How is my understanding of the purpose of education visible in my classroom - Connected communities, able citizens.

So if I think back to week 1 of Mindlab, a central question was 'what is the purpose of education'. Gert Biesta talks about the purposes of education and the three things education prepares a learner for. So while we are still concerned with the how, the why becomes very important.
What am I preparing my students for? How will what I do within the confines of my classroom enable them to get there?



Clearly, education is far more than the content of the curriculum. So the big question then becomes how do we prepare students to be connected able citizens of the world? How do we prepare students for a rapidly changing world?

This is a massive question which is not going to be easily answerable in a pithy blog post. I suspect that I will continue to wrestle with this over the 32 weeks of this programme.

I am thinking at the moment about 'how can I encourage community in my classes'. This goes for my face to face classes and my online class. I would really like them to move beyond the individual paradigm.

If Knowledge is a verb (Gilbert, 2005) then it is something that can actively be built, shaped and informed by the community.

For NetNZ art history (an online class taught via Google Hangouts. 1 hour hangout : 3 - 4 hours individual study.) Knowledge Building Communities (Kwok Wing Lai, 2014) has the potential to be extremely powerful. Students, who live all around the country are able to connect with other students, encounter other perspectives, improve their understanding as a community. This requires independent thinking (members of the community must understand the question, develop theories, pose questions, identify promising ideas, and synthesis) however it requires students to connect as a community (all students have a responsibility to the community, all students are legitimate contributors).

For me, the community question is the thing that I'm grappling with. How I can encourage students to operate as a community? How can I foster trust and a connection with each other? How can I foster an intrinsic feeling of responsibility towards the community?

In my face to face classes (all of which are multi-year level), the concept of community is also central to my current thinking. This has the potential to be really powerful. The range of students could be seen as an affordance rather than a detriment. I would love to develop community culture more. Level three students could mentor level one and two students, and visa-versa (A tuakana teina type paradigm). Peer feedback in the form of class critiques would be powerful (when one considers the diverse range of abilities across year levels). I need not be the font of all knowledge. 

I would also like my students to connect more with the local community. Why not turn assignment hand-ins into art exhibitions? Why not invite whanau and community to see the work? Why not blog about it and effectively have an online exhibition space with a global audience?

I think that I need to teach my class how to have conversations about their work. This needs to be taught directly and talked about regularly. For example: What does good quality feedback look and sound like? Why is it important to get feedback? Who is the audience for my work? What am I saying to them with my work?

In a 21st century world, where problem-solving and collaboration are predicted to be at the forefront, we need to move beyond the model of the individual learner receiving and applying content.

Evidence says that metacognitive strategies, feedback, peer tutoring and visible learning are all incredibly powerful. As a teacher, I need to overcome the challenges we face in order to build these capabilities in my students. 

(Hattie, 2011)
https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/