What happens if students are asked to learn Geography content, specifically Population, through SOLE?
Keywords:
SOLE, self organised learning, Educational alternatives, progressive education, alternative education, difference, educational theory, educational philosophy, home education, education policyAbstract
Is the role of a teacher in the results driven education business of schools a didactic provider of information, imparting knowledge, examples and subject techniques to pupils? Or is there still a greater need for the development of a new pedagogy, one in which teachers take a metaphorical back seat to facilitate self-led learning, where students take ownership through effective collaboration and enquiry? This paper describes an action research cycle undertaken to explore the potential of a Self-Organised Learning Environment (SOLE) to increase engagement and learning in a low achievement cohort of Year 8 pupils in a secondary school in England. We describe the strengths and limitations of SOLE in our context and recognise significant improvements in learning generated by effective peer support from Sixth Form mediators. Based on our observations we recommend that scaffolding (Wood et al. 1976) is introduced to support students as they develop the metacognitive ability to participate in a SOLE effectively. This paper draws the tentative conclusion that SOLE may be described as an evolving pedagogy, where students develop a deeper knowledge of subject content through access to a wide range of sophisticated geographical content. We believe that it is necessary for school leaders to adopt a longitudinal approach to self-organised learning in order to afford students the time needed to adapt to the SOLE ethos and thus to embrace ‘learning at the edge of chaos’ (Mitra 2014b).
References
Atkins, L. & Wallace, S., 2012. Qualitative Research in Education, London: Sage Publications.
Baumfield, V., Hall, E. & Wall, K., 2013. Action Research in Education 2nd ed., London: Sage Publications.
BERA, 2011. Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research. Available at: https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2011.
Bernstein, B., 1975. Class and Pedagogies: Visible and Invisible∗. Educational Studies, 1(1), pp.23–41.
Bloom, B.S., 1956. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain, Available at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0582280109.
Dolan, P. et al., 2013. Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in an English School: an example of transformative pedagogy? Online Education Research Journal. Available at: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/15077/1/SOLEs_-_Transformative_Pedagogy.pdf.
Efrat-Efron, S. & Ravid, R., 2013. Action Research in Education: A Practical Guide, London: The Guildford Press.
Ford, D.P. & Staples, S., 2010. Are full and partial knowledge sharing the same? Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(3), pp.394–409.
Gornall, S., Chambers, M. & Claxton G. L, 2005. Building Learning Power in Action, Bristol: TLO Ltd.
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. & Nixon, R., 2014. The Action Research Planner: Doing Critical Participatory Action Research, London: Springer.
Mitra, S., 2014a. SOLE Toolkit. Available at: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/school-in-the-cloud-production-assets/toolkit/SOLE_Toolkit_Web_2.6.pdf [Accessed September 16, 2014].
Mitra, S., 2013. Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud [Accessed April 1, 2014].
Mitra, S., 2014b. The future of schooling: Children and learning at the edge of chaos. Prospects, 44(4), pp.547–558.
Mitra, S., 2006. The hole in the wall: self-organising systems in education, New Delhi & New York: Tata-McGraw-Hill Publishing.
Mitra, S. & Crawley, E., 2014. Effectiveness of Self-Organised Learning by Children: Gateshead Experiments. Journal of Education and Human Development, 3(3), pp.79–88.
Mitra, S. & Dangwal, R., 2010. Limits to self-organising systems of learning - The Kalikuppam experiment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41, pp.672–688.
Molenaar, I., Van Boxtel, C.A.M. & Sleegers, P.J.C., 2010. The effects of scaffolding metacognitive activities in small groups. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), pp.1727–1738.
Paradowski, M.B., 2015. Holes in SOLEs: Re-examining the role of EdTech and “minimially invasive education†in language learning. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/12688895/Holes_in_SOLEs_Re-examining_the_role_of_EdTech_and_minimally_invasive_education_in_language_learning.
Raes, A. et al., 2012. Scaffolding information problem solving in web-based collaborative inquiry learning. Computers & Education, 59(1), pp.82–94.
Scripture, N., 2014. Sugata Mitra TED Prize update: Preview the School in the Cloud documentary — and a new web platform for learning. Available at: http://blog.ted.com/preview-the-school-in-the-cloud-documentary-and-a-new-web-platform-for-learning/ [Accessed April 1, 2014].
Selwyn, N., 2015. Minding our language: why education and technology is full of bullshit … and what might be done about it. Learning, Media and Technology, pp.1–7. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2015.1012523#.VdWnNflViko.
Vygotsky, L.S., 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, Available at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674576292.
Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. & Ross, G., 1976. The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 17(2), pp.89–100.
Wood, D. & Wood, H., 1996. Vygotsky, Tutoring and Learning. Oxford Review of Education, 22(1), pp.5–16.
Yelland, N. & Masters, J., 2007. Rethinking scaffolding in the information age. Computers and Education, 48(3), pp.362–382.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License of their choice (usually CCBY 3.0 unported, but determined at the proofing stage by consultation with the Editor - readers looking for copyright permissions are required to do this on a case by case basis) that allows others to share the work in some way with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. We appreciate authors placing a link to the Other Education site wherever they choose to offer a PDF download to the original OE article.