Vision
The revolution in the study of the mind that has occurred in the last 30 years has important implications for education. A new theory of learning is coming into focus that leads to very different approaches to the design of schools than those that exist today.
Education for Life Skills
In the early part of the twentieth century, education focused on the acquisition of literacy skills: simple reading, writing, and calculating. It was not the general rule for educational systems to train people to think and read critically, to express themselves clearly and persuasively, to solve complex problems in science and mathematics. More than ever, the sheer magnitude of human knowledge renders its coverage by education an impossibility; rather, the goal of education is better conceived as helping students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire the knowledge that allows people to think productively about history, science and technology, social phenomena, mathematics, and the arts. “School should be less about preparation for life and more like life itself.” As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon wisely stated, the meaning of “knowing” has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it
Ex. 1. Life Skills 2. S-T-E-M Education 3. Integrated curriculum
Learning from conflict
Children share with adults the urge to make sense of conflict. Child’s desire to look for order and coherence gathers strength from the knowledge of conflict. No external stimulation is need to engage with the subject. They want to ‘resolve’ it in their minds in the sense that they want to identify the contradictions involved in the conflict by referring them to framework of ideas and values. The school can assist by providing opportunities to study issues that require such framework to be applied with rigour. It can be done by carefully calibrating the framework of ideas and values to the process of intellectual development during childhood.
Ex. 1. Sex education 2. Critical pedagogy 3. Value Education
Community-centered approach
Learning is influenced in fundamental ways by the context in which it takes place. A community-centered approach requires the development of norms for the classroom and school, as well as connections to the outside world, that support core learning values. The benefits of this “ distributed cognition ” are tapped inside the classroom when students work collaboratively on problems or projects, learning from each others’ insights, and clarifying their own thinking through articulation and argument. The schools should aim to develop ways to link classroom learning to other aspects of students’ lives.
Ex. 1.Parent Education 2. Exploiting the Local Context 3. Internship school
Assessment and Evaluation
A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings. The ability of students to transfer provides an important index of learning that can
help teachers evaluate and improve their instruction. Many approaches to instruction look equivalent when the only measure of learning is memory for information that was specifically presented. Instructional differences become more apparent when evaluated from the perspective of how well the learning transfers to new problems and settings. Assessments could be used to improve the teaching learning process rather than just grade the learners.
Ex. 1. Best practices approach 2. Teachers as researchers 3. Feedback mechanisms
- Therapeutic cum Educational
Inclusion is a belief system, not just a set of strategies. It is not just about accommodations and supports; it is about an attitude and a disposition that a school intentionally teaches by example. It is the opposite of segregation and isolation. Our challenge is not one of getting “special” students to better adjust to the usual schoolwork, the usual teacher pace, or the usual tests. The challenge of schooling remains ensuring that all students receive their entitlement i.e. right to thought-provoking and enabling schoolwork. - Revitalizing schools and attracting students from all social classes
We have been busy taking education to the masses, and this may have left us no time to worry about maintaining high standards. In many of the schools, their students live in a restricted universe. Either the schools select its clientele out of the larger population (private schools), or clientele are compelled to choose the school out of lack of choice (public schools). This constructs a narrow sphere within which its clientele must socialize. Such practice alienates the school from its milieu. It may offer high quality or rigorous instruction, but its instruction will not answer the child’s search for meaning.
One’s relatedness to other people is what creates the context in which acts of inquiry become meaningful. Such a context remains permanently stunted or underdeveloped in a school, which has only one segment of the wider society represented in it. We will work to transform the school quality of our education system which will attract parents from all social classes to create a rich human context for meaning making.
Ex. Inclusive schools
Towards a Democratic School
A radical change is going to be needed to get a learning system fit for a democracy. It needs to get away from domination and its endless stream of uninvited teaching. It needs to recognize that, in a democracy, learning by compulsion means indoctrination and that only learning by invitation and choice is education . A democratic school, is a school where students are trusted to take responsibility for their own lives and learning, and for the school community. Democratic education is an educational ideal in which democracy is both a goal and a method of instruction. Thoughtful participation in the democratic process has also become increasingly complicated as the locus of attention has shifted from local to national and global concerns.
Education for Sustainability
Sustainability addresses the ongoing capacity of the earth to maintain all life. Sustainable patterns of living seek to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This requires a renewed and balanced approach to the way humans interact with each other and the environment. We propose to create a waste-free campus by integrating our practices. By attracting experts in sustainability into the campus, we plan to engage with them to create activities as a cross-curricular theme to enable students to develop a new perspective to look at relationship between nature and human society. Schools can reach out to the community by transforming the school campus into a sustainable living experience center.
Ex. 1. Sustainability Lab 2. Museums 3. Convergences 4. Green curriculum
Tinkering and Technology
The real power of any technology is not in the technique itself or in the allure it generates, but in the new ways of personal expression it enables, the new forms of human interaction it facilitates, and the powerful ideas it makes accessible to children. We propose to organize their entire curriculum around making and invention. A space where a large, eclectic assortment of materials, tools, and technologies are provided from them to explore and create.. It will develop craftsmanship skills at an early age transforming our students into skilful youth. Technology in schools not as a way to optimize traditional education, but rather as an emancipatory tool that puts the most powerful construction materials in the hands of children. More importantly it will make education more meaningful by being project-based, student-centered and constructionist.
Ex. 1. Digital Prototyping Lab 2. Telementors 3. Scarpyard
