How do we implicate children in their own learning?

This week I have been reading a variety of views about a learning and teaching strategy called mantle of the expert, an approach first proposed by Dorothy Heathcote in the 1960s. My first introduction was a series of blogs by Debra Kidd (links below), which caught my attention as they talked about engaging a group of 21 Century pupils in a learning experience through imagination and taking responsibility for solving a learning problem. The basis was I suppose somewhere between drama and role play, but with a real thinking experience.

These attractive articles started me thinking about what learning experiences we offer in the classroom each day, and also how much time teachers have to be reflective about the way they choose to teach for creativity, independence and enthusiasm. These characteristics are all too easily overlooked as the curriculum is so stuffed with facts, skills and knowledge that appear to need drilling, learning by rote and inculcating that the delivery of knowledge though old fashioned leaning and practising might seem to be the only time efficient and effective approach.

It would be so easy to forget that the pure content of the curriculum can mean very little in educational terms if it fails to challenge the child in a way that develops cognition, wisdom or intelligence. Without the engagement of thinking processes, adequate challenge, high expectations, fascination, time to problem solve, encouragement to think independently and to evaluate with real honesty and resilience, learning will be very limited. Learning, certainly for primary and younger secondary aged pupils, really means developing thinking skills, extending and enhancing vocabulary, improving thinking speed, working on listening skills, and building on the ability to concentrate in a variety of situations. Children that learn to love the world of books and imagination do better in public examinations. Pupils that ultimately need to retain facts and manipulate these to answer questions for GCSE and A Level perform far better if they have mastered that knowledge through teaching that demands something of them rather than hands something to them. 

Last week a visitor to Notre Dame School spoke to us in broken English, and rather quaintly, referred to our teachers being "implicated" in the education of the children. However, he was utterly right and I believe this to be a brilliant description: we are all implicated in the process of educating a child - but that must, if it to be of any long term use, mainly implicate the child as master of their own learning.

So I urge you read the blogs mentioned at the top of this piece,

debrakidd.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/bottoms-on-fire  and debrakidd.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/bottoms-up  as they remind us how important it is to create educational experiences that allow the child to take part in the learning experience and to learn by inspiration and instinct, creative imagining and having fun. I’m not sure if I wear the mantle of the expert, but I do know that good teaching must make use of every strategy it can to fully involve the children, and that will undoubtedly create experts of the future.