AiFL

Hmm. I've blogged about this before but having Twittered (Tweeted?) about it on Friday at the AiFL day in Inverness I thought I'd say some more.

For a curriculum which purports to be heading towards Active Learning and for an initiative (AiFL) which puts itself firmly at the heart ("embedded" being the current buzz word) of said curriculum, how is it still possible for a roomful of teachers to be talked at rather than interacted with?

I don't wish to appear rude or disrespectful towards a man who's clearly a respected authority on such matters, but it does strike me as odd that something which appears to be so firmly at the core of AiFL (namely "meaningful dialogue") is not firmly at the core of presentations on the subject.

Perhaps the very nature of presenting to a large group is unsuited to engaging in dialogue but surely we could use the formative assessment-based models of "think-pair-share" to discuss ideas and engage with the concepts? Could meaningful links be better made between theory and practice if we attempted to learn by doing?

How can we expect our learners in the classroom to be motivated by this area if we ourselves are turned off by the way in which it's presented? Or perhaps it's a clever and cunning ruse to make us examine our practice closely and to say "now, I reckon an active approach would be better here, think I'll try it back in class..."

Or am I being too hopeful?

Lousie Hayward made a lot of sense though. Which was nice. I can now use the phrase "systemic compatibility" and know what it means AND know that it's a useful concept.

Edit: Here's the stuff I was after about practicing what is preached...Doug Dickinson (see 9th March entry) and Will Richardson.