The Fourth Design Principle - The Learning Principle

Good learning designs engage students in “playful” activities at the edge of their knowledge and understanding using symbolic tools to develop and internalize meaningful thought.

This quote sums up what we learned about Vygotsky’s theory.  He believes that society and culture play a fundamental role in cognitive development.  Language and activities in a culture along with role models are the keys to learning.  The adults or role models are the guides to cross the bridge from readiness to learning.

As hard as it was to read Vygotsky’s Mind In Society, the discussion in class reinforced what we discussed in the previous class.  Activity, culture, and concept are intertwined to teach the generalizable knowledge.  What is the fundamental thing to teach?  What is the purpose of this learning?  What should the learner be able to do in the end?  These are the guiding questions I can use to start a design plan.

I will also keep in mind the Zone of Proximal Development when designing lessons for students.  It reminds me of a report that I recently learned about in MAP assessments.  There is a report that shows you what skills the student is ready for after they take the diagnostic assessment.  Starting where the student is ready, makes sense.  Then modeling, coaching and fading until it is mastered or understood.  The difference is that MAP is talking about a Standard of Learning Skill and Vygotsky is talking about an authentic activity within a culture.

Knowledge - The Third Design Principle revolves around the idea that any design we create has to be situated with authentic activity.  The concepts we discussed in our third class all revolve around learning through ordinary activity of our culture.  Situated Cognition is learning through situations in our society.  ABCS is Authentic Activities - the ordinary practices of a culture, Building Knowledge Activities - connecting the learned facts to meaning, Construction Activities - moving from knowledge to understanding involves performances of understanding, and Sharing Activities - allows for testing the understanding in a public arena. AeCTS is Authentic Problem - problem solving, decision making and learning activities embedded in an authentic problem, Clear Outcome - the end public product and the criteria, Process/Thinking Skills - talking about the thought process and sharing, and Software Skills - the tool used and scaffolding the activity.  

All of these concepts are being adopted in LCPS through our Vision 20/20.  The mission is to empower all students to make meaningful contributions to the world    The strategic goals are:

1. Develop knowledgeable critical thinkers, communicators, collaborators, creators, and contributors

2. Cultivate a high-performing team of professionals focused on our mission and goals

3. Deliver effective and efficient support for student success

The concepts we are learning in class speak to the first goal and are being taught and stressed throughout LCPS, as well.  The professional development I receive from my district and this class are helping me be part of the second goal.  The third goal is the hardest of all.  

Learning about how to educate 21st Century Learners inspires me and makes sense.  I want my students and my own children to make meaningful contributions in our world and have the skills to do so.  But my buy in is there.  Now, it’s up to me to do my part, deliver and implement these ideas.  Things have been done the same way for so long, that the change has been easy to start but slow in gaining momentum.  Educators are so busy meeting the expectations of the district and school administrators, the parents and most important of all, the students, that any kind of change is difficult.  Change means more time, energy and commitment.  It would be easy to ignore and maintain business as usual but my buy in is too strong.  Everyday, when I walk into my school building, I pick one thing I can do within that day to make progress toward the goals.  Yesterday, I had a planning meeting scheduled with my second grade team.  My goal walking in that day was to incorporate authentic activity into our planning session.  I wasn’t sure what ideas the team would come up with or if they even had anything but I was going to try.  By the end of the meeting, I coached them through and they came up with a plan to have their students create an informational presentation for the school and their parents about their field trip to the zoo.  Their field trip is in November and that gives us plenty of time to scaffold how to use Google slides as the tool.  We are still in the planning phase but the idea is there and it is an example of using the content as the means and not the end.  I’m excited to see how this goes for the teachers and especially for the students.

Second Design Principle - The Ends Principle

In Saber-Tooth Curriculum, New Fist was a doer and a thinker.  He came up with a curriculum to better the world around him for the people.  His educational goal / leading thought was, “If I could only get these children to do the things that will give more and better food, shelter, clothing and security”.  These were the things important to his society’s well being.  That is how he came up with fish catching, horse clubbing and tiger scaring.  These can be compared to our age old skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.  As the world changed and evolved the curriculum became obsolete but society was still preserving it because it was “magical”, our word for traditional.  For the students and society’s sake the curriculum was irrelevant.  

As we discussed this, Wednesday night, in class, so many points hit home.  The decline portrayed in Saber-Tooth Curriculum depicts failure to recognize societal changes, rejection of innovation, separation of teachers from teaching, replacement of education with policy, and giving students irrelevant work and boring them. If only New Fist stuck to his original educational goal, he could have come up with a new curriculum and the education would have stayed relevant.  I see all of these points ring true, to some degree, in the education system of today.  

The second design principle is the The Ends Principle.  Students need PICKLE to live to learn and learn to live.  PICKLE is problem solving, information using, community participation, knowledge, literacy, and ethical decision making.  This reminds me of the 21st century skills in education today; critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creation and contribution.  PICKLE cannot be abstract teaching but teaching in action with something or about something.  As educators burdened with SOLs, we can use PICKLE and the content (SOLs) as the means of getting to the end and not the end itself.  The 4th grade Burma Shave activity on Regions of VA was an example of students using PICKLE to create a presentation with the content they learned on the Regions.  

In LCPS, our Vision 2020 mission is empowering all students to make meaningful contributions to the world.  Our first strategic goal is to develop knowledgeable critical thinkers, communicators, collaborators, creators, and contributors.  As an IFT, my job is to facilitate this in the instruction at my school.  The first step this school year was to explicitly explain the first strategic goal to all of our students.  Then as the days go on and the lessons are learned, not only do we point out the content they learned but the 21st century skills the students used to acquire the knowledge.  I plan to explain PICKLE to my teachers to use as a tool to design lessons for students.  

First Design Principle - Teachers as Designers

This was my first class of many for the next 2 years.  There are 12 of us and one professor.  We are a motley crew of teachers from all levels of education and from many areas in the DMV.  We learned all of our names in about 15 minutes with an opening activity.  I was impressed with myself and instantly felt a bond with the group just by learning and knowing each members' names.

JCMDRSEJMAPCP  These are all of our first initials.  I'll try to make an acronym.

The topic of the night was the first design principle - teachers as designers.  I learned that design and planning are different.  When teachers design, they islolate a design problem and use principles, processes, patterns and tools to design an activity for students.  Planning is taking another's design and implementing the activity for students.  I always prided myself in being a good planner, finding someone else's activity to facilitate with my own students.  But I wasn't necessarily taking the individual needs of my students into consideration.  By planning, I might have been trying to put a square peg into a round hole, meaning the activity that I found might not have been a good fit for my cureent students.  Just because it worked well with some students, it doesn't mean it was a good fit for all.  Now, I will think about my students, their strengths and areas of need and try to design using a variety of processes and tools.  I feel like I have to change my whole mindset and think outside of the box.  It's problem solving on a teacher level to try to design problem solving for my students.

I left class having a lot to think about.  This world is so dynamic and global that I need to start thinking with the world.  Then apply that to design learning to prepare my students to the change that will happen.