I first became aware of Lamplaimat Pattana School (LPMP)
while doing research about education systems in several countries in which I
was considering doing volunteer work. Having spent the previous thirteen years
in American Higher Education as a college instructor of English Composition, I
found myself increasingly frustrated working in a system that did not,
ultimately, share my vision of the possibilities of education.
My American teaching career spanned the dawning of the
21st-century, and my students represented the global village; I often had
students from as many as a dozen countries represented in a single classroom.
It became increasingly clear to me that the needs of the 21st
century, and of the young people who would be charged with facing and solving
the problems inherent to it, were not being addressed as effectively and
urgently as necessary.
In June of 2011, I resigned from the American education
system and made the decision to go outside of the United States to see if I
could find a way to use my skills and
experience to make a difference in global education. As I often say, and deeply
believe, “Education anywhere matters everywhere.”
In my research about education in Thailand, I discovered
Lamplaimat Pattana. As I began to read about the mission of LPMP, and as I read
the extensive analytical report produced by the University of Tasmania about
the school, I recognized a pedagogical soul-mate. Conversations with a
representative of LPMP further enhanced my sense that LPMP was a school that
not only shared my educational vision, but was in fact substantially further
down the path in implementing that vision.
Problems in American
Education: The No Child Left Behind Act and Standardized Testing
On January 8, 2002, former United States President George
W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). I had been
teaching for three years at that time, and although I did not doubt that the
intentions of the Act were good, I knew that the methodology was exactly the
opposite of what we needed to focus on in American education in order to face
the increasingly pressing needs of the 21st century.
NCLB elevated the results of standardized testing to the
position of central, and only, determinant of “success” for students, teachers,
and schools. In the past ten years, a generation of American students has been
taught “to the test” instead of being taught in authentic ways that truly
encourage a love of learning, ways that cultivate critical inquiry and
dialogue, and that help students to apply their knowledge to the real-world
issues faced by their local and global communities. American teachers are
becoming increasingly frustrated at having to assess students based upon an
extremely narrow understanding of “knowledge” and by being unable to devote enough class time to helping students
nurture a genuine excitement for the learning process (instead, the time
is used to relentlessly prepare for testing). In effect, the motivation for
“learning” has been thoroughly externalized: the goal is to pass the test, and
avoid punishment, which is the end result of not “succeeding” in the NCLB
model.
Both “knowledge” and
“success” are perilously ill-defined in the NCLB system. Students are
considered to “know,” and therefore to have “succeeded,” to the extent that
they become successful test-takers; that is, to the extent that they are able
to demonstrate that they can reiterate (not necessarily deeply understand) a
narrow range of information, which they have been drilled about for the entire
school year at the expense of the whole range of knowledge and skills which
have been neglected in order to “teach to the test” (many of which skills, of
course, simply cannot be assessed in the standardized testing model).
Also virtually ignored in the
NCLB system is the inherent diversity in students themselves. Although anyone
who has ever taught knows that each and every student is a unique human being
with equally unique abilities and aptitudes, NCLB demands the impossible and
ultimately, for the 21 century-- the undesirable: that every student be alike--
that they think alike, that they “know” the exact same things in the exact same
way, and that they express that “knowledge” in the narrowly conceived way that
allows test-makers to easily quantify that “knowledge.” Students are ultimately
reduced to numbers in this system, a system that has been a boon for some, such
as the standardized testing industry, which has become a multi-billion dollar
industry since the inception of NCLB. But at what cost to the students, to
America, and to the world?
In order to meet the
requirements of “knowledge” in Reading and Math set out by NCLB, teachers and
students are increasingly forced to give up time and resources that would
otherwise be available for developing a well-rounded, holistic educational
experience, one that recognizes the students as human beings, not simply
standardized test-taking machines. Time for the Arts, play, sports, and even
time to eat a proper nutritionally balanced lunch (all of which have been
scientifically proven to enhance children's learning) has been increasingly
shifted to test cram sessions. It has gone so far that two 11-year old girls
from Minn, Minnesota recently felt compelled to write to their local newspaper
to express their concern over being given just 10 – 11 minutes to eat lunch. (Return to discuss relevance/ implications/revise
this section).
