Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning

This site outlines ways in which Native Australians learn.  Learning for them isn’t a curriculum, the content of a course, but it is a process.  There are eight involved, one of which involves a sense of place—“land links.”  Teaching takes place away from classrooms and desks, and in the community.  Students construct stories and they share them.  The pedagogy is narrative-driven, and the eight ways are interconnected.  They are:

Use of symbols and images
Land links
Non­-verbal
Non-linear
Deconstructive/Reconstructive (starting with the whole and picking it apart)
Story-sharing
Community Links

There’s a link to a wiki site that discusses these eight ways in greater detail, complete with a discussion forum.  I will write about this site in a later blog post.

References:

Kalantzis, M., and Cope, B. (2011).  Eight Aboriginal ways of Learning.  New Learning:  Transformational designs for pedagogy for assessment.  Retrieved from http://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1-literacies-on-a-human-scale/eight-aboriginal-ways-of-learning/