I like reading the blog titled Authentic Learning. This term is mainly associated with the gentlemen that talked about 'communities of practice' and John Seely Brown who focusses a bit more on the issue of assessments that demonstrate authentic learning.
Who cares?
Or rather who should care?
Clearly I do, since I'm writing about it. The link between what I blogged about before ('Backwards Design') is highly relevant and one of the major approaches that we use at the Multiple Intelligence Centre in utilising the multiple intelligence theory in our teaching & learning.
With regard to backwards design, the process starts by stating what the actual 'end goal' of one's education is supposed to be. Now very few people would argue that the 'end goal' is to be able to successfully do relatively abstract tasks that are only ever encountered in the classroom - even if that is for the most part the reality of our educational practices of the last century or so. When asked, of course most people would say that teaching should prepare the students for 'real life'. That is the end goal, even if it appears as if many times one has to go through rather abstract routes to get there. Bords backwards design is for this reason, naturally married with 'authentic learning'.
At the Multiple Intelligence Centre we follow an approach that suggests that multiple intelligence theory is really the scaffolding that allows us to ask questions about what is the relevant pedagogy or curriculum to use with our individual children. These have been presented in five 'pathways'. One of which is when we talk about 'authentic learning'. I'd like to write in this blog about how that is effected at the school through an example.
One of our teachers of class 5, has made media the central theme of this year's teaching. Shortly as part of her end of year activities to try and summarise the learning for the year, she will ask the class to produce and publish the school's newspaper. On a Friday night, the children will gather at 5pm at school which will have had it's classrooms repurposed as 'editing room' and 'mark up' room as well as 'art department'. The deadline is for 9am on the following Saturday morning. They need to do enough that night and the following morning to be able to send the finished copies to the printers (which is going to be us in electronic form). The children are not expected to do every task, instead they have to work as a team, playing to their strengths and using the team members effectively to support their weaknesses.
In fact just as we do in real life when we work with somebody other than ourselves.