Ok, this is kind of late, and I have two days' worth of materials to reflect on...
I joined the class as Dr. Quek was introducing the key terminologies in Classroom Learning Environments and they are namely:
While reading Fraser's reading on Science Learning Environments: Assessment, Effects and Determinants, I also learnt that in addition to alpha press and beta press introduced by Murray, Stern actually extended the notion of beta press by making a distinction between private beta press and consensual beta press.
This was also my first introduction to the founding fathers of the realm of Learning Environments, having been exposed to the works of Fraser, Walberg, Moos, Lewin and Murray, and some of the instruments they developed to assess the learning environments.
Walberg - Learning Environment Inventory (LEI), Harvard Project Physics
Moos - Classroom Environment Scale (CES), Theoretical Framework - The 3 Dimensions of Learning Environments,
Murray - Needs-Press Model
Lewin - Field Theory, B=f(P,E)
What truly amazed me was the amount of details captured by Murray's seemingly simple model. If my classmate has not pointed out, I may not even have noticed that the connecting arrows were different and meant different things! And this model was developed 70 years ago!
Dr. Quek then briefly touched on the demands of the design of the learning environment to meet the goals of education in the 21st century, following which she shared the four different perspectives on learning environments as defined by Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000) and instructed each group to read Chapter 6 of the book How People Learn and summarise one perspective each. My group was tasked to work on community-centred learning environment and here are my take-aways:
- The degree to which environments are community-centred is getting incresingly important and related to the learning that takes place in them.
- The community includes several aspects of the community, namely the classroom, school, degree to which students, teachers and administrators feel connected to the larger community of homes, businesses, states, the nation and even the world.
Positive aspects
Furtheremore, this way of collaborative learning also allowed me to learn a lot more about the other three perspectives from the other groups. Certainly more efficient and easier to digest!
We were tasked to do up a wetpaint page on one of the following and share with the class the following lesson:
There's just the little problem of trying to digest the huge stack of readings as well as the four books that I have borrowed from the library.
Will report back soon, I hope!
I joined the class as Dr. Quek was introducing the key terminologies in Classroom Learning Environments and they are namely:
- School climate
- School culture
- Perception
- Learning environment
- School learning environment
- Classroom learning environment
While reading Fraser's reading on Science Learning Environments: Assessment, Effects and Determinants, I also learnt that in addition to alpha press and beta press introduced by Murray, Stern actually extended the notion of beta press by making a distinction between private beta press and consensual beta press.
This was also my first introduction to the founding fathers of the realm of Learning Environments, having been exposed to the works of Fraser, Walberg, Moos, Lewin and Murray, and some of the instruments they developed to assess the learning environments.
Walberg - Learning Environment Inventory (LEI), Harvard Project Physics
Moos - Classroom Environment Scale (CES), Theoretical Framework - The 3 Dimensions of Learning Environments,
Murray - Needs-Press Model
Lewin - Field Theory, B=f(P,E)
What truly amazed me was the amount of details captured by Murray's seemingly simple model. If my classmate has not pointed out, I may not even have noticed that the connecting arrows were different and meant different things! And this model was developed 70 years ago!
Dr. Quek then briefly touched on the demands of the design of the learning environment to meet the goals of education in the 21st century, following which she shared the four different perspectives on learning environments as defined by Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000) and instructed each group to read Chapter 6 of the book How People Learn and summarise one perspective each. My group was tasked to work on community-centred learning environment and here are my take-aways:
- The degree to which environments are community-centred is getting incresingly important and related to the learning that takes place in them.
- The community includes several aspects of the community, namely the classroom, school, degree to which students, teachers and administrators feel connected to the larger community of homes, businesses, states, the nation and even the world.
Positive aspects
- Norms for people learning from one another
- People continually attempting to improve
- Social norms that value the search for understanding
- An environment that allows students the freedom to make mistakes in order to learn (Brown & Campoine, 1994; Cobb et al., 1992)
- Emphasis on community (strongly affected by the adults who work in that environment) (Brown, 1988)
- Different set of expectations for different students (MacCorquodale, 1988)
- Cultural expectations (Schofield et al., 1990)
- Classroom norms which may encourage modes of participation that may be unfamiliar tp or awkward for some students (Rogolf et al., 1993)
- Grading practices like the public display of a "high achiever" bulletion board (Deyhle & Margonis, 1995)
- Competition among students for teacher attention, approval and grades
- Individual competition at odds with a community ethic of individuals contributing their strengths to the community (Suina & Smolkin, 1994)
Furtheremore, this way of collaborative learning also allowed me to learn a lot more about the other three perspectives from the other groups. Certainly more efficient and easier to digest!
We were tasked to do up a wetpaint page on one of the following and share with the class the following lesson:
- Kurt Lewin's Field Theory - 1936 (Group 3)
- Henry Murray's Need- Press Theory - 1938
- Rudolf Moos' theoretical framework - 3 dimensions of human evnrionments (Group 1)
- Walberg's involvement in the Harvard Project Physics (HPP) - 1960s( Group 4)
- Barry Fraser -80s’
- Darrell Fisher-80s’
- Theo Wubbels-90s (Group 2)
There's just the little problem of trying to digest the huge stack of readings as well as the four books that I have borrowed from the library.
Will report back soon, I hope!
1 comment:
picture> assuming the role of a student - doodling, i mean taking notes in class. :)
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