There are multiple pedagogical approaches and to each approach at least one method and at least one technique. The following approach is centered in collaborative learning. The definition of education, itself, is changed. The purpose shifts from the accumulation of knowledge, to the investigation and creation of meaning, surrounded by a sense of community and participation:
"Traditional pedagogical patterns have fixed goals and comparatively fixed routines. CSCL demands and enables shift the focus of education from learning as knowledge acquisition to learning as building shared meaning, enculturation into social practices and participation in valued activities situated within a community of practice" (Wen et. al., p 138).
Indeed, this sounds very nice. A community of learners participating in a variety of goals, learning to work together, playing roles that will be played again in the future, thinking creatively. I have two criticisms of this. First is the fact that it orbits around technological products in the classroom. This makes it a less viable alternative for failing schools. Second it is important to raise the limitations of such a classroom. Without technological tools to measure or assess the students, there is no quantifiable measure for student performance. Further, students who are not kinesthetic learners, who are shy, who have difficultly socializing, may not benefit from such a curriculum. Nonetheless, the philosophy of the approach yields much to the attentive reader. While not all classes are engaged in collaborative learning at all times, they can
involve such projects throughout the semester, even when technological tools are not available.
The approach to education defined above comes from an article on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The title of the article is "Supporting Teachers in Designing CSCL Activities: A Case Study of Principle-based Pedagogical Patterns in Networked Second Language Classrooms". The authors write from an increasing popular socio-cultural framework that emphasize the human relationship to the socio-cultural context, or environment.
Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Improvement (RCKI) are the principles upon which their philosophy is based. The idea is to use technology as a tool for knowledge construction by creating collaborative projects that use technologies. Certainly, in the socio-cultural sense, technology is relevant as technologies are a major feature in our lives. Technology is very much a part of our culture. Using technology as a medium for learning is, perhaps, an important skill students need to develop for the future. It seems to me this perspective is very future oriented, very forward thinking.
"The major reason might be that the field of language learning has long been dominated by the traditional cognitive perspective in which individual internalization of mental processes and the development of grammatical competence (Firth & Wagner, 2007) are too much emphasized. It runs counter to sociocultural perspectives underpinning CSCL studies. Collaborative learning has long been widely used in language learning, whereas the existing collaborative learning studies on language learning focus too much on language itself, but without sufficient consideration of its function as a tool for collective thinking for the pursuit of joint intellectual activity" (Wen et. al., p 139).
This method sets grammar as a secondary feature of instruction -- something that emerges from the dialog requisite for the project. Though this may work as a learning methodology and though the techniques may yield favorable results, I wonder if the technological tools are necessary. It could be novelty that affects outcomes, but I imagine that the true value in such a curriculum would be to prepare students for a future in which they will have to use technology to create, communicate and participate in society.
RCKI principles are as follows:
1) Spontaneous Participation: applied to responses in the form of "posts" and deals with the students liberty to ask questions and make comments. This seems as much a software feature as it is a principle. Implied in this is that the students' posts are seen by all and so they should monitor what they say. This is true of classrooms as well.
2) Multi-modal expression: deals with permitting the student to respond in the manner of his or her choice. If the student is capable of formulating a sentence, he or she may write or speak their response. Others less advances can write or draw their response.
3) Volunteerism: A task is divided into several sub-tasks. The idea is that there is something to do for everyone. If one prefers to write, he can write, if another prefers another task, he will perform that task, and so on. This is designed to promote participation from all members of the group.
4) Democratizing knowledge: can be distilled down to "do not let a few participants dominate a project". Everyone can contribute whatever it is they have to contribute. This can also occur without technology and promoting everyone's involvement should always be encouraged in the classroom.
5) Epistemic Agency: unclear.
6) Idea Diversity: rather than merely focusing on language acquisition, focus also on creative capacity.
7) Improvable Ideas: using language not only for the sake of proper speech, but to elaborate on ideas.
8) High Order Thinking: let students use collaboration to express high order thoughts.
9) Symmetric Knowledge Advancement: interaction among groups.
Notice that many of these principles are intuitive and not specific to the context promoted in the article (technology).
