September in Guyana traditionally ushers in commemoration events on “Indigenous Heritage” and “Education” by the Government. The latter event usually centres on some aspect of the education curriculum that the Ministry wishes to emphasise. However, with the coming of oil and the promise of greater economic opportunities, there is the beginning of a conversation on the relevance of our curriculum to the demands of that economy. The educational establishment has responded by offering additional subjects in the technical/vocational fields, as well as in business management. While there is much more to be done, this is a good start.
All of these changes are very positive, and must be encouraged, since we are situated in an increasingly globalised world that was created as the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century evolved to fundamentally new levels with the Information Revolution in this 21st Century. The Industrial Revolution was facilