Educ 203 Unit 1-C PDF

Educ 203 Building and Enhancing Literacy Skills Across the Curriculum UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION OF KEY CONCEPTS LESSON 2 (Week 2): FEATURES OF THE 21ST CENTURY TEACHING AND LEARNING INTRODUCTION: This lesson is designed to help future teachers to acquire and apply in their upcoming profession th...

Educ 203 Building and Enhancing Literacy Skills Across the Curriculum UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION OF KEY CONCEPTS LESSON 2 (Week 2): FEATURES OF THE 21ST CENTURY TEACHING AND LEARNING INTRODUCTION: This lesson is designed to help future teachers to acquire and apply in their upcoming profession the 21st century teaching and learning context. The 21st century teaching and learning emphasizes learning to learn together about the data filled world and prepare student teachers to connect in a new world where challenges of globalization, technology, migration, international rivalry, altering markets, and transnational environmental and political contests add a new urgency to develop the skills and knowledge students need for success in the 21st century setting. With the challenges that the world are facing nowadays it is imperative for the teachers and learners to be equipped with 21st century teaching and learning skills. With the onset of the 21st century, the whole world has witnessed an era of intense transformation in all aspects, whether it is in education, global trade and economy, technology or society. Thus, the 21st Century Skills are the skills that are required by an individual for holistic development so that he/she can contribute to the progress and development of the society. For students to learn 21st-century skills, educators will have to teach them in a rationalized approach as the most effective way to teach 21st-century skills. This lesson summarizes the nine science of learning telling how students learn the skills and how pedagogy can address their 21st century needs. V. OBJECTIVES: At the end of this lesson, students are expected to: 1. Enumerate the science of learning in the 21st century teaching and learning context; 2. Discuss the conduct of teaching 21st century skills; and 3. Create learning experiences and activities that address the 21st Century Skills of problem solving and creative thinking. ANALYSIS: The 21st century skills are more challenging to teach and learn and they are also more difficult to assess. Designing tests that measure lower-order thinking skills like memorization is straightforward in comparison to measuring skills like creativity, innovation, leadership, and teamwork. ABSTRACTION: This illustration helps you understand our lesson: Foster Make it students’ relevant creativity Make full use of Teach technology through the to support disciplines learning Promote Science of Learning in the 21st Simultaneously teamwork as a process Century Teaching and Learning develop lower and higher order and outcome Context thinking skills Address Encourage misunderst transfer of andings learning directly Teach students to learn how to learn The Science of Learning The science of learning can be extracted into nine points, all of which are about how students learn 21st century skills and how pedagogy can address new learning needs. Many of the lessons particularly transfer, metacognition, teamwork, technology, and creativity are also 21st century skills in themselves. Use them as points of advice that other education systems can apply. 1. Make it relevant Relevant learning means effective learning, and that alone should be enough to get us rethinking our lesson plans. The old drill and kill method is neurologically useless, as it turns out. Relevant, meaningful activities that both engage students emotionally and connect with what they already know are what help build neural connections and long-term memory storage. Relevance could be established through showing how theory can be applied in practice, establishing relevance to local cases, relating material to everyday applications, or finding applications in current newsworthy issues. To be effective, any curriculum must be relevant to students’ lives. Transmission and rote memorization of factual knowledge can make any subject matter seem irrelevant. Irrelevance leads to lack of motivation, which in turn leads to decreased learning. To make curriculum relevant, teachers need to begin with generative topics, ones that have an important place in the disciplinary or interdisciplinary study at hand and resonate with learners and teachers. Both teachers and students benefit from the use of generative topics and reinforcement of relevance. Teachers like this method because it allows for the freedom to teach creatively. Students like it because it makes learning feel more interesting and engaging, and they find that understanding is something they can use, rather than simply possess. 2. Teach through the disciplines Learning through disciplines entails learning not only the knowledge of the discipline but also the skills associated with the production of knowledge within the discipline. Through disciplinary curriculum and instruction students should learn why the discipline is important, how experts create new knowledge, and how they communicate about it. Continued learning in any discipline requires that the student or expert become deeply familiar with a knowledge base, know how to use that knowledge base, articulate a problem, creatively address the problem, and communicate findings in sophisticated ways. Therefore, mastering a discipline means using many 21st century skills. 3. Simultaneously develop lower and higher order thinking skills Lower-order exercises are fairly common in existing curricula, while higher- order thinking activities are much less common. Higher-level thinking tends to be difficult for students because it requires them not only to understand the relationship between different variables (lower-order thinking) but also how to apply or transfer that understanding to a new, uncharted context (higher-order thinking). Transfer tends to be very difficult for most people. However, applying new understandings to a new, uncharted context is also exactly what students need to do to successfully negotiate the demands of the 21st century. Higher-level thinking skills take time to develop, and teaching them generally requires a tradeoff of breadth for depth. What are Higher Order Thinking Skills? Bloom’s taxonomy revised (From Anderson, L. W. & Krathwohl, D.R., et al., 2001). 