Feb
22
My Word on My World
Posted by: flick | February 22, 2012 | Leave a Comment
I was intrigued when reading Edelson’s work, Learning for Use: A Framework for the Design of Technology -Supported Inquiry Activities. The parallels between the current push for reform in the teaching of mathematics and the apparent push for reform in the teaching of science were startling. Edelson (2005), impressed upon the reader that “integrating content and process together in the design of learning activities offers the opportunity to increase students’ experience with authentic activities while also achieving deeper content understanding”. ( p. 355). I would have preferred the phrase integrating concept and process. Certainly in math, procedural knowledge without conceptual knowledge to enable application puts a student at future risk in numeracy. Edelson indicates the same is true for science. This belief, the marriage of procedure and concept/content, has encouraged the research resulting in Edelson’s paper.
My World was engaging and time consuming. As teachers we are overwhelmed by the plethora of learning outcomes to be covered and the limited amount of instructional time with which to do so. Yet, we must facilitate learning opportunities in which our students may well learn less but learn deeply. Shifter and Fosnot state (1993), (“No matter how clearly and patiently teachers explain, they cannot understand for their students.”
Interestingly, Edelson proposes that perhaps “technology supported inquiry curricula will contribute to reform (p. 381). I have heard this theory/idea promoted before. Will it be technology that will finally be the catalyst to push educators to reform their practice? The Points of Inquiry, Critical Inquiry, . . .our teaching lives are abuzz with these terms. Yet these concepts are deep and hold promise for learning rigour.
For an educator to purposefully include the learning opportunities of My World, they must themselves be learners with the program. Teachers as learners with technology are better able to then incorporate technology into their classrooms? This question returns me to the learning and reflection that I engaged in as I framed an issue in Module A that led to the research and demonstration of my new learning and understandings in the Framing Issues Assignment.
“Likewise, if students do not construct knowledge in a manner that supports subsequent re-use of that knowledge, it remains inert (Whitehead, 1929).” 1929! My gosh. And we are still debating the need for authentic learning.
Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,38(3), 355-385.
Schifter, D., and C. T. Fosnot. 1993. Reconstructing mathematics education: Stories of teachers meeting the challenge of reform. New York: Teachers College Press.
Whitehead, A. H. (1929). The aims of education Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.