The Role of the Educator In Regards to the Future

The world is changing -- it is getting both smaller and bigger at the same time. Our world shrinks as technologies now allow us to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously with peers around the world. Conversely, the explosion of information now available to us expands our view of the world. As a result of the ability to communicate globally and the information explosion, education must change. Most educators might not want to change, but the change is coming -- it is a matter of whe...

 Constructivism

Jean Piaget’s work is the origin of Constructivism, which is the foundation of learning-centered classrooms (Bogost, 2007). Constructivism is a broad theory of learning that argues (quite unlike Essentialism) that what matters in learning is not the accumulation of facts, paradigms, and theories but rather the meaning making that comes from taking these disparate notions and integrating them to form new knowledge. What matters is not the received wisdom handed down from generation to genera...

 Changing Focus from Teacher to Learning in Education

Most theories of teaching and learning take a particular stance on the role of the teacher and the relative importance of the teaching act, in contrast to the role of the learner and the learning act. This fundamental division splits the world of educational theory into two clear schools of thought. In the first—more ancient—school, it is the authority of the teacher that takes pride of place. The teacher is seen as a master or wise one who possesses knowledge and who, through the act of ...

 Parental Resistance to Educational Change

The greatest challenges facing parents stem from their own school experiences. Every adult has been educated in some way, and the methods their teachers used usually shape the values they carry with them and color their perceptions of how education “should be.” These learned values are very powerful and can be seen in the ongoing controversies that manifest in social media regarding the Common Core State Standards and math instruction, for example. The notion that there is a critical-thin...

 Classroom as Gamespace

A gamespace is a uniquely coded and constructed place where players are expected to act before being any good at what they’re doing; they’re spaces inherently founded on the notion of risk taking. The process of building a classroom that functions as a gamespace should start with the teacher being committed to democratic learning processes that place the student at the center of his or her learning and development. Likewise, it casts the teacher as the constructor or designer of the games...

 Teaching is a Waste of Time

I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his preciou...