In search of excellence...

Still on that journey, huh? Anyway, I didn't (don't?) want this blog to be anything other than a look at evidence gathering in the "new" curriculum. However there are issues impacting on us as teachers which, I think, will directly affect how the curriculum is delivered.

If one of the key notions of ACfE is the integration of different curricular areas in order to enliven and enrich the experience for learners (it is a key notion, right?) then it strikes me as fairly obvious that the approach teachers take to both introducing and teaching subjects - and/or teaching across the curriculum - will be central to the way in which that information (or that "experience") is interpreted and subsequently utilised by the pupils.

Phew. Long winded way of saying something I said before. Ho hum.

Back to the point: basically I agree with and endorse - not that he needs it - the ideas of Richard Bailey with regards to the notion of learning as problem solving. It strikes me now, having been both teacher and, in a previous life, sports coach that if you have no need for the learning experience then you're going to take very little from it. In other words, if there is no "problem" to be solved then why are you learning decontextualised solutions?

Professor Bailey put this into context with the simple analogy of a traditional basketball drill: the chest pass. Two rows of participants, firing off passes to a partner with the possible reward of a game at the end. Loads of perfect chest passes result. Along comes the game. The ball rarely makes its target. "Stop, stop, stop!" exhorts the bewildered coach. "Why aren't you passing like I showed you?" "Oh," say the players, "So that's why we were doing it..."

I've heard him speak before and one of his books is the core text on the PE course but it doesn't stop the cringe inducing feeling of "whoops - think I've done that in class" every time he makes this sort of analogy. The key question, though, as a reflective practitioner must be "how can I use this notion in class?" I've found the answer lies in keeping things simple. I ask myself a question when planning an activity, a lesson or a topic: what use will doing this activity/practice/scenario be to the children. If an answer's not immediately forthcoming which doesn't involve contrivance on a massive scale then I think of another activity/practice or scenario which will be.

Reading that back I realise I've made that sound like a lot of work for myself - and anyone else adopting such an approach. But it isn't really, and its value can't be overstated. Time is so precious, I think it pays to ask oneself, "Am I wasting mine and that of my pupils by doing this?"

Interesting "what's this learning malarkey all about?" type link.