re-think, re-frame

Garfield Gini-Newman, professor @ OISE, started us off this morning with a context: An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.

Going on to quote George Bernard Shaw with ‘What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. ‘, Garfield spoke of four fronts of reforming education.

1. Re-think learning targets: What are we measuring?
2. Put inquiry at the heart of learning : Do we start learning journeys (study units) with inquiry? We use backwards design to plan, but do we inform the students of where the strand is going? Do we make the vision and destination transparent to the students?
3. Re-frame teacher-student relationships: How do we create the climate where all stakeholders contribute to the learning?
4. Assess for thinking: We need to engage students in thinking, deeply, in all that they do. We want to assess for thinking. We need to give them tools for thinking.