Here’s the primary problem with the mentality of “if it ain’t broke, why fix it,” often those who see things from this lens, ignore what isn’t and hasn’t been working. Sound familiar? If it does, it’s because this is where much of our education system falls today; currently stuck in a loop of making minimal changes and hoping for maximum results.
After looking at the video on Progressive Education in the 1940s, much of what I heard seems like where we find ourselves in education today. In need of transformation. From the video it’s clear that the old system of “drill formula” styled teaching where students were pushed into one room and required to learn at the same pace and of the same memorized content, no longer suited the needs of learners. As a result, the design and implementation of learning was transformed into application learning that incorporated real world scenarios and practices to better serve the students. So, what has changed? Over time it seems like the initial plan to prepare the students for the future has turned into another form of static education, but today it is centered around standardized testing and mastery based on age, and predetermined benchmarks for students. To reference a point made in the article People who like this stuff…like this stuff, part of why we are stuck in this unproductive educational loop is because people years ago found a model that worked and decided to just stick with it. As Dr. Harapnuik points out in the article, to get people who like this stuff, as in traditional education, to like new stuff, such as digital learning environments, requires more than just lip service. Show rather than just tell, to get the message of WHY it’s important is the first step in moving towards progressive transformations in education.
Σχόλια