2.5.4: MANY QUESTIONS

What is true learning? I wish to say that it is the construction of knowledge through passion-driven spontaneity, using resources in a natural environment.

Like the Science Leadership Academy, we need to steer our schools and learning programs towards:

• Teaching learners how to learn.
• Opening learners’ minds to ideas through critical and creative thinking.
• Teaching learners how to live, to be citizens.
• Using enquiry based approaches, asking questions whose answers learners do not know.
• Helping learners to realize themselves in the community through community-based collaboration. If we are to be part of the community, we need to know the needs of the community and work with it to solve them.
• Honoring the lives of learners - allowing learners to do  things that please them. Let them research, collaborate, present and network.

What seems to complicate learning in our schools are the following:

• The laid down and rigid curriculum which is often irrelevant and meaningless to the learners.
• The failure of the teachers to identify the diverse strengths and multiple intelligences of the learners, culminating into the use of poor approaches to teaching and learning.
• The failure of the education system to see and recognize the position, role and contribution of the learner in his own learning.
• The mistaken view hat knowledge is an independent entity that has to be delivered to an empty vessel.
• The unknown reality that, when young children are left alone, the can originate great ideas from which knowledge can be constructed using simple local materials.
• That good and meaningful learning is originated by the teacher. The learner is less exposed and therefore has less body of knowledge.
• The failure of the teacher to plan meaningful but challenging activities and experiences for the learner.
• The failure of the teacher in becoming a constantly passionate and willing learner, ready to follow with the interest of the learners' activities and asking questions that lead to the desired goal.

Did I enjoy having to do a more creative kind of task? You guess I did! The exercise was a high challenge learning opportunity. It required creativity and it was quite thrilling. Tasks involving the creation and submission of a product, however simple, have been more rewarding for me than just written reflections. The infographic is another very powerful tool that I will be using in class. I see its immediate application and relevance to my work.

And the feeling of having to tackle something with which I was unfamiliar? That is where the fun begins. First, it looks complicated but as we collaborate and work together, a new thing or two turn things around, making the activity more rewarding.
 I felt the pleasure of the rigour of working hard when I submitted my assignment.