A decade into this experiment
in American education, even formerly enthusiastic advocates of NCLB, such as
education historian and once prominent supporter of the federal education
policy, Diane Ravitch, have come to understand that, good intentions aside,
NCLB is a “disaster.”
21st-century Skills
The world is
changing at a faster pace than ever before in human history. The skills
necessary for meeting the challenges of the new millennium are not the same as
those that were sufficient to meet the challenges of the past. More than ever
before, students need to develop what have come to be known as 21st
century skills, authentic thinking and communication skills that include:
·
Mental model building - using physical and virtual models to refine
understanding
·
Internal motivation - identifying and employing positive emotional connections in learning
·
Multi-modal learning - applying multiple learning methods for diverse learning styles
·
Social learning
- using the power of social interaction to improve learning impact
· International
learning - using the world around you
to improve teaching and learning skills.
In effect, what educators
must focus on in order to prepare students to effectively participate in the
21st-centruy global community is the development of “lifelong learners.” In the
past, the focus of education has largely been placed on teaching, yet 21st
century demands a shift to a focus on learners: helping students learn how
to learn, how to reflect on and articulate their growing knowledge,
and how to implement that knowledge, together with others, in ways that
positively impact the world in which they live, is crucial to authentic
education. The problems that have been created by outdated thinking cannot be
solved by that same thinking; instead, education must focus on cultivating
creative, critical thinking that will enable students to become self-motivated,
confident innovators who are able to bring new thinking to the problems faced
by the real world in which they live.
LPMP meets (and exceeds)
the challenge of providing 21st-century education
Having had the privilege of
experiencing LPMP as a guest observer/participant for a five weeks, I have come
to know that not only were my initial impressions of the school correct, but
that, in fact, the work being done at LPMP is even more transformational and
progressive than I could have imagined. Below is a discussion of the ways in
which I have observed LPMP meeting, and exceeding, the 21st century
skills goal that is becoming increasingly recognized globally.
Mental model building - using physical and virtual models to refine
understanding
LPMP employs a variety of
learning opportunities/methodologies to assist students in developing and
refining their understanding/knowledge through the use of physical and virtual
models, including mind-mapping and project-based learning.
Mind-mapping
Mind-mapping allows students
to begin to articulate, as well as to visually conceptualize, the framework of
key questions, ideas, and language of the particular project they are working on. Mind-mapping
inherently encourages complex analytical thinking. Analysis, of course, is the
process of breaking down a coherent whole into its parts so as to better
understand a) how the parts function in and of themselves and b) how the parts
function together to make up the whole. This physical modeling tool encourages
students to recognize and represent the complexity and interconnection of
ideas, as well as to begin to understand and represent complex structures.
Project-based Learning
(PBL)
LPMP's focus on Project-based
Learning (PBL) is perhaps its most striking contribution to helping students become
engaged life-long learners. Whereas the traditional lecture, drill, test
methodology encourages learners to think of knowledge as compartmentalized
(limited to the classroom, or to the test, for example), PBL encourages what
renowned educational theorist Paulo Freire, in his seminal essay “The 'Banking'
Concept of Education” defines as real knowledge. For Freire, as for progressive
schools such as LPMP, knowledge is not a static, compartmentalized “thing.”
Instead, it is understood to be what it truly is: a process. True
knowledge “emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the
restless, impatient, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the
world, and with each other (Freire ___).” It should be noted that the PBL
projects themselves are imagined and constructed by the students in
collaboration with their teachers, increasing student engagement and ownership.
PBL encourages students to actively engage in the meaning-making process
through inquiry, through dialogue, through collaboration with others, and then
to apply their growing knowledge in the real world. This is the kind of
knowledge, and these are the kinds of learners, crucial to the 21st-centrury.
