Tag: Curriculum

At BSD, we believe that all students should have a digital education, learn digital skills and apply them to a range of contexts. That is why we advocate for these skills to be taught across subject areas, topics, and age groups. Even though younger students may not label that they are learning digital skills, technology is now second nature. 

The educational focus is less on cultivating particular technical skills and more about creating digital familiarity during the early years. This includes developing ways of thinking (such as computational thinking and design thinking), and building a foundation for fluency. Teachers can do this in many ways, and students are never too young to start creating digitally.

Virtual Learning

The move to virtual teaching and learning was a real opportunity for younger students to start a digital education earlier. In addition, it has enabled educators to introduce technologies and digital skills from a very young age, which was not always the case. 

Children are growing up as digital natives, so they are often familiar with digital media earlier than ever. However, virtual learning did not always align early years education with children’s experience with technology in the ‘outside world.’ 

Digital Opportunities

While many students had excellent experiences, the prevalence of technology and opportunities to learn digital skills were hugely variable. These opportunities depended on a range of factors. Kate Gilchrist nicely summarises this in a blog for LSE: ‘teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards the value of digital technology as part of learning was found to strongly relate to whether they used it or not in their teaching.

Early educators often lacked the IT skills, confidence, and knowledge of implementing skills relevant to the subject being taught. There is also a lack of adequate training, professional development, and technical and administrative support for teachers. Many of the curriculums investigated also did not include any provision for developing digital literacy.’ 

Historically, these factors have meant that not all students were exposed to this critical learning from an early age. As a result, when more technical skills are introduced later, students’ skill levels are at very different starting points. 

Virtual teaching and learning, however, have shifted this. This meant that many of the barriers outlined above have had to be overcome in the classroom. Educators have had to find a way to digitize their curriculum, and with trial and error comes confidence and knowledge.

While teaching young children virtually has its challenges, this educational experience is positive for developing children’s digital fluency and foundation. 

Teachers should no longer feel or be labeled as the all-knowing expert of their subject area or in their classrooms. Like our learners, we as educators should cultivate a growth mindset for ourselves, a term coined by psychologist Carol Dweck.

You may be asking, what is a growth mindset?

Sasha Crowley, an instructional designer at Brandman University concisely summarizes the difference between students with a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset:

To encourage and develop a growth mindset in students, we should model and implement the key characteristics of a growth mindset in how we work. 

To successfully facilitate and cultivate a growth mindset in teachers and educators, many factors must work together amongst the schooling community. In the article titled “Developing a Growth Mindset in Teachers and Staff” by Keith Heggart, he shares four ways to encourage a growth mindset in teachers:

Modeling

Modeling is seen as one of the most effective methods in encouraging a culture of a growth mindset. Teachers should see themselves as learners, who are there to learn with the students and see that they too have the ability to improve and learn new things. When students see the passion of learning from their teachers, they too will be encouraged to embrace the learning journey.

Opportunities for new ideas

The willingness to try new things is an essential part of having a growth mindset. To encourage this in teachers, there should be more opportunities and space to do so in the school environment to try new approaches to teaching and learning with an emphasis on what is learned through the process. 

For example, schools can explore offering opportunities to employ action research into the constant improvement of a curriculum. 

Self-reflection

Built-in reflection time is crucial in helping teachers bring awareness to their practices to foster a growth mindset. The reflection should focus on what was learned through the process or journey rather than focus on the success of a new process/program. 

Formative Feedback 

Formative feedback is something we often use with students, but it is equally important in teacher performance management. School management should consider implementing formative feedback opportunities, rather than quarterly “summative” assessments of the teacher. Teachers need to feel that they are in a safe environment to give and receive constant meaningful feedback to improve their daily practices. 

The four areas mentioned above are important and it will take time to implement and establish as part of a schools’ management culture. Here are some ways that you can consider to practice a growth mindset.

Establish a community of practice with your colleagues

Involve your colleagues in your quest to foster a growth mindset. Establish seek colleagues to come together as a community of practice (Wenger-Trayner and Lave, 1991). By regularly meeting and engaging with a group of like-minded colleagues who share your concerns and passions will help you to constantly reflect and get feedback on your practice. What is also great is that through sharing, you may feel inspired to try new approaches!

Involve your students

The first step to modeling is to actually share your goals with your students. Tell them that you are constantly learning with them and you are learning to adopt a growth mindset. Additionally, welcome student feedback, actively ask students how they think you can improve, and become a better guide for them. You will be surprised by how enlightening their answers may be!

Change is the constant in our lives, and teachers have been thrown in the deep end the past year with the current pandemic shifting our usual practices but hopefully, this year, with a little change in perspective we will be ready to face any challenge ahead and innovate with a growth mindset.

– You can read more about Carol Dweck’s work here.

If you have ever spent any time teaching in a school, you will observe that throughout the day children will find or invent new ways to play with just about anything whether it’s tossing paper airplanes down the hall or engaging in sports games during recess.

This seems only natural because children are inclined to be curious, imaginative, and engage in playful discovery. 

Traditional education systems seem to stifle playfulness and instead encourage obedience and order, the opposite of play. I can recall many moments in my own childhood where I was asked to turn over the trinkets and toys that I usually brought to school in my pocket and played with during lessons.

Jane McGonigal, a game designer and researcher in the field of game-based learning says in her TED Talk that “when we’re playing a game, that we’re actually happier working hard than we are relaxing, or hanging out.”

It turns out that playing games and engaging in other forms of play are deeply stimulating and intuitive activities that require cognitive thinking and problem solving, the very things that education strives to achieve. 

Toy manufacturer LEGO has known about the power of play for many years and has even conducted research to thoroughly understand the nature of play. When they published a framework for educators called the Pedagogy of Play, their research indicated that when children are engaged in play, they are building cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and creative skills.

Research has repeatedly shown that “play experiences are not merely fun – play also has a critical and crucial role in learning and in preparing children for challenges in childhood and throughout adulthood.” If play helps to develop the exact same skills that education intends, then why do we shun play in school and in classrooms? 

Instead of shunning play in education altogether, perhaps there are ways in which we can leverage play in classrooms as a way to keep children engaged while learning. Depending on your readiness to play and lead play, there are several entry points, such as gamifying behavior management with tools like Class Dojo or if you are ready for a costume change and a magic wand, step into the world of Live Action Role Playing.

We all understand that education can’t be fun and games all of the time, but there certainly is room for improvement. 

Today, there are dozens of educational games, apps, and learning environments that are designed to provide a playful experience for learning to take place. One of the biggest players currently in this space is Minecraft, which operates an education version of their famous game environment. Educator Dan Bloom has used Minecraft to teach biology, where students used Minecraft to recreate models of cells.

This is just one of the many examples of how educators are harnessing the power of play through what is called game-based learning. 

At BSD Education, like LEGO, we know that children are inherently tuned for play, which is why our curriculum is project-focused and is centered around creating and making digital artifacts such as web pages, games, and interactive elements.

By engaging in the process of making something like a webpage or video game, our students are experiencing the same characteristics of play that are described in the Pedagogy of Play: iteration, meaningful contexts, joyful experiences, and social interactions.

Our Education team at BSD Education relies on the unique potential of play to be a catalyst for learning, which is why we start developing our curriculum with play in mind.