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Showing posts from September, 2019

Week 3: September 23rd

What does it mean to be a 'good' student according to the commonsense? It is suggested by Kumashiro that a good student follows the ideal 'good', listening, playing, creating as the teacher outlines is acceptable. This can change from each teachers expectation but he gives examples of student who did not follow his, such as, M. Which students are privileged by this definition of the good student? Students who follow direction well, and do not question authority or subject matter. These are 'good students', not students who learn 'differently' that traditional education. There are many factors as to why students may not 'sit and behave' in the traditional sense, could be as simple as they are not getting fed a proper breakfast. Therefor only a small group of people are privileged 'good students' by this understanding of a 'good student'. What is made impossible to see/understand/believe because of these commonsense

Week One

The problem of common sense (Introduction; Kumashiro. (2009). Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice, pp. XXIX – XLI). Kumashiro in this article find himself questioning how oppressive common sense in school can be. He talks in this article about how the American system was deemed as a higher level of education to the one he worked in, in Nepal. His job there was to help Americanize their learning. At one point he talks about how the Peace Corps he worked for was about teaching them how to be more like 'us' as he refers to Americans and their system. This is completing degrading to their way and what they value he found out. But there is a lack of challenging the common sense as to why we teach this and 'this way' and not this Kumashiro experienced. Also, challenging student and teachers to think about that was very difficult as it was almost engrained. By doing this Kumashiro questioned it himself, and how it is in America, and how d

Week 2: September 16/18

Criteria for assignment #1: Outdoor Education and School Curriculum When I first heard about outside school and part-time outside schools, i'll be honest with you I was very hesitant to be on board. While examining this process through the article by Quay, j. (2016), it really gave me a new perspective and here I stand now defending that outside education absolutely needs to be a subject and is very important to all subject matters and is a key component in subjects and also of self. Some may argue that outdoor education is an alternative but throughout the assignment I will be doing I plan to argue that outdoor education is a subject and key part of other subject. Quay put forward that outdoor education " introduces the idea that education involves more than just curriculum and pedagogy, for it is ontological, about being, about who we are in the world, about who we have been and can be.  We need to see this deeper layer of ways of being, for it is in a living, experient

September 9th

Smith, M. K. (1996, 2000) ‘Curriculum theory and practice’ the encyclopaedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm. Curriculum theory and practice 1. Curriculum as a body of knowledge to be transmitted. This is practices as lectures with a strict syllabus. The classes lead most often lead up to an examination. In summary this is where an instructor transmits information to students by lectures. I would argue that this is the most 'typical' way we think of education. It is a teach standing at the front of the class usually at a chalk board or white board lecturing the class maybe with some notes on the wall and the students take notes as the information is 'transmitted' to them. A very efficient way cover a lot of material but it not as useful for students to put the material to use. Students are mainly learning the information for exams and not consciously exploring or applying it to real life. 2. Curriculum as an attemp