Connected Learning Supporting Specialist Knowledge

 Connected Learning

Promoting Specialist Knowledge

David Hood, in his book The Rhetoric and The Reality, which I touched on in a previous post, refers to the paradigm of one.

The Paradigm of One (the traditional secondary school structure)

Students are grouped into one class, based on one age, and for one hour go to one room where one teacher teaches one subject and students, largely, do one set of learning activities and work according to one timeline and at the one same time complete the one assessment activity.

Then the bell goes and they go down the corridor and for one hour go to one room where one teacher teaches one subject and students, largely, do one set of learning activities and work according to one timeline and at the one same time complete the one assessment activity.

Then the bell goes and etc, etc.

And what they learn in each of those one blocks is completely siloed and there are no connections between them.

I remain to be convinced that this is the best way to learn. I suppose it is OK if your definition of learning is limited to the reception and processing of knowledge in isolation from other knowledge, This is, no doubt, a vehicle for a level of learning.

I prefer a model of learning that, without downplaying the importance of specialist subject knowledge, raises the possibility of deeper learning. I believe this deeper learning can come about when we explore the connections between these specialist areas of knowledge.

Connected Learning in Action

While hosting a group of 35 Australian teachers at our school yesterday we spent a lot of time talking with students while they were engaged in learning (in the last block on the last day in the last week of term!). The majority of classes we visited were our Foundation classes (combined Years 9 and 10).

• In one class (combined Visual Arts and English) students spoke confidently about how their exploration and research, involving close reading, comprehension and analysis of visual media (English) of graffitti and research on the topic of the difference between vandalism and art enabled them to produce thoughtful and high quality pieces of graffitti art (Visual Arts) with annotations linking their words and images to what they had learnt from their English.
• Another class (combined Visual Arts and Science) had students who had engaged in microscope use skills to analyse the individual features of a plant so that they could recognise, name and explain their purpose (Science) and were now free-hand sketching the plants to such a level that they would not be out-of-place in a professional botannical sketch publication.
• In another class (Maths and HPE) we came across students who had done some lessons previously on how statistics could be analysed, presented in grapic form, and explained in text. From there they had gone to the gymnasium where they had learned the skills involved in volleyball. At some point they collected data by video and written observation sheets and were now in class using the data to present their findings in graphic form. This class of 40 students were the most engaged I had seen in any Maths lesson

The above are only 3 examples of the numerous connected learning modules our students experience. None of them lack the important content, concepts or skills of any of the individual specialist subjects, but their learning and understanding is deepened when they explore the connections between the disciplines.

The Structure of Connected Learning

There is a bit of a view amongst some academics and commentators that when a school focuses on connected learning, or anything that looks like project based learning, and any model that incorporates student voice and co-construction that students are missing out on that all-important subject specialist knowledge. I do get frustrated by the limited lens that such commentators have with their belief that specialist subject knowledge must always be delivered by subject specialsists through a silo model with little co-construction with students.

At our school we absolutely believe in the importance of subject specialist knowledge delivered by absolutely specialist subject teachers ( we have at least one PHD in their subject area with the vast majority of staff with degrees, mainly at Masters level, in their subject area). We just believe that their are better, more engaging ways to deliver this important knowledge in a way that deepens learning.

When we started our school our specialist subject leads unpacked their curriculum area and backward mapped from a quality NCEA Level 2 what were the key foundational knowledge, concepts and skills students need to be strong in by the end of Year 10 to be successful in qualifications.

We then asked those specialist leads to group this key foundational learning into 8 episodes (1 per term over 2 years) and to identify in which term this learning would occur for our Foundation Learners. We did this so that it didn't matter whether a Science student was studying Science with Visual Art, or with Maths, or with Social Science they were all covering the same foundational learning. This is the case for all Learning Areas and it means students are not left with gaps in this key foundational knowledge.

To give even more coherence to their learning we settled on a big school-wide concept for each of the 8 terms which is addressed that term by each Learning Area.

 

This means that in the semester that is focusing on Identity  and Space and Place Social Science students might be focusing on Community/Migration, Science students might be focusing on DNA/Outer Space, English on how cultures and societies express themselves in and through Creative Writing etc, etc., while Maths students will be developing key mathematical competencies using the related learnig area as the context in which to apply their learning and develop their understanding.

Our approach certainly does not downplay the importance of specialist knowledge, in fact it increases its importance as we discover important connections with other specialist knowledge. It has the added bonus of having interesting contexts for learning that seem to engage our learners.

Get in touch if you'd like to explore how a focus on connected learning can happen in your school without any other changes to a school's way of structuring learning.