Schools & Engagement Learning

Schools have a very special opportunity for developing children's engagement in their learning. Because routines are so critical in the running of a school day, they have enormous power in forming the way we learn as opposed to what we learn.

Whether there is a focus on the early Kings and Queens of England or on the rise and fall of the western church is largely irrelevant when compared to what is actually taken on through the way the child is taught to learn.

With the focus of the National Curriculum on "outcomes" much of the intelligent education practice from the sixties and seventies has been discredited. The "back-to-basics" claim sought a return to a more simple input/output learning from the fifties but has not taken into account the fact that a classroom in those times was a completely different place to a classroom today. In the meantime discovery learning, as one example, has been discarded along with so much other educational wisdom.

INTEGRATION

As a simple tool, the idea of integrating learning for a child is key. Children learn meaning and develop understanding through an expanding narrative. They connect steps, create order and build internal frameworks like a story.

If we want a child to learn about something, we need to allow him/her to explore that content from different viewpoints: - through art, music, science and nature study. We need to integrate our subjects into a collected way of looking at what we are wanting our children to learn. This way, we teach children to approach knowledge and understanding from a broad and rich spectrum not as a grasped single result.

SOFT SKILLS

It is now recognised that our graduates, although very able technically to handle the demands of their chosen profession, never-the-less lack the "soft skills" necessary to be successful in a modern business.

“Soft skills” attempts to wrap up in a single concept the interwoven qualities or personality traits, social graces, language facility, personal habits, openness, and optimism that are fundamental to good character. They have to do with personal development and the ability to work positively with others. A simple list might include: problem solving, communication, being a team player, conflict management, planning and organization, leadership and motivation skills, initiative, responsibility, trustworthiness, caring, fairness, respect and so on.

These are the characteristics struggling to develop in an education system which separates subjects and has them compete as specialisms.