Let's Get Together...

The more I study learning theory, the more I become convinced that we as home schooling parents can too easily fall into the trap of educating like we were educated. It is natural. It's not like it is a sin or anything like that. It's easy to default to. Yet, the whole reason we are home schooling is that we want something different for our kids in one way or another. And of course we do give them something different in many ways. Yet...

here are some methods of teaching:

Direct Teaching
Lecture Teaching
Group Based Teaching
Discussion Teaching
Case Based Teaching
Problem Based Teaching
Curiosity Based Teaching
Project Based teaching
Team based Teaching
Design Problem Teaching

There are more. The point is, people generally teach the way they were taught. People often resist anything else, because they haven't seen anything else, or had personal experience with anything else. So generally some of us, even many of us, might learn toward using what we know and have experienced, even if it is detrimental simply because we know nothing else. Kind of like those "who are kept from the truth, because they know not where to find it."

At part of my degree, I am working at a Lab School. Part of my job is to help them use technology to drive learning deeper. From time to time it can be frustrating, unless you stop and realize that although these teachers do great things in the classroom, they may not have personally experienced how technology can drive learning deeper, let alone have had the experience using technology to drive learning deeper with kids in their classes. The point is, it is the exception not the rule that people can implement something they haven't seen before. I think we can all agree on that.

Now, put these two ideas together: 1) each teaching method molds a child differently, and 2) that it is less likely that we as home schooling parents are going to teach using a method we haven't experienced ourselves. The potential result? We might unknowingly do some of the same harms to our children at home that they would have experienced in another system.

If this is true, and you might not agree, (which I can completely understand) is anyone on this list interested in working together on studying about different learning methods, their pros and cons, and sharing this work with the group? We could do this online, via online technology, make it a work in progress and also make if available to home schoolers in general!

If anyone would prefer to discuss this offline, you can email me at dadweiss@gmail.com. I thought we might consider making a WIKI where we could all contribute in an organized way and make it public for everyone.

Why not have our own research and learning experience and use our little home schooling community of learning to benefit the world?

Mark Weiss
http://trustthechildren.blogspot.com