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.

Is The Internet Safe For Children?

There are two quick answers to this: Yes and No.

Yes, if the children can be directed to use safe sites. Yes, if they know that they should never give out their own personal information. Yes, if they learn to check with or inform an adult if they are in doubt. However, for many children the internet presents a tempting maze which means they easily forget the rules, or it seduces them to follow links that may take them to inappropriate places. So, No, if they are not trained in the best ways to do research and use information. No, if they proceed without understanding the risks at their own level. No, if they are left unsupervised, as dealing with potential risks requires a level of sophistication that a child simply does not have the maturity to understand.

The virtual world seems safe to children, as safe as being at home or at school where the magical portal physically exists, and furthermore it is colourful, exciting, apparently child friendly and full of possibilities. They do not realise that it is also populated with biased or incorrect information and people who are looking for their contact for advertising or other less suitable purposes. They don’t realise they are being solicited as customers for sponsored sites or that there may be far better child friendly information available through certain sites such as the brilliant Usborne quicklinks (www.usborne.com/quicklinks/eng/default.aspx). They don’t understand the potential of unkind contact or cyberbullying until it happens to them. The virtual world seems less real and therefore the risks seem detached.  

Children, by their very nature are curious and enthusiastic. It is tempting for them for example, to type their own names, or yours, into Google to see what appears – it is potentially a harmless activity after all – but what happens if they find a person or a site that is not suitable? It is simply not helpful to ban the looking up of anything or everything, instead it is better to be frank with them that they might find things that are not appropriate and that they should call you and explain what they have seen. They will also understand that this enables other children to be protected. At Notre Dame Prep School we have a ‘safe surf’ program that eliminates inappropriate words or images, but children often don’t consider the reasons for this and have been heard to say “Oh, I will try that site again at home”. We teach them the risks and hope they remember, but they do need your help at home, where they often feel the restrictions and rules are different.

As often as possible schools revisit the safety issues, and reiterate that personal information should be kept private, and that it would be foolish to trust someone on any site that they cannot see but still the dangers seem remote to them. I strongly recommend that everyone should watch this fantastic BBC Newsround film created for families: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCNGvL0g1g, which will help you, as well as your children, to understand more about the social complexities of the technological world they live in.

Cyberbullying is referred to at school, and children are encouraged to understand that writing an unkind email or texting a negative message is not only wrong, but an activity that is potentially criminal in the wider world and will not be tolerated. Most understand, but the medium is so available and immediate, that it can be tempting after a minor spat with friends (for any of us) to put frustrations or retaliation into writing and hit ‘send’. All of this needs to be talked through regularly and calmly so that the actions of a moment, so hastily committed, don’t create further conflicts or unhappiness.

In summary, I believe that the internet is a fantastic tool for all. Used with appropriate safeguards (e.g. safe surfing controls for children), adequate supervision (not everything can be caught by the filters – imagine the range of materials you might see for the word ‘schoolgirl!’) and training in how to find the right sort of material targeted at the right age, the internet is brilliant. But as ever, education is everything. Keep reminding your children about safety, take nothing for granted, check up on them regularly, look at the search history and talk to them about what they are doing and what they are seeing, especially if you think it might be something unsuitable or risky. In short, help them to develop better internet behaviours that will be useful to them for many years.

Safe surfing!