Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

#44 of 60: Too much learning in school is disembodied from context. What if we changed that? 🤔

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Two days ago the idea of using autonomy, mastery and purpose as lenses to design learning environments. 

Let’s dig a little deeper into the why and what if…

In his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman reminds us that dopamine plays a critical role in learning motivation. “Dopamine has activating effects on cognition and behavior, pulling us to engage in the world and with ideas.” This ancient molecule acts as an incentive to drive our attention toward areas of personal interest.

It’s the context of learning, then, that releases dopamine and drives attention and engagement.

What if we shifted our roles as teachers from content disseminators to learning experience designers? What if, in addition to content knowledge, the skill of designing personalized, relevant and contextualized learning environments was highly valued in the teaching profession? Better yet, what if teachers and learners were co-designers of learning experiences that released dopamine and motivation to learn?

This would require us to flip the paradigm of teaching and learning. Instead of starting with content of a dry curriculum, we would need to start with the curiosities and interests of each individual learner. 

The art of teaching would be to co-create with learners the experiences by which to build competencies to be valued across the life span–learning experiences characterized by personalization (responsive to learner interests and curiosities), contextualized (embedded into a context relevant to the learner—What does this mean?) and relevant (meaningful in the world of the learner–challenges, aspirations and interests).

Co-design personalized, relevant and contextualized learning experiences–learning contexts–and the dopamine release will be unstoppable. Learning will no longer be disembodied, but will fuel curiosity to keep learning. What better assessment of learning than when the individual is motivated to keep learning beyond the initially designed experience!

But first we have to change the DNA of our mindsets around education—teaching and learning. Get rid of our traditional notion of curriculum—much of which is not personalized, relevant or contextualized.

What could replace our traditional standards-based curriculum? Something to shift the current disembodied context of school into a dopamine-driven learning fest. 

—–

âť“ Provocations:

There are two ideas today: Shift our paradigm of teaching; shift our paradigm of curriculum. What are the barriers to such a shift? If we get rid of the traditional notion of curriculum…the stuff that is disembodied from the learner…do we replace it with anything?

đź’Ž Resource:

What science knows about learning with passion – video

🧠 Mindsets:

Role of the teacher

đź’ˇ Areas:

Learning

📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. 🔥🔥🔥

Randy Ziegenfuss
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