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Some useful explanations and examples for humanistic environment in a school regarding curriculum, methods and facilities

Burcu, thank you for sharing. I must confess that I did not understand the difference between humanism and neo humanism:). They seemed almost the same to me. In the movie, children are running in the environment, observing the world, helping people, establishing love and trust with peers and etc. And their ages are small. I support the idea that small children should be made aware of their uniqueness. However, when they grow up, we will have to show them science, math, history and etc. The bulk of knowledge in the world and in our education might unable school to continue humanism in education. Actually, it means that especially for higher graders, we should use humanism as an element in classrooms, not a whole teaching strategy since as wee from the video, creating humanistic classroom is not feasible at all and may not be affordable for higher number of students. In the video they said that firstly they "choose" students. It means that, it is a private school. For private school, one can create almost % 100 percent humanistic environment. However, in public schools, teachers have to integrate humanistic elements into predetermined educational environments.

The interaction between the student and the teacher should be manipulated according to the content of the lesson, objectives, materials and instruments as shown in the video. Making the class more engaging requires effective conversation and good communication between the teacher and student.

Great video for classroom management lessons. :)

This is a good way forcreating active learning enviroment. Also it includes more alternatives like individual or group working. But it seems good for small class size.

Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you're thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

Dincer, interesting! While I am in favor of open education and massive open online courses, I recently started thinking about the cultural and social impact of such initiatives. For instance, the Moocs are recently being offered from the west because we assume or accept that they have the high quality content and courses. One might say that this could cause a kind of cultural imperialism, countries importing ideas from the west that may not necessarily fit to their context.

An article on Turkish National Eduactional Ideology

thank you for sharing this source

Bilge, thank you for the post. It was an interesting topic. I will consider to have the book. In Turkey, after military coup on September the 12th in 1980, the military government introduced some important changes about religious education. Before military government period, schools had offered Religion Lesson as elective and Moral Knowledge Lesson as compulsory. The military government combined the two lessons and decided to be taught in primary and secondary schools compulsorily. However, as it is mentioned in the article, this decision leaded to an Islamization of our education. In my opinion, religious education is important. However, instead of emphasizing only one religion, students should be made aware of other religions and cultures and be tolerant to all of them. They should be thought that having a different religion is not a dangerous phenomenon. Such thoughts have been more and more important after 11th September attack to World Trade Center in the USA.

President of Institute of Humane Education give a talk. Web page of the institute: http://www.humaneeducation.org/ From their web site: Humane education includes 4 elements: Providing accurate information (so we have the knowledge to face challenges); Fostering the 3C's: curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking (so we have the tools to meet challenges); Instilling the 3R's: reverence, respect, and responsibility (so we have the motivation to confront challenges); Offering positive choices and tools for problem solving (so we will be able to solve challenges).

in another talk about humanistic education ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxvMqhxt-SI ) the speaker gave credit to this talk so I wanted to share it with you.

This is a lesson plan I prepared during my last year of college while I was taking school experience course and attending a public school as an intern. My proffessor Jale Çakıroğlu also liked this lesson plan very much and published it in her book named "Bilimin Doğası ve Öğretimi". Moreover, I also implemented it this semester with preservice teachers at METU. I took activity from http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/gr.fs.fd.html and adapted it into Turkish. I also made some changes to make it more appropriate for 6th graders. In this activity, students are active all the time. The teacher only provides them the required materials and answer their quesions to guide them. The students work in small groups to learn the nature of science aspects with an acitivity where they act as they are scientists. The evaluation is process based not product based and this is clearly explained to the students. Since I prepared this lesson plan, actually implemented it and saw that it worked perfectly I would not change anything, but I always welcome your suggestions. :))

Gamze, thanks for sharing the lesson plan. This is an exemplary lesson plan and let's talk about it in class.

Here is another critique on MI. Interesting insights are presented here. 