One particularly excellent
example of PBL at LPMP is a Primary Grade Six project in which students
collaborated in creating a video of a
text they had read together (The Alchemist). Not only was the students'
understanding of the concepts clear in the excellent artifact they produced,
but the joy and engagement of the students was also clear in videos and images
that captured the students' creative process. Perhaps Socrates said it best
when he said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a
vessel.” PBL kindles the flames of curiosity, creativity, engagement, and joy
necessary to cultivate lifelong learners. We owe students no less as we ask
them to face the enormous challenges of a century the problems of which they
did not create, but will necessarily be tasked with solving.
Real-world Learning
The world as a model is also
a key component of LPMP pedagogy. Students are encouraged to look to their own
natural environment for learning models, and to observe and understand their
world as a classroom. Children in Kindergarten Two, for example, studying
ants, are encouraged to observe ants on the playground: to recognize their
size, their color, their movements and habits. Of course, observation is the
first principle of science, and these little investigators practice one of the
most important intellectual skills when they observe their own world. They also
build physical models as they produce art projects that allow them to
demonstrate their growing understanding, for example, of ant morphology. What
kindergarten class would be complete without music? Although they are “only”
five-years old, they are already being introduced implicitly to linguistics as
they sing songs (in their Native language as well as in the English language).
*I will discuss later the
implications of these multi-faceted learning activities on learning styles.
Internal motivation - identifying and employing positive emotional connections in learning
One of the most impressive aspects of
LPMP's pedagogy and methodology is its focus on student learning as an organic,
internal process. At LPMP, punishment and cohersion are avoided in favor of
student-focused learning that evokes the natural curiosity and wonder necessary
fro the development of life-long learners. The intellectual materials are not
“owned” by the teachers” and “given” tot he students; instead, they are the
creation of the students facilitated by their teachers, who dilligently strive
to ensure that students are
Multi-modal learning - applying multiple learning methods for diverse learning styles
Unlike schools that rely on traditional and
outdated methods such as lecture and drill, LPMP teachers employ “multiple
learning methods for diverse learning styles” daily. The Primary Six project
discussed above provides and excellent example of this. Students employed
multiple skill sets in producing their collaborative project, including music,
technology, writing, theater, and oral presentation. Visual, auditory, kinetic
(Discuss Learning Styles
research -return to ANTS discussion)
Social learning
- using the power of social interaction to improve learning impact
In traditional educational settings, which
often views learners in isolation, LPMP recognizes that knowledge and
meaning-making is an inherently social process. Particularly in the 21-st
century, as human beings become increasingly capable through technology of
interacting and collaborating globally, it is important to cultivate learners
who are not isolated and compartmentalized.
LOVE: Introduce Erich
Fromm's definition: to love someone, you must respect them, to respect them you
must know them, to know them, you must listen deeply to them. LPMP LOVES their
students by this eloquent definition. Deep listening, attention to the issues
to he individual student, to individual teachers, sports/games that build social
connections (not heirarchical). Bodies, spirits, minds, emotions
(Khru Kloy with upset
child on day one: discuss the role of empathy in critical thinking and
education) EQ?SQ/IQ: HOLISTIC intertwining.
LUNCH/FLAG rituals
Home/School synthesis
(home visits)
International
learning - using the world around you
to improve teaching and learning skills.
Real-world learning. Use
ASEAN example (Primary Five). Buriram example (_________)?
How does LPMP EXCEED?
·
Attention
to teachers as students and as human beings.
·
Mentoring
of younger/less experienced teachers
·
Constant
self-reflection: as a team, and as individuals
·
Regular
dialogue (talking with, not AT teachers)
·
Problem-solving
as a community (child with diabetes-- not HIS problem, OUR problem. Same with View
and Boom)
·
Attention
to environment: exciting, engaging, safe, full of wonder, play, lesson
(walkways as classrooms).
·
Return
to Fromm: LOVE (no physical, emotional barriers, trust)
·
respect/love/appreciation
for their own (and others') culture (builds self-esteem and other-esteem)
·
Dedication
of teachers extraordinary
·
Involvement
of parents crucial: always seeking to improve/reinforce/build upon this crucial
connection – HOME VISITS.
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