Contemporary Learning Design

My Own School Experiences
I am going to break down my classes into Teacher – Centric or Student Centred, but first of all I would like to clarify that the school I went to, has a very good curriculum for slow and/or gifted children. The classes had no more than 24 students and performing and visual art was well encouraged and en extensive physical education was an integral part of our school life.
TEACHER CENTRIC or STUDENT CENTRED

Math Main Class: sit at a desk, watch “talk and chalk”, do examples on the board, submit work. Rote.TEACHER CENTRIC

Math Remedial Class: 6 students, self paced work, group discussion; students decide what they need help with.STUDENT CENTRED

English Main Class: reading out loud, copy exercises from board, writing essays in class, submit work. TEACHER CENTRIC

English Remedial Class: 6 to 10 students, self paced work using SRA English workbooks, group discussion, storey writing, students decide what they need help with. STUDENT CENTRED

Science: Yuck and boring!!!! Sit down, shut up, take notes, and dissect this rat!!! TEACHER CENTRIC

History: research topic from text book, discuss it with the class, work in groups, assignments were presented with an illustrated story that we got up in front of the class to discuss.STUDENT CENTRED


Latin: ROTE TEACHER CENTRIC

Geography: much the same as history but involved many excursions to many places including the Rocks area in Sydney, Warrumbungle Ranges in N.S.W., Canberra and several other places around Sydney. STUDENT CENTRED

Visual Art was broken into four categories: Art History, graphic, free form and craft. STUDENT CENTRED

Physical Education: Swimming, netball, softball, tennis, gymnastics, archery, golf, fencing, track and field.STUDENT CENTRED



The school I attended used a system called “The Dalton Plan” Ascham School , where the curriculum included a lot of free study periods in which the students decided what subject and where they would like to study. I feel that this plan made us responsible for our own learning within the guidelines of the school.

I feel that my education adopted many of the strategies from Lynch’s 8 Learning Management Questions. My education in the 1970’s was rather more forward thinking than that of most schools at that time but was still primarily Teacher – Centric. As time went on the school was placing more emphasis on all of the 8 LMQ’s but was still very focused on Academic Achievement.
In my opinion some of the pitfalls with the 8 LMQ”s would be that some children would still get left behind in an academic sense, regarding literacy and numeracy skills and that to an extent ROTE learning has some positives. Spelling Bees and times table were such things that contributed to my literacy and numeracy skills in adult life.
Where and how will the 8 LMQ’s fit into present day curricula? If all students need to arrive at the same point at the end of their schooling and we take into consideration the different levels of academia and schemas, would it necessitate more students to repeat? I am sure that as my studies progress this question will be answered.

Learning Engagement Theory
What learning activities would I design to fulfill this approach?
Constructivism Constructivism (learning theory) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge (epistemology) [1] which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their experiences. Constructivism is not a specific pedagogy, although it is often confused with constructionism, an educational theory developed by Seymour Papert. Piaget's theory of constructivist learning has had wide ranging impact on learning theories and teaching methods in education and is an underlying theme of many education reform movements. Research support for constructivist teaching techniques has been mixed, with some research supporting these techniques and other research contradicting those results. Social constructivism has been criticized for being a kind of behaviorism, which reduces the individual to his social environment.
As I completed my “Indicators of Engaged Learning” quiz, I approached the task with a combination of experiences as a teacher of Visual Art and a student doing my Graduate Bachelor in Learning and Teaching and I don’t find that this test was completely relevant to my chosen field of teaching, Art.
I feel that using technology in researching art is not a key component in using ones’ imagination when creating Visual Art. Technology may be useful as a research tool for art theory of for referencing creative styles and mediums (painting, drawing, print-making etc.), but as a whole “making art” is a very tactile and emotional process and my teaching style gives the students the tangible tools and knowhow to use a variety of mediums to create something that is produced with a great deal of emotion. In saying that, my learning activities include a lot of discussion, demonstration, contemplation and reflection. All the students work individually but are one big group sharing the experience. Some of the activities that I do incorporate tactile exercises like physically playing with paints and painting mediums (with fingers) as it is just as important for my students to know what the products feel like in order to manipulate them on a surface. Excursions are crucial to broaden the Art Vocabulary and experimentation is crucial to allow the students to achieve relaying their emotions and feelings in a 2 or 3 dimensional way.
Learning Art in a technological age brings me to question the specific technology we are referring to. Computers are a great research tool and mobile phones are capable of capturing and sending visual reference, as are cameras but I would also like to point out that there has been fantastic advances in the past ten years in the production of art materials.
Hope fully the overview of the 2 classes I am currently teaching will demonstrate my understanding of the Learning Engagement Theory.
Class 1: Emotional Mark Making
Listen to a selected piece of music.
Discuss with the group the emotions and feeling this evokes in each individual.
Make marks or images on paper to convey your emotions using the materials provided. (There are no rules to what the student can reproduce)
We share our thoughts and feelings discussing the images at the end of the class.
This lesson pushes the student into the Higher Order of Thinking and tells us a little about each individual person.
At all times during my classes I go from person to person asking questions to push their minds out of the “Safe Box” and demonstrating techniques with their materials.
I give them the tools to enable them to express themselves artistically. Art is not only about aesthetics it is about self expression.

LEARNING ACTIVITY SCORE FROM 1 - 10
University
10
Health and Safety Induction Training @ Spotlight
3
Monthly Management Meetings and Training Seminars – Retail
8

Formal learning experiences I have had in the last 2 years:
Categorise each of these learning experiences (between 1 and 10) according to Dale's Cone and the Learning Pyramid (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)




After adding the above table of scores together and dividing by 3 to get my learning experience, I conclude that it is where it should be.
University: incorporates all of the experiences and methods on Dale’s Cone and the Learning Pyramid. It is engaging and interesting and despite the huge amount of work expected (after not studying for several years) it is a lot of fun!!!
Induction: (A one hour lecture and 15min audio tape) sooooooooo boring!!! 1980’s safety video with no relevance to the store I was to work in. Lecture that didn’t take into consideration any previous training that each of the participants may have had. This experience was in the top 3 rungs of the Learning Pyramid and a few of the top section of Dale’s Cone.
Management Meeting: very engaging and pro-active activity!! All of both cone thingies.
Question: How will your students rate the learning experiences you design and develop for them?
My current mature age students rate my L. E. in the higher range so I hope I can achieve this in a high school setting.