Module 4: Journal on the Foundations and Principles in My Context of Practice

Assuming a plethora of teacher learning communities was available in my own geographical area, I ambitiously set off to find the perfect fit – a primary, child-centered, social recontructionist, active learning community in my local school district. After a few days of exploration, however, I soon realized that I would have to broaden my search. There were some communities in Canada that were applicable and available for a cost or annual membership (in which I was not interested), but I ended up settling on Edutopia.

GEORGE LUCAS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

Edutopia

I gained access to this site be providing my email and I am able to contribute to discussions and add my own to the community of learners. This site is part of the George Lucas Educational Foundation in the United States, and many of its articles are quite inspirational and have already given me many ideas on how to organize and facilitate learning in my own classroom. For example, I just viewed a video on "Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk" which argued that often we tend to focus on reading and writing in our Language Arts curriculum, and we diminish the importance of oral skills. I was also challenged and inspired by articles on differentiation for children with special needs and one on the effects of PBL for students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. This site has many real-world examples of how educational practices are helping children to learn and become contributors in our global community.

By discussing curricular concepts, educational philosophies, and curricular designs in a blog/discussion format I hope to stimulate some dialogue around how planning, instruction, and assessment is carried out in this learning community. I would love to learn what is working for teachers and practical ways of embedding our philosophical foundations into our teaching practice. From my understanding after researching this site, Edutopia's participants are educators with a passion to drive student learning. It is "dedicated to transforming the learning process through core strategies" which include: comprehensive assessment, integrated studies, project-based learning, social and emotional learning, teacher development, and technological integration (https://www.edutopia.org/community). As such, Edutopia seems to take a pragmatic, reconstructivist educational philosophy with a learner-centered, social-reconstructionist curricular design approach. After my initial post on curricular concepts, philosophical foundations, and curricular design approaches, it will be interesting to see if the response of participants aligns with my speculation.

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