Group items tagged

Breadth of Coverage Books may present problems of stereotyping with respect to sex and to race. Religion, politics, and questions of morality or patriotism are issues about which there are considerable differences of opinion. The importance of such books may lie mainly, or only, in their historical viewpoint and should be presented as such to children who read them. Teachers and librarians should be aware of these considerations and should make every effort to provide materials which present alternate points of view. Historically there have always been those who have recognized the offensiveness of these materials. Children, like adults exposed to new ideas, can accept or reject them, based on input from all viewpoints. All opinions require protection under the First Amendment.

IF and AFTER censorship problems arise (and before a formal complaint procedure is initiated), here are some approaches and considerations: Be sure to inform your principal of any complaint, and how you plan to handle it. Urge your principal to read or view the material objected to. Afterwards, share with him/her your reasons for using the material with children. Also, try to get a school board member and a local minister, rabbi, or priest to read or look at the material. If a parent complains about material, insisting on an immediate discussion about it, defer such a discussion; make an appointment with him/her for a later time. At the same time, assure the parent that you have a concern for the child's interest. Neither you nor the parent should be in the position of discussing material without careful consideration beforehand of the factors that are to be discussed. Do not defend materials on the spur of the moment. Apart from being unfair to all concerned, and particularly to children, it is your professional duty to present your views thoughtfully and with consideration. Reread or review the material in question, even though you may already be familiar with it. Identify its strengths. Put down in writing why you believe it is proper and useful in your teaching program. Collect reviews of the material from such publications as Language Arts, English Journal, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Horn Book, School Library Journal, and other professional publications. There may be three to five parents, other than the complaining parents, who may be particularly supportive of your teaching objectives. Request that they read or view the material being questioned and invite their written reactions, addressed to you and your principal

Attending to a behaviour; remembering it as a possible model or paradigm; and playing out how it may work for them in different situations (rehearsal) are key aspects of observational learning

It makes no sense to talk of knowledge that is decontextualized, abstract or general. New knowledge and learning are properly conceived as being located in communities

Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.

there is a need to explore the extent to which learning (or intelligence) lies in the resources to which people have access

while the individual is significant, psychological analysis should focus on the joint, socially mediated activity in a cultural context

While not all societies channel sufficient resources into support for educational activities and institutions, all at the very least acknowledge their centrality—and for good reasons

within a few years they can read, write, calculate, and act (at least often) in culturally-appropriate ways

education also serves as a social-sorting mechanism and undoubtedly has enormous impact on the economic fate of the individual.

education equips individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens

societal perspective, where the picture changes somewhat

groups depend for their continuing survival on educational processes, as do the larger societies and nation-states of which they are part

The great social importance of education is underscored, too, by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education, and educators, become scapegoats.

education as transmission of knowledge versus education as the fostering of inquiry and reasoning skills that are conducive to the development of autonomy

the question of what this knowledge, and what these skills, ought to be

how learning is possible, and what is it to have learned something—two sets of issues that relate to the question of the capacities and potentialities that are present at birth, and also to the process (and stages) of human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated

liberal education and vocational education

personal development or education for citizenship

distinction between educating versus teaching versus training versus indoctrination

education and maintenance of the class structure of society, and the issue of whether different classes or cultural groups can—justly—be given educational programs that differ in content or in aims

whether or not all children have a right to state-provided education

relation between education and social reform, centering upon whether education is essentially conservative, or whether it can be an (or, the) agent of social change

These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, criteria for selecting evidence that has relevance for the problems that they consider central, and the like.

for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education (as Dewey pointed out), and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches, or the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like

These PLN activities stimulate, for many, the need to express themselves further in blogging, speaking and writing books

The PLN is a mindset, not the outcome of a workshop or the PD offered annually by many school districts. It is not a one-shot fix.

Successful users of PLNs overwhelm the uninitiated with techno-babble.

t requires, at least at first, digital literacy beyond a Google search.

continuous building and active use of PLNs as a tool for learning benefit educators personally and professionally in ways never before possible.

PLNs Are Collaboration

technology is collaboration on steroids, supporting "connected educators"

Technology has fundamentally changed collaboration by removing barriers of time and space.

Where connectivism differs from those theories, I would argue, is that connectivism denies that knowledge is propositional. That is to say, these other theories are 'cognitivist', in the sense that they depict knowledge and learning as being grounded in language and logic.  Connectivism is, by contrast, ‘connectionist’.  Knowledge is, on this theory, literally the set of connections formed by actions and experience. It may consist in part of linguistic structures, but it is not essentially based in linguistic structures, and the properties and constraints of linguistic structures are not the properties and constraints of connectivism. . . In connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge.  Rather, the activities we undertake when we conduct practices in order to learn are more like growing or developing ourselves and our society in certain (connected) ways.”

Vygotsk

Vygotsky

learning is the act of recognizing patterns shaped by complex networks.’  

The role of the tutor will not only change, but may disappear altogether.

A paradigm shift, indeed, may be occurring in educational theory, and a new epistemology may be emerging, but it does not seem that connectivism’s contributions to the new paradigm warrant it being treated as a separate learning theory in and of its own right.  Connectivism, however, continues to play an important role in the development and emergence of new pedagogies, where control is shifting from the tutor to an increasingly more autonomous learner.

Downes and Siemens do not suggest that connectivism is limited to the online environment.

Connectivism stresses that two important skills that contribute to learning are the ability to seek out current information, and the ability to filter secondary and extraneous information.

The learning process is cyclical

In contrast, a developmental theory may attempt to take strides towards becoming an established formal theory over time.