OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
The
previous educational methods and techniques are not giving the right respond to
our pupils and they are not able to see the reason to go to school. The
educational systems were created and established two or three centuries ago
‘Our educational systems were conceived and designed in the intellectual
culture of the Enlightenment and the economic circumstances of the Industrial
Revolution...’ (Sir Ken Robinson) So if we do not use wigs, if we do not ride
horses as the main mean of transport and if we do not use candles to allow us
to see things; why do we have to use so
old educational systems?.
SOCIETY NEEDS
A degree
is not always the way to get a job, and get a job is not the main goal for our
pupils. This is because year by year the number of people who got a degree has
increased and it is demonstrated that you do not always need to be succeeded in
academic terms, which are deductive reasoning and the knowledge of the
classics, to get a good job. Apart from this there are other necessities in our
society and it is demanded an integral education and not only focus on academic
success. People need to feel important
and well valued for what they are able to do and not for the number of
degrees they have collected along their lives.
BECAUSE children require a different encouragement
21ST CENTURY ENCOURAGEMENT
The way
we were encouraged is different to the one our pupils demand. I am speaking
about the fight that exists on pupils mind between teacher´s encouragement in
the classroom and the video games encouragement. This is probably the most
stimulating period of Earth´s history and pupils cannot be focused on only one
simple and repetitive situation, a teacher telling them things besides a
blackboard. How can we gain a battle
against video games without a change?
BECAUSE Learning is for everybody
INDIVIDUAL LEARNING
We
organize our educational processes by year ranges and by what it is expected to
be known in a specific age. It is easier to control a group when all people
have the same level of knowledge and when someone has a different level he is
considered the ugly duck. All learning processes have a beginning but not an
end and especially when we talk about languages. All of them depend on the
person that of course, to make learning processes meaningful has to acquire
them at his own pace taking baby steps and if we have done a good job they will
never stop self-learning.
LEARNING STYLES
Pupil´s
progress is controlled by a teacher which at the end of the term has a
mathematical operation in which the result is the mark of the subject. Each
person is responsible for his acts while not of his or her learning progress.
Children need to know how they are doing and what they are doing at real time. Let them be part of their progress.
COLLABORATIVE WORK
Learning
progresses are evaluated through individual activities while great learning
happens in groups. There is a common tendency for teachers to think that
individual activities show what a person can do and it is partly wrong. We are
preparing people to live in group but we do not take into consideration what they
can do when they collaborate. Surprisingly, the
growth of all cultures along history is based in a collaborative development.
4 MAIN REASONS
WHAT VS HOW
Teachers
are in charge of evaluating a production created by multiple repetitions
instead of assessing a creative production in which the goals are to understand
the values and reasons of what pupils do. There is still the idea of ‘An artist
is somebody who produces things that people do not need to have’ (Andy Warhol)
while we must think that if our pupils have an artist in, who is struggling to
get out? Teachers are taught to ask and correct pupil’s answers while we should
permit more questions from pupils, an oral interaction in which they could
demand their willing and curiosities and take advantage of this, building
investigators, people that do not think there is only a right answer for every
question. And all this refers to our obsession
of What, all academic terms that
have to be taught in a year, instead of How.
RESEARCHERS
DO COYLE
LEARN THROUGH EXPERIENCES
At the
beginning of the human kind we learnt from experiences and copying from others’
experiences but since the writing invention, we were taught by text in which
experiences were told. This is requiring a mental process in which pupils need
to imagine the situations whilst through direct observation the process is
shorter and easier remembered. Our mental processes due to the technological
advances and the stimulating situation we are living, call for learning visual
moments. It is easy to remember an activity that you did with your body or what
you have directly seen, than the last page you studied. Learning by doing mixed
with emotions are the two ingredients every learning moment should have. Let’s make every learning process an
unforgettable experience.
LEARNING IS FUN
Pupils
were supposed to be well seated, in front of a blackboard and listening carefully
and with visual connection to what the teacher was saying and there were few
moments in which something fun happened. Our pupils are requiring more
participation and affection (Active Learning), so it is in the learning guides
the possibility to make education a group of fun activities full of purposes
and goals, in which pupils enjoy learning through that type of experiences, learning by laughing.
DAVID MARSH
GISELLA LANGÉ
DAVID LASAGABASTER
Coloquio sobre el bilingüismo entre Virginia Vinuesa, profesor docente investigador de inglés en la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, es experta en formación del profesorado y ha ejercido la docencia en España y el Reino Unido; María Espejo Quijada, es autora de la "Guía Práctica de Bilingüismo" y profesora de inglés en un centro educativo público; y Elena del Pozo, es profesora de Geografía e Historia, en inglés, del IES Bilingüe Manuel de Falla de Madrid
