Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s upbeat keynote was about the transformation of classroom to community. They talked about a ‘tectonic shift’ that’s underway as more and more people take up social networks to organise, communicate and collaborate.
They argued that we need to help learners to create, grow and navigate their own personal learning networks; to do this, we need to rethink our roles as educators, classrooms and schools.
By their definition, a healthy classroom is a healthy community. A critical characteristic of a healthy community is that it seeks improvement – it evolves, it develops shared norms, and it becomes a vehicle of systemic change. It’s also self-managing and self-governing; it meets and supports its member’s needs; members are innovators and co-creators.
To transform our classrooms, Sheryl and Will say that learning communities have to be a part of the way that teachers learn. Experience is necessary for good pedagogy.
Shifts in the nature of the relationship between teacher and student are important here, reminding me, at least in part, of ako: a teaching and learning relationship where the teacher is also learning from the student, and where the learner and whānau cannot be separated. The learning community values who students are and what they bring with them, and student, teacher and whānau share their knowledge and expertise.
The keynote was affirming of many of the ideas and conversations circulating in the New Zealand education community. Talking with conference attendees, I feel this year that there’s keenness – even some impatience – to dig a bit deeper into what these technologies mean for teaching practice and, ultimately, student outcomes.
So Will and Sheryl’s talk sparked some interesting questions for me:
- What strategies do we need to teach – explicitly, deliberately – to support learners to participate in learning communities?
- What opportunities exist to strengthen learners’ key competencies through their participation in learning communities?
- What opportunities exist to strengthen teachers’ key competencies through the same?
- How can a learner’s personal learning network contribute to their experience of personalised learning?
Hopefully the conference will build on these and more …
