Vital seed principleSudheendra SavanurIn previous contributions to this page, I described learning expeditions, design principles, building blocks of high quality learning expeditions, school structures required; and the benefits of expeditionary learning. In this conclusive part, let‚s examine how expeditionary learning can be practised daily and discuss experiences of schools that have made it work.When we dig down through the layers of design principles, core practices, benchmarks, and planning guides, we come to the integrating principle at the heart of expeditionary learning. We discover the seed meant to bear fruit all day, every day, in every subject and every lesson. It seems too simple and obvious to promise much, but then, visualise the seeds you‚ve seen. They don‚t look like all that much, but they know the amazing secret of orchestrating the elements: earth, water, air, fire in a way that brings forth growth and fruit. Here‚s the seed: The experience comes first, then the concept. The experience creates a ‚Ëœvessel‚ that the concept ‚Ëœfills‚. If we pour in concepts without having created vessels to receive them, they will run off the sides of understanding and be forgotten ‚ if not before the test, then surely after.Two problems immediately complicate this simple principle. The first is that understanding and skill require much practice and repetition in order to be mastered, even if you see it once with a great “Aha!” I can create moving experiences to introduce an idea or challenging products to address a standard, but understanding won‚t last without repeated practice and opportunities for application.The second has to do with figuring out what is ‚Ëœexperience‚. We often use the word, but what are we really talking about? Is it more than just doing stuff? I think about four aspects of experience: sensual, emotional, imaginative, and mental. It is direct, immediate, and the first three types accessible without language. The way the world enters us through our senses is experience. The emotion we feel when the world enters us is experience. The imagination, the seeing of pictures in our mind‚s eye is experience. Finally, we can experience ideas and concepts, themselves. The power of thinking can be an experience. Understanding can bring joy.Howard Gardner writes, “The most important moment in a child‚s education is the crystallising experience: when the child connects to something that engages curiosity and stimulates further exploration.” How do we create these experiences for our students? Ask the following questions to plan individual lessons: What is amazing about the concept or the topic? What important consequences does it have in our lives? How would life be different without it? Until we recognise the significance of the concept ‚ the genius of the topic, what makes it unique, what makes it important ‚ we won‚t be able to communicate to our students that it matters. Can you imagine a number system without zero? What an incredible invention! To appreciate how amazing it is, I have to feel it. How have children experienced the topic in their own lives? More often than not, students already have the experience, but may not have formulated the concept to define it. The kindergarten child experiences subtraction when she loses a chocolate. The high school kicker on the football team has experienced parabola as he judges a kick for height and distance. If we can‚t imagine where they have experienced the concept already, we need to create an opportunity for them to experience it again before we introduce it. What connection does this topic have to others? Is there a principle or concept at the root that leads to something universal? Sometimes the crystallising experience happens in making connections to other concepts. Remember a class I student becoming engaged with the letter ‚ËœM‚ when she saw it emerge in a picture of the mountains. How can I lead students to discover the topic for themselves rather than tell them what they are going to study? Students want to feel they are creating the curriculum rather than us imposing it upon them. Try to create situations in which they feel they are authentically exploring something relevant to their lives. Suppose you have to teach kids rocks and minerals. Have them dig in the ground to prepare for planting something, they will find rocks. This will lead to learning about how scientists identify rocks and minerals. Is there a great question, issue, or challenge that could introduce the topic? Here is where guiding questions can be used as a crystallising experience to engage students. They can be used for single lessons and expeditions. Reading an article together about how television transformed an Eskimo village generated lively debate in my class and engaged students to explore the relationship between technological progress and the quality of human life. Remember the seed that underlies all our tools and principles: that experience precedes conceptual understanding. Much of our work is to craft these experiences for our students, or mine them from their own lives. Our students have a better chance to develop real understanding if we start with the experience and then construct the concepts through guided inquiry. If we apply this principle to every lesson we teach, I think we will be on the way to figuring out what it means to do expeditionary learning all day long. (Sudheendra Savanur is a Bangalore-based behavioural scientist and education consultant. E-mail: [email protected])
Experiential Education
EducationWorld October 04 | EducationWorld