The author contrasts the MI intelligence with single intelligence and says that single intelligence is not educable, rather it is an innate capacity. As an educator, this criticism for MI is useful for me only because I remember to be critical to the theory and begin to search for weakness of it. Otherwise the authors view of single intelligence (non-educable and innate) shows me, as an educator, no direction about my teaching. So I find the Gardner's view (though it may not be a theory) more compelling than the authors view even if I agree that there are problems with Gardner's word choices. Rather than "multiple intelligence theory" he could use "practices of multiple abilities".

"if students can receive similar or better outcomes by taking courses online for free, why step foot into a classroom at all?"

Since the beginning of the trend, one of the most controversial issues is the question of whether free online courses by the Ivy league universities will cause the decline of "other" universities and how will this affect students' choice and higher education in the next years.

This for sure giving us some indications about where higher education is going and how should universities respond to this change. Perhaps, new accreditation systems, different degree forms. As a country with a very big number of young population, we better act on it fast, instead of being the observers of these trends around us.

There must be a balance between private & government schools!

Since I started my school education,I have witnessed this problem. Unfortunately it is getting worse. How come a government cannot provide satisfactory education and instruction to its people and children? How dare to push them to pay more and fulfill their own education? Turning the private courses into private schools do not change anything. And as usual, teachers and the students are worst affected from th situation.

Changing dershanes to private schools is not a solution to provide better education to society for free. The only change is that you can go to private schools with bursary or half-bursary. It means that they just moderated the money transaction. In addition, they will make teachers take exams throughout their careers which is actually not related to the conversion process. Therefore, the attempt to make dershanes extinct is a starting move that can be supported but these private schools should be converted to public schools in order to provide a high-quality education to all children for free. That is one of the most primary duties of the governments.

It is suprising to see that reputable universities set high standards for applicants, more exams to pass before entering. In Turkey, it is perceived as a success and indicator of giving great importance to establish at least a university in each city around the country. The quality of education should not be measured with the number of universities or the number of university graduates. The credentials of that graduates are far away important.

I totally agree with you. In recent years many universities were opened in Turkey. Most of them do not have any academic people to instruct the new students. It is not a sign of success for Turkey to have "many" but "unqualified" universities. Our unemployment rate is very high when compared to other countries in the world. So what is the logic for opening so many universities?

"We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."

Dinçer, thanks for sharing. I support the idea that traditional schools should be supported by technology. However, in my opinion, technology should not be used as a total substitute of traditional campus-based education. By stating that, I do not support idea that technology can not offer the effectiveness of content transfer to students. Rather, it offers a wide range of opportunities to enhance learning. However, in my opinion, we should not separate people from each other anywhere in the world. The long term effects of technology and mass city life is not clear yet. At least, we know about depressions and diseases because of long term stress crises. Thus, today's schools should also reteach people to be together. To put it differently, we should use technology for "better learning together".

First, there should be simple changes in the classroom. Then more complex ones will be taken into consideration. What I mean is that for example most of the studies are nearly screaming that main problems of the education system, lack of teachers, lack of space which is suitable for learning, lack of classrooms. I can not say anything about their intent of refreshing the education system, but can't understand the ignorance of such physical problems. Maslow pyramid..

The system has not recognized that the curricula is not a seat that we can change constantly. They are also not aware that it is not easy to implement it with a sudden change.

Science fields do not seem famous any more.

The important point in this case is that only girls who study for A-level physics are the ones who came from Girls' schools. It means that as the text stated, mix schools have a kind of characteristic that stereotype the physics as if it was boys' area. However, in my opinion, that's not true. Unless a job does not require so much muscles, it can be handled by both males and females. In physics, the brain, intelligence, and the disciplined work is necessary which are highly available in human beings, not just only in males.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9609566/Girls-put-off-studying-science-in-mixed-gender-schools-says-headmistress.html Another news related to this!

