Significant Learning Environments
The Riddle of Learning – A Solution in a “New Culture”
I’ve been in a classroom my entire life. No, really. Elementary school, middle school, high school, and college all to lead me back to the other side of the classroom as a teacher. As a learner I participated in some really amazing experiences and sat through from pretty terrible ones. As a teacher I am constantly reflecting on my own experiences questioning how I can enhance the learning in my classroom. The answer sits bright-eyed in front of me. By shifting my focus to my students and recognizing their passions, we can create a “significant learning environment” (SLE); an environment that embraces the unknown and constant fluidity of the world.
Environments Can’t Break
Talk to anyone involved with education, teachers, administrators, students, or parents, and a common gripe is that the school system is broken. As educators, we might throw our hands up in the air and continue to teach what’s always been taught to the same stiff rows of students. However, Douglas Thomas (2011), a scholar, researcher and journalist, and John Seely Brown (2011), a researcher specializing in computer-supported activities, suggest that if we look at the learning system as an environment that cannot break, we no longer have an irreparable problem. Rather, this perspective allows us to move towards a growing solution.
In order to create SLEs, we need look no further than the already available resources – our students, their passions, a “massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 19), and a place to put it all together. That being said, it’s less about the actual classroom and more about the culture and learning context. Like most people, most of the important lessons I’ve learned in life did not happen in a classroom. Creating SLEs embraces just that – moving beyond the walls of the classroom and recognizing the myriad “teachers” in the world and opportunities to learn. Learning is happening everywhere around us. It is no longer enough to simply learn about the world. In today’s culture of learning, we need to “learn through engagement within the world” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 38).
Passion
There is no one easy solution to this riddle. Technology is a component but not a fix-all. But passion is a way to start to understand the solution. I love to laugh and I love to have fun. This is why I teach. I get to talk into my classroom every day and really have no idea how it will turn out – that’s so exciting to me! But not everyone loves English class… So I tapped into my own passion for teaching and learning which led me here to pursue this second master's. Immediately, I began to shift my classroom to a much more student-centered one where my students get to experience COVA just as I am. Now I am determined to help my students find their own passions so we can continue on this learning journey together.
Thomas and Brown (2011) remind us that students learn best when the topic is something they’re passionate about. “When students feel passion for a topic, they will seek out the tough problems […] and best of all, they will have fun doing it” (p. 80). If my students are having fun learning, my job becomes even better. And if we are learning together, and they are teaching each other, it helps learning become the “lifelong interest” that is should be (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 32).
Fishing for a Collective
Somewhere in every school building, maybe right next to the cat poster telling us to “hang in there,” resides the poster that tells us to teach a man to fish.
However, Thomas and Brown (2011) point out that this adage is no longer enough. Like most teaching practices, the adage assumes “what we know will remain relatively unchanged for a long enough period of time to be worth the effort of transferring it” (p. 40). One Google search will show how erroneous this is – our world and information is constantly in flux, being altered or changed this very minute.
No worries. This adage, with a minor altercation, can still be applied.
“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him as long as the fish supply holds out. But create a collective, and every man will learn how to feed himself for a lifetime” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 53).
I often tell my students that I am not smarter than them – I’ve just experienced more. This allows everyone to be an expert in some field. And when their eyes light up because they’re teaching me something new, the importance of creating a culture where this is always happening is so clear. As I’ve begun to implement ePortfolios in my classrooms, seeing this collective is much clearer. Students are eager to help one another and show each other some new way to do something. Now, students are not only exploring their passions, but they are able to share their passions with others.
Riddling Our Way to an Answer
“The solution to the riddle does more than just solve it. It organizes and makes sense of the riddle” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 98). There isn’t one right answer to the conundrum that is the education system. But if we attack the problem with the resources we already have access to, we can being to understand it. SLEs embrace students’ passion, playfulness, and inquisitive nature.
Combining these attributes with the readily available information at our fingertips, we can create an amazing culture of learning – quite possibly one that students will use for the rest of their lives.
References
Thomas, D., & Brown J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.