The curricula fosters and prioritizes teacher centred, text book driven, time parcelled, class room- bounded and grade oriented education rather than deep and sustained learning. The students often find them puzzled with a set of seemingly disconnected facts, remain as passive spectators. They don’t realize the diversities as well as inter-connectedness of various aspects of ideas, they hesitate to believe that they can make a difference by learning to think and feel and act differently. Research across a variety of fields – from cognitive science to learning theory to anthropology-suggests that humans are extremely adept at pattern making and pattern perceiving. We learn things by relating them to our prior knowledge and experience, by contextualising such knowledge in specific situations. There are “webs of meaning” and it is critical to weave webs of relationships and connections to a multitude of seemingly disparate data; stories, metaphors and narratives live with us and in us; they help us to construct arguments, change our views and push us over the cliff where we find that things are not certain and they do not last. John Dewey suggested that all true learning begins with a condition of doubt, “which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance”, our paradigmatic perspectives shift, that our expectations are redefined, they open a wedge in the foundations of what we consider “real”. In this process, students can explore themselves, understand their own potentials, modify their actions, devise new strategies for fostering productive “habits of mind”. This process emphasise self- initiated and self-engaged learning but also add to collective dialogical discourse. They can feel a change in their understanding, build a faith in themselves that there are choices in life and they can create their choices.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 14:11:51 +0000
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