BOOK PROPOSAL

Working Title: Teaching & Learning--A Sustainable Future: Using On-Line Learning, Coaching Clusters, and Service Learning to Educate Teachers and Learners in the 21st Century

PART 1: WHY ON-LINE LEARNING?

The transitional/transformational structure that can respond to these changes will evolve from on-line learning, structured around essential questions, utilizing "coaching" by teachers and others, and extending into community service and school to work transition.

On-Line Advantages

  1. Shorter texts
  2. More views
  3. Hypertext shifts to counter frustration/lack of patience
  4. Essential Questions to prolong focus and develop MIND
  5. The motivating power of choice among links and lines of inquiry unattainable in traditional texts
  6. The appeal of the new, of being a "pathfinder" in a new kind of learning

Why NOT trust classrooms? Because of:

  1. Trivializing the Value of Learning by emphasizing academic vs. human excellence. The Tyranny of Testing and Ways Out of the Trap of Triviality.
  2. Lack of Mutual Respect and Understanding in Classrooms: Chasm in Teacher vs. Student perception, esp. of BOREDOM. Lack of mutual trust that would be easier to establish through a coaching and menoring stance.
  3. Unhealthy Social Systems in Schools. The non-educational origins and purposes of the State, cf. A Political History of American Education
  4. Stagnation and Denial: Teachers doing what Learners should be doing; learners doing next-to-nothing.
  5. Need for teachers to engage in a "critical community" of dialogue about changes in the challenges facing them and hopeful practices.
  6. Need for time to reorient teachers to coaching and coordinating roles, working with other support staff, and becoming accustomed to uses of the Internet in instruction.

  • What can be done in On-line Teacher Education, cf. Teacher Development Network Courses

  • NEED: RE-ORGANIZE CURRICULUM ON-LINE AROUND ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS OF HUMAN EXCELLENCE based on concepts of Identity, Interaction and Inquiry.

    Existing sources and Internet "Hubs" e.g. High School Hub

    Other Hub Sites:

    1. MATH Forum Library
    2. Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Science Topics
    3. WWW-VL Central HISTORY Catalogue
    4. English Teacher's Companion, and
    5. Teaching & Learning Elementary Subjects More Effectively

    • Pathways from "Point-and-Click" to Reading and Writing
    • Texts, NOT Textbooks; Real World Writing, NOT "Papers"
    • The need for silence and reflection time

      Part 2

      "CLUSTER COACHES" for On-Line Inquiry, Service Learning, and Transformative Learning

      "From Sage on the Stage to Guide At the Side."

        Coaching and Transitional Aims/Transformative Goals for
      1. Goal Setting,
      2. Habits of Mind
      3. Morale and Culture
      4. Character Development
      5. Content Mastery via Essential Questions

      Expanding the "pool" of coaches: Teachers, Parents, Cross-Age Peers, Older citizens (including nursing home residents), and "Significant Others"

      Building Clusters: Learner role in coordinating Coaches

    • Cluster Coaching and Meta-Coaching

      The demographics of the teaching profession do not bode well for the future supply of teachers using the models we currently follow.

      An assumption needing reexamination is our sense of the requirement for expertise. Almost all developing countries have educational programs based on replicating the "traditional" model of schooling at a time when experience in the so-called developed countries is showing that this model is inappropriate in a digital world. It is widely believed in developing countries that "under qualified" teachers are unable to handle technological thinking. However, our experience for the past 20 years working in Developing Nations and more recently our work in Costa Rica and in Thailand has shown that the number of years spent in teacher training institutions has little positive (and perhaps some negative) correlation with effectiveness as tutors for constructivist learning. Because content delivered through web sites reflects multiple sources of expertise, a moderator or feedback structure, rather than teacher-expert is needed to assist the learning process. This may be a source of threat to teachers who do not value empowerment of learners, or to administrators who oppose the freeing of teachers to work individually with students, sponsor research, and conduct field studies related to their courses. Lastly, in American schools there is an epidemic of "learning disabilities." The traditional treatment is to prescribe easier work. However the adaptation of powerful technologies for use by children allows many of these children to engage with highly challenging activities. Success comes from work that is harder, not easier.
      The Future of Learning Group Mission {M.I.T.}

      • Powerful learning requires a "bodybrain partnership" - an integrated process.
      • Both students and adults require a bodybrain-compatible environment to work and learn, i.e.
        1. Absence of Threat
        2. Meaningful Content - Any place, any time format and selection of sites and emphasis give safety, choices, movement, time, and enrichment to on-line courses
        3. Choices
        4. Movement to Enhance Learning
        5. Adequate Time
        6. Enriched Environment
        7. Collaboration
        8. Immediate Feedback - Discussion Board, email, and Shared Inquiry group tasks provide Collaboration, Feedback and Mastery
        9. Mastery (application level)
        News from the Neurosciences

      Taken together, all these factors help explain why students learn 20% more in online courses.
       Web Based Courses: Research Abstracts

    • Gateways & Exhibitions: Publics and Publishing: Socrates Cafe and Beyond

    • Negotiating Solutions for Difficult Students and Overcoming Other Obstacles: Breakdowns to Breakthroughs

      PART 3: SERVICE LEARNING and the Development of Mind, Character, Knowledge, Morale, and Culture

      For so many students in this country, motivation is the biggest block to success. It is true that many young people have learning deficits that hold them back from economic and career success. But how can we hope to boost learning without a key that unlocks motivation -- through interaction with caring and competent adults, responsibilities that are real and are rewarded, mastery of different kinds of skills, opportunities for leadership, and demonstration of competencies not valued in traditional classrooms?

      School-to-work is not the only way to help young people become motivated -- for some, a focused, demanding academic course can work; for others, community service might do it. But enough young people check in through these programs after years of checking out that there is no doubt that something important is going on.

      The programs that will most embody the values and principles of school-to-work in the coming years will be small career academies that are multi-year efforts to personalize high school education and provide focus by "learning through careers," as John Dewey wrote long ago. There will be learning programs that recognize that, for many young people, "schools can't do it alone."

      Please circulate this e-proposal to elicit interest. I envision both a popular and widespread educational audience. I can be reached by e-mail : ozpk@earthlink.net or snail mail Chad C. Osborne 923 West Mission St. Santa Barbara, CA 93101.

      I also have narrative material from working this approach in teacher education, and numerous sites that could make a CD possible.