4. Encourage transfer of learning Students must apply the skills and knowledge they gain in one discipline to another. They must also apply what they learn in school to other areas of their lives. This application or transfer can be challenging for students and for adults as well. There are a number of specific ways that teachers can encourage low and high road transfer. To encourage low-road transfer, teachers can use methods like the following: Design learning experiences that are similar to situations where the students might need to apply the knowledge and skills. Set expectations, by telling students that they will need to structure their historical argument homework essay in the same way that they are practicing in class. Ask students to practice debating a topic privately in pairs before holding a large-scale debate in front of the class. Organize mock trials, mock congressional deliberations, or other role- playing exercises as a way for students to practice civic engagement. Talk through solving a particular mathematics problem so that students understand the thinking process they might apply to a similar problem. Practice finding and using historical evidence from a primary source and then ask students to do the same with a different primary source. The purpose of each of these activities is to develop students’ familiarity and comfort with a learning situation that is very similar to a new learning situation to which they will need to transfer their skills, concepts, etc. Teachers can use other methods to encourage high-road transfer. For example, teachers can ask students to: brainstorm about ways in which they might apply a particular skill, attitude, concept, etc. to another situation  generalize broad principles from a specific piece of information, such as a law of science or a political action make analogies between a topic and something different, like between ecosystems and financial markets study the same problem at home and at school, to practice drawing parallels between contextual similarities and differences Some education experts believe that training students to transfer their knowledge and skills to real problems contributed to their success. The importance of transfer brings us back to the fundamental rationale for learning 21st century skills in the first place so that students can transfer them to the economic, civic and global 21st century contexts that demand them. 5. Teach students to learn how to learn Learning to learn is the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organize one's own learning, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups. This competence includes awareness of one's learning process and needs, identifying available opportunities, and the ability to overcome obstacles in order to learn successfully. This competence means gaining, processing and assimilating new knowledge and skills as well as seeking and making use of guidance. Learning to learn engages learners to build on prior learning and life experiences in order to use and apply knowledge and skills in a variety of contexts: at home, at work, in education and training. Motivation and confidence are crucial to an individual's competence. There is a limit to the skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students can learn through formal schooling. Therefore, educating them for the 21st century requires teaching them how to learn on their own. To do so, students need to be aware of how they learn. Teachers can develop students’ metacognitive capacity by encouraging them to explicitly examine how they think. It is also important for students to develop positive mental models about how we learn, the limits of our learning, and indications of failure. Students benefit from believing that intelligence and capacity increase with effort (known as the “incremental” model of intelligence) and that mistakes and failures are opportunities for self-inquiry and growth rather than indictments of worth or ability. Learning to learn skills require firstly the acquisition of the fundamental basic skills such as literacy, numeracy and ICT skills that are necessary for further learning. Building on these skills, an individual should be able to access, gain, process and assimilate new knowledge and skills. This requires effective management of one's learning, career and work patterns, and, in particular, the ability to persevere with learning, to concentrate for extended periods and to reflect critically on the purposes and aims of learning. Individuals should be able to dedicate time to learning autonomously and with self-discipline, but also to work collaboratively as part of the learning process, draw the benefits from a heterogeneous group, and to share what they have learnt. Individuals should be able to organize their own learning, evaluate their own work, and to seek advice, information and support when appropriate. A positive attitude includes the motivation and confidence to pursue and succeed at learning throughout one's life. A problem-solving attitude supports both the learning process itself and an individual's ability to handle obstacles and change. The desire to apply prior learning and life experiences and the curiosity to look for opportunities to learn and apply learning in a variety of life contexts are essential elements of a positive attitude. (Key Competencies for Lifelong Learning, 2006) 6. Address misunderstandings directly Another well-documented science of learning theory is that learners have many misunderstandings about how the world really works, and they hold onto these misconceptions until they have the opportunity to build alternative explanations based on experience. To overcome misconceptions, learners of any age need to actively construct new understandings. There are several ways to counter misunderstandings, including teaching generative topics deeply, encouraging students to model concepts, and providing explicit instruction about misunderstandings. 7. Promote teamwork as a process and outcome Students learn better with peers. There are many ways in which teachers can design instruction to promote learning with others. Students can discuss concepts in pairs or groups and share what they understand with the rest of the class. They can develop arguments and debate them. They can role-play. They can divide up materials about a given topic and then teach others about their piece. Together, students and the teacher can use a studio format in which several students work through a given issue, talking through their thinking process while the others comment. 