important, realistic problems. We call this "authentic pedagogy," and we found that authentic pedagogy boosted student achievement equitably for students of all social backgrounds (p. 3).Creating learning communities where everyone is engaged in challenging and meaningful activities requires changes in the "core of educational practice" - in the "fundamental relationships among student, teacher, and knowledge" (Elmore, 1996). Researchers in school reform have consistently found that in order for teachers to facilitate higher-order thinking and a love of learning in children, they must be viewed as intellectuals, capable of creating new knowledge to inform instructional practice, and of designing (often in concert with parents and students) authentic learning situations (Carr & Braunger, 1997). Learning new ways of teaching requires time for observation, reading, reflection, dialogue with colleagues, action research, and ample opportunities to address questions and concerns regarding educational practices.
Teacher observation and research can be powerful tools for informing and improving teaching practices. Good teachers have always built on children's understandings, seeking to understand learning from the child's point of view. A teacher in a Northwest multiage classroom advises, "Listen to children's thinking. Use their words and work as a window to see their processing and perspectives" (Novick, 1996).
In an educational approach based on authentic pedagogy, both adults and more competent peers play important roles in children's learning: an active child and an active social environment collaborate to produce developmental change (Vygotsky, 1978). Glennellen Pace (1993) describes the role of the teacher in a classroom based on social-authentic pedagogy:
This is not a laissez-faire approach. As the teacher, you are a central player, not someone who "sits-out," afraid of "getting in the way of" students' knowledge construction. But neither is this approach teacher centered, where your meanings are the meanings students must "get." Instead, you play multiple roles: demonstrator, mediator, keen observer, and listener (p. 4).Creating a state of disequilibrium in a child's understanding through posing questions and problems, followed by discussion, is a strategy used frequently in classrooms where higher-order thinking is valued. Three Northwest teachers describe their approach to teaching math in their blended first and-second grade classrooms:
As teachers, we look for challenging problems that will land our students on the edge of a cliff. We must help them find the motivation and courage to take the leap across the chasm. Not every learner needs the same distance to cross. If the gap is too wide, a child will falter and lose confidence. If too narrow, the child won't stretch, and instead just follow a prescribed course. Students must take this leap of understanding, over and over again. When the confusion is resolved, a bridge has been built across the chasm, bringing power and flexibility of thinking (Briggs, Folkers, & Johnson, 1996, p. 36).Brain research has helped us to understand why frequent new learning experiences and challenges are critical to brain growth. The brain, we now know, is designed as a pattern detector - perceiving relationships and making connections are fundamental to the learning process (Caine & Caine, 1997). Early experiences and interactions do not just create a context for development and learning; they directly affect the way the brain is wired - the connections that are formed between neurons (Shore, 1997). Because the brain is predisposed to search for how things make sense, strong connections are formed when children make meaning from their experiences (Caine & Caine, 1990)."Challenging sensory stimulation has been rightfully compared to a brain 'nutrient,'" writes Jensen (1998, p. 31).
Teacher expectations. In the early school years, then, children develop patterns of learning and patterns of reliance on significant others to support learning that directly affect later attainment (Entwisle, 1995). Children's self-images, in large part, are based on their perceptions of how acceptable they are in the eyes of significant adults (Bowman & Stott, 1994; Sroufe, 1979). Because the disposition to learn, in large part, depends on a positive sense of self, teaching for understanding includes paying careful attention to children's interpretations of themselves as learners. Joanne Yatvin, superintendent of a rural district and principal of a small rural school in Oregon, writes:
In order to learn, a child must believe: 'I am a learner; I can do this work; craftsmanship and effort will pay off for me; this is a community of friends and I belong to it.' Because such beliefs often are not the inherent property of children who come from splintered families and dangerous neighborhoods, teachers today must work as hard on them as they have always worked on the intellectual side of learning (1992, p. 7).Several studies have found long-term effects of first-, second-, and third-grade teachers' expectations on children's performance in high school and beyond (Entwisle, 1995). Teachers' expectations for children's success have been shown to have both direct and indirect influences on achievement. Directly, teacher perceptions can affect placement of children in ability groups. Once the child has been assigned to an ability group, Entwisle (1995) explains, "real consequences begin to follow":
Placement in reading groups effectively determines the amount and type of instruction children receive; it influences group process (interruptions and disruptions); and it affects how children are viewed by parents and teachers. . . . Indirect effects come about when the teacher influences the first grader's own attitudes toward achievement, which are then carried forward within the child" (pp. 238, 240).In a study by Graue (1992), a six-year-old boy's words illustrate how teachers' judgments in the early school years may shape a child's self-image in a way that may seriously constrain his or her future ability to learn. When asked what skills are needed to succeed in first grade, the child replied, "Read and be good and sit down and be still. . . . If you don't know how to be good then you'll be a bad boy. . . . Then you'll have to wish that you were good. . . . Nobody will want you if you're a bad kid."
More than what districts mandate, more than what teachers teach, it is how children interpret their role as learners that determines what and how they learn. Creating a psychologically safe environment is not a frill to be addressed only after the basics are attended to; for young children, such an environment is essential for learning.
|
This document's URL is: © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
|