With the ISP MEd. program, I am revisiting the Reflective Practitioner course. It takes me back to the first time teaching it - also in the Spring term. That time I had assigned a culminating task that involved action research. Everyone had a question that they were asking in their own setting and they had to follow through on the question with action research. But by midterm there seemed to be no end in sight. The action research projects seemed to be "on hold" at best - or downright failures in the worst case scenarios. These students were anxious - too anxious it seemed to do reflective work. I got a horrible rash all down my legs that indicated how anxious I was... what if no one's research actually turned out? We worked through to the end, despite the ominous possibility of failure. And somehow - just before the last class - all the pieces came together for everyone. It was like a miracle. It was a perspective transformation.
What did I learn? That some anxiety is good. Those student produced work beyond anything that they had done before. They were thrilled with their products, even though the process had been so painful. Why? It seemed the projects were so successful was because there was a certain amount of ambiguity in the assignment. John Dewey (1910) said that you could not really learn anything new without uncertainty.
But how much uncertainty is too much? Consider Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory . We need the proper balance of both comfort and challenge with a task. Then we can be in flow, be in the moment, and presumably do our best work. The path with heart. Follow your bliss (Note this may not be a reliable site !).
But, I was violating this comfort/challenge rule as learners were tossed into the unknown without a life jacket to help them stay afloat.
Now I am asking the ISPs to take a similar journey. They are to write a collaborative paper on google.docs with digital links in it. They will need to navigate the technology. At the same time I want them to co-construct the vision of 21st Century schools in China. There will be many demons and dragons...and they will need to slay the dragon in order to complete the task.
What should schooling look like? I like Edutopia as a site where we can see what works in education. There are articles and UTubes available. I also like project-based learning as described by the Buck Institute. You can go and look at schools such as High Tech High. Here you can see an innovative 21st Century School in action. Check out the student portfolios to see a Rich Culminating Assessment Task. And if you look at Calgary Science School, you can see a whole school program that exemplifies 21st Century learning.
I hope this blog gives you a sense of how to connect your experiences with "theory" that is derived from digital forms of text. This is the type of thing that I expect your group to do as you collaboratively form a vision of education. The only problem may be that my links don't work consistently as I used 2 different methods to link. And the only way that I can think to find out is to publish the blog. Here's hoping. Be warned that this way of knowing involves playing, exploring, and experimenting until you find what works. Good luck.