8. Make full use of technology to support learning Technology offers the potential to provide students with new ways to develop their problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills, transfer them to different contexts, reflect on their thinking and that of their peers, practice addressing their misunderstandings, and collaborate with peers all on topics relevant to their lives and using engaging tools. The technologies used in many modern classrooms allow teachers to move beyond the traditional textbook by using main sources, demonstrate abstract concepts in ways students can grasp, bring the miniscule world to the human eye, simulate processes that could not be otherwise demonstrated, bring people from distant places into the classroom, take students virtually to almost anywhere, allow students to collaborate with others in their class, in another state or another country. It gives teachers the opportunity to assist students who have the technology in their hands to reach out to the world to understand that with that unprecedented power comes responsibility. There are also many other examples of web-based forums through which students and their peers from around the world can interact, share, debate, and learn from each other. The nature of the Internet’s countless sources, many of which provide inconsistent information and contribute substantive source bias, provide students with the opportunity to learn to assess sources for their reliability and validity. It gives them an opportunity to practice filtering out information from unreliable sources and synthesizing information from legitimate ones. 9. Foster students’ creativity A common definition of creativity is “the cognitive ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.” Creativity is prized in the economic, civic, and global spheres because it sparks innovations that can create jobs, address challenges, and motivate social and individual progress. Like intelligence and learning capacity, creativity is not a fixed characteristic that people either have or do not have. Rather, it is incremental, such that students can learn to be more creative. In contrast to the common misconception that the way to develop creativity is through uncontrolled, let the kids run wild techniques or only through the arts creative development requires structure and intentionality from both teachers and students and can be learned through the disciplines. Creative instruction can be used to promote achievement across content areas, establish long-term learning (Woolfolk, 2007 as cited in Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010), encourage creative thinking and problem solving (Treffinger, 2008), and foster motivation and engagement. Creative thinking lessons build on critical thinking and go beyond simple recall to consider "what if" possibilities and incorporate real-life problem solving; they require students to use both divergent and convergent thinking. As Robinson has noted, "Creativity is not only about generating ideas; it involves making judgments about them. The creative process includes elaborating on the initial ideas, testing and refining them and even rejecting them" (2011, Chapter 6). In a classroom that promotes creativity, students are grouped for specific purposes, rather than randomly, and are offered controlled product choices that make sense in the content area. Creative lesson components are not just feel- good activities. They are activities that directly address critical content, target specific standards, and require thoughtful products that allow students to show what they know. In the creative classroom, teachers encourage students to become independent learners by using strategies such as the gradual release of responsibility model (Fisher & Frey, 2008). Creativity is not just for low-performing schools; using creative strategies and techniques helps all students think deeply and improve achievement. Creativity is not only for disengaged learners; it is motivating for all learners. Creativity is not just for students in the arts; it is for students in all classrooms in all content areas. Creativity is not just for high-achieving students; it supports struggling students and those with special needs as well. Creative thinking is not just for those students who are good at creative thinking; it is for all students. Promoting creativity in the classroom is not just for some teachers but for all teachers. Other relative essential components for effective teaching and learning Although learning is a complex process, in its most basic form, there are some processes that must take place in order for learning to occur. The learner must be attentive, must be able to connect the information to prior knowledge and understanding, and finally, the learner must draw appropriate conclusions. Attention: Attention is the fundamental building block for how individuals think, how teachers create plans and teach each other to apply them, how groups socialize, and how students transform their lives. Learning occurs when students pay attention in the discussion, focusing in the subject matters that make the learning broad-gauge.  The first thing an instructor must do is to gain the attention of the learner. This is not a joke or a shout at the beginning of class, this is the need for the learner to see relevance and meaning in learning the information being presented. This relevance and meaning must go beyond taking and passing the course for degree completion. The learner must be able to personally connect course content in meaningful and relevant ways. The instructor must be able to convince students that the effort they put forth in learning the course material will be worthwhile. Often, topics can be approached by presenting a real-life scenario or problem for which the information can be utilized to solve the problem. Processing Information: Just because learners must process new information repeatedly, in a variety of ways, before they can master it, instruction should include a mixture of written words, visuals, audio, manipulative, action, and practice with the content that students are expected to master. It is best to focus the instruction on a few major concepts that are learned deeply rather than teaching many concepts superficially. All learners will compare new information with previous experiences and knowledge. Effective instructors will incorporate this into learning activities by giving the students an opportunity to reflect, compare, and question the new information. Small group discussions are effective for giving learners the opportunity to draw from past experience and knowledge and to make links to the new information being presented. Conclusions and Understanding: All learners have their own unique perspective and experiences, and this affects what knowledge they are able to retain and use. The instructor’s role is to move learners through the new material in an orderly and organized manner, giving them classroom opportunities to practice new skills and to draw their own conclusions. Learners experiment with and/or test new information before deciding if it is useful to them enough to make the effort to learn it. When instructors develop learning activities that encourage students to experiment and use information to draw their own conclusions, students see the relevance in learning the material.