Positive psychology should immediately take place in education. Without concentratig on anxiety, fear of a subject matter we as teachers should focus on enjoyment, fun related to the learning. A theory says that mind can not engage two of the issues at the same time; positive and negative issues. Negative issues are mostly make you prevent from going further with that subject matter, however positive issues do the opposite.

Sinem, I agree with you, I think that's why game-based learning, problem-based learning, anchored instruction that has elements of problem-based learning has started to gain importance in education. I did not understand the sentence "A theory says that mind can not engage two of the issues at the same time; positive and negative issues." Can you explain it please,

We can see a brief overview of these stages which used examples for each levels..

It is really weird to watch the reasonings and answers although we read that they are so. I was surprised once again.

Yes hatice, actually I can go on applying the theory to my cousin by hiding it from Yengem, it is unethical I know:). May be I should wait until I have my own children. I can give permission myself to apply Piaget's theory to my children, no problem:), I agree saime, in one ofthe video a little girl was shown a simple triangle and was asked to draw exactly what she saw, and she drew a different sketch and showed the corners of her triangle that was completely in different places. It was in the video that Evrim Hoca posted to Diigo, I guess.

Hope to see a similar result for Fatih project.

Here I think the most important phrase is "when used properly". "Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm's president of global market development, believes that the improvement comes because students using smartphones have easier access to information at any time of day or night. They are also able to keep in contact with their classmates and even their teachers, which helps them stay on top of everything that goes on in school." When students have enough motivation to allocate more time to use these devices for such activities stated above, the finding that their learning is increased can be supported. Here again we reach the conclusion: How to use technology is important, since it is just a tool, and can well be used as a toy instead of educational material.

Is this a case of learning or transfering the existing information without assimilating or accommodating into the classroom environment via technology? I think the meaning of learning is also changing. In near future, there will be no learning like we do I guess.

"Dinçer.., serbest kıyafet sayesinde çocukların yeteneklerinin ön plana çıkacağını ve özgüven kazanacaklarını belirtti." this is a part of the newsderived from this link: http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25402921/ Ministery believes it will be useful for our country. I wanna ask to him "Is it real?". Also, we will have two different generation in two or third decades; one of them are doormat, the other one is jakanapess and provincial, I think.

The previous policy, when students required to wear school uniform, was still unsuccesful since students' shoes or shirts(gömlek) made difference among social classes of students. The new policy will increase this gap. Although wearing a school uniform seems to similarize students psychologically, this negative aspect can be ignored when the danger of social class imposition is considered. In my opinion, instead of requiring parents to buy school uniform theirselves, school boards should provide them with shoes also, just as they provide school books. While this will reduce class differention, the gap still can not be closed completely since students, for example, will buy different foods in line with their allowance. However, decreasing gap as much as possible is stilll more valuable than free clothes permission.

It is one to one lesson and there is an activity to divide 4,5 into 3/4. The teacher gives the control of learner's understanding to learners and only guides the student according to gain the objective by asking effective questions, following step by step. However, there should be more than one learner, at least two, because the learner looks like a little bit not into the situation. Maybe with a friend they could better understand.

You will find all authors and their related work that criticizes MI theory. One notable and recent critique that Turkish academicians made: DECIPHERING THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._11_[Special_Issue-June_2011]/32.pdf

Agreed! But I posted this for us to see and be aware of some people in Turkish Education. Thanks for your time and comment.

For the first time I see that a scientific theory is tried to be challenged by a divine source rather than a scientific source. In my opinion, scientific debates should rely on scientific data and reasoning. Since divine sources describe an eternal truth, such sources make scientific debates and progress meaningless. In that sense, I think that this article's applicability and validity is open to discussion. Thank you Dinçer, it was one of the most interesting articles that I have run across so far.

This is the website for Multiple Intelligence Institute. It has information on the applications of MI and the models developed. Also current information on the MI theory can be found.

I really liked the MI network part in the site. It is useful to see different ideas about curriculum for us as teachers :))