Creating Significant Learning Environments
A New Culture of Learning
Technology is great, there is no doubt about it. It provides us with countless resources at the click of a button or nowadays a touch of a screen. But what makes it great? Why do we need more resources? In my subject matter, I wonder, haven’t high school students been learning math for years? And although these questions raise a valid argument, the rebuttal is quite elementary in my opinion; if we have new tools to enhance learning, why wouldn’t we make use of them? Each day I strive to develop my students’ problem-solving, critical thinking, and self-advocacy skills. To transition myself from the leader to the facilitator students can truly take ownership of their learning and dictate their learning journey. My innovation project is based around implementing blended learning into the mathematics classroom, and eventually to my entire organization. This is not a transition that can take place over night, but it is a process. But to appropriately implement into the classroom, the right classroom environment must be established. The classroom must be a place where students can feel comfortable taking risks, voicing their opinions, and going outside of their comfort zone. As Douglas Thomas (2012) discusses, we must engage passion, open students’ imagination, and present students with natural obstacles to persevere through.
Thomas’ (2012) discussion on context versus content hit home with me and made me reflect on my educational ways when it comes to leading a classroom. I found that although I do think of myself as another context for my students, I do teach many lessons as if I am the content. I often find myself feeling as though I am crunched for time by dates set by district-wide assessments and am unable to let my students explore and most importantly, productively struggle. As I think back to lessons where my students were responsible for their learning, where I gave them a topic or concept and said “GO!” I think of the higher-level thinking questions that arose and the deeper understanding the students developed of the content leading to a stronger ability to apply and synthesize. The number one challenge that I will continue to face is how to increase the implementation of lessons of this sort while adhering to deadlines that come from above.
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Another fundamental idea from A New Culture of Learning that I am confident can make my classroom a better place to learn is putting a greater focus on engaging passion. I am not naïve in that I know some of the concepts I teach in my Honors Algebra 2 course are quite abstract and quite honestly lack real-life application for most people, however, that does not mean that imagination and creativity cannot be engaged. Providing students the opportunity to explore using their phones, their computers, or any resource they see fit will make the learning more authentic. Establishing a learning environment where multiple students in the same class can learn the same lesson from different sources is something that may be uncomfortable to many but is the reality of where education is going. There is no need to restrict this from happening, but rather it should be encouraged. Given a topic, students should be able truly see the real-life application it has and understand why it is a piece of their educational puzzle.
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Thomas and Brown (2016) talk about the idea of students “get[ting] it,” which is often what is assessed in the classroom (p. 38). However, in the new culture of learning, students have to opportunity to interact with the content in their own way and to make it have value to them. As the facilitator of the classroom, I set the framework. Providing at atmosphere where students feel comfortable challenging one another, but also being challenged will teach them how to battle through academic adversity and frankly, adversity as a whole, to expand their thinking beyond the contextual level. As a young teacher and forever learner, I was and still am the person who goes to Wikipedia first to get a quick piece of information, as Thomas discussed with his students (2016). And to this day I continue to encourage my students to do so as I see is as a context and I know my students do the same. Also, from my own experiences, I have had some brilliant mathematics professors who are close as you can come to an expert in the field, but lack the ability to convey their knowledge appropriately, even in a direct instruction setting. They did not provide the opportunity for struggle and were unable to give up their expertise. They searched each class to see if we knew what they knew in their way, not in a way that was authentic to the student or in a way that engaged the student’s creativity and passions.
Thomas and Brown (2016) talk about positive impact gameplay can have on learning. As an athlete and coach, this aligns with my personal beliefs quite closely, and my students would agree. I see the way my students light up when they are engaged in activity with or against one another and the on-topic discussions that stem from such. The idea of the “why” game, especially in my field, pushes students to think outside of the box, recall their prior knowledge, and make connections (Thomas and Brown, 2016, p. 19). Many of these ideas can be added to existing lessons quite easily without forcing the facilitator to reinvent the wheel, but the classroom environment must be established in a way early on where students can feel comfortable voicing their opinions and providing one another with constructive criticism throughout. This begins with the way the teacher talks to students and the trust that is built between all parties involved.
As I mentioned prior, one of the main challenges I will face in my current organization is the rigidness of the curriculum and required deadlines we must adhere to. Our unit assessments are in the process of being standardized from course-to-course where alternate ways evaluate learning and understanding will no longer be as easy, in addition to the previously created district-wide midterm and final exams. I also anticipate challenges establishing a blended learning setting based around collaboration, inquiry, discovery, and problem-solving when most of my students’ other classes are taught in a traditional setting. While this will be a breath of fresh air for many students, I am certain that there will be pushback whether it is from students, parents, fellow teachers, or administrators. Lastly, some of the research I collected within my literature review discussed the challenges that inquiry-based learning has when teaching higher level concepts. I belief it will be a learning process on a personal level knowing when to step in as the facilitator to provide a bit more direction while continuing to allow students to maintain ownership of their learning.
Adopting this perspective of creating significant learning environments within my organization will be a step outside of the box for what we typically adhere to, but at the perfect time. COVID-19 forced my district to teach asynchronously for the last three months of the 2019 school year, hybrid for the 2020 school year, and now back fully in-person for current year. With this transition back to normal has come a return to many teachers’ old routines which are dated and often ineffective but comforting for many. Creating significant learning environments will allow us to make use of the resources that we made make work over the last two years and intertwine them with what we know works to enhance the learning that takes place. Getting the faculty, staff, and student body to zoom out when viewing education and view learning through a broader lens can remove biases that exist from course-to-course and allow for more cross-curricular connections to be made. Outside of the school setting, we rarely deal with compartmentalized subject matters, but often view education as just learning. The resources, whether technology-based, or not that are available along every step of the process will raise the authenticity of the material we cover.
In my eyes, the learning process we are accustomed to must change and creating significant learning environments is a definite step in the right direction to do just that. My learning philosophy is based around collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking. These are broad ideas that are not limited to my high school mathematics classroom but can be applied to any field where learning is taking place. “Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change” (Harapnuik, 2015). Creative significant learning environments is a collaborative effort. Students must be willing to step away from what they are used to, and newly crowned facilitators must be okay with branching from their norms while continuing to support the learners who are now in the driver’s seat.
References
Harapnuik, D. (2015, May 8). Creating Significant Learning Environments (CSLE). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ-c7rz7eT4&t=9s
TEDx. (2012, September 12). A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U&t=1083s
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Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.