References:
Wen, Y., Looi, C.-K., & Chen, W. (2012). Supporting Teachers in Designing CSCL Activities: A Case Study of Principle-based
Pedagogical Patterns in Networked Second Language Classrooms. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (2), 138–153.
"Traditional pedagogical patterns have fixed goals and comparatively fixed routines. CSCL demands and enables shift the focus of education from learning as knowledge acquisition to learning as building shared meaning, enculturation into social practices and participation in valued activities situated within a community of practice" (Wen et. al., p 138).
Indeed, this sounds very nice. A community of learners participating in a variety of goals, learning to work together, playing roles that will be played again in the future, thinking creatively. I have two criticisms of this. First is the fact that it orbits around technological products in the classroom. This makes it a less viable alternative for failing schools. Second it is important to raise the limitations of such a classroom. Without technological tools to measure or assess the students, there is no quantifiable measure for student performance. Further, students who are not kinesthetic learners, who are shy, who have difficultly socializing, may not benefit from such a curriculum. Nonetheless, the philosophy of the approach yields much to the attentive reader. While not all classes are engaged in collaborative learning at all times, they can
involve such projects throughout the semester, even when technological tools are not available.
The approach to education defined above comes from an article on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The title of the article is "Supporting Teachers in Designing CSCL Activities: A Case Study of Principle-based Pedagogical Patterns in Networked Second Language Classrooms". The authors write from an increasing popular socio-cultural framework that emphasize the human relationship to the socio-cultural context, or environment.
Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Improvement (RCKI) are the principles upon which their philosophy is based. The idea is to use technology as a tool for knowledge construction by creating collaborative projects that use technologies. Certainly, in the socio-cultural sense, technology is relevant as technologies are a major feature in our lives. Technology is very much a part of our culture. Using technology as a medium for learning is, perhaps, an important skill students need to develop for the future. It seems to me this perspective is very future oriented, very forward thinking.
"The major reason might be that the field of language learning has long been dominated by the traditional cognitive perspective in which individual internalization of mental processes and the development of grammatical competence (Firth & Wagner, 2007) are too much emphasized. It runs counter to sociocultural perspectives underpinning CSCL studies. Collaborative learning has long been widely used in language learning, whereas the existing collaborative learning studies on language learning focus too much on language itself, but without sufficient consideration of its function as a tool for collective thinking for the pursuit of joint intellectual activity" (Wen et. al., p 139).
This method sets grammar as a secondary feature of instruction -- something that emerges from the dialog requisite for the project. Though this may work as a learning methodology and though the techniques may yield favorable results, I wonder if the technological tools are necessary. It could be novelty that affects outcomes, but I imagine that the true value in such a curriculum would be to prepare students for a future in which they will have to use technology to create, communicate and participate in society.
RCKI principles are as follows:
1) Spontaneous Participation: applied to responses in the form of "posts" and deals with the students liberty to ask questions and make comments. This seems as much a software feature as it is a principle. Implied in this is that the students' posts are seen by all and so they should monitor what they say. This is true of classrooms as well.
2) Multi-modal expression: deals with permitting the student to respond in the manner of his or her choice. If the student is capable of formulating a sentence, he or she may write or speak their response. Others less advances can write or draw their response.
3) Volunteerism: A task is divided into several sub-tasks. The idea is that there is something to do for everyone. If one prefers to write, he can write, if another prefers another task, he will perform that task, and so on. This is designed to promote participation from all members of the group.
4) Democratizing knowledge: can be distilled down to "do not let a few participants dominate a project". Everyone can contribute whatever it is they have to contribute. This can also occur without technology and promoting everyone's involvement should always be encouraged in the classroom.
5) Epistemic Agency: unclear.
6) Idea Diversity: rather than merely focusing on language acquisition, focus also on creative capacity.
7) Improvable Ideas: using language not only for the sake of proper speech, but to elaborate on ideas.
8) High Order Thinking: let students use collaboration to express high order thoughts.
9) Symmetric Knowledge Advancement: interaction among groups.
Notice that many of these principles are intuitive and not specific to the context promoted in the article (technology).
References:
Wen, Y., Looi, C.-K., & Chen, W. (2012). Supporting Teachers in Designing CSCL Activities: A Case Study of Principle-based
Pedagogical Patterns in Networked Second Language Classrooms. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (2), 138–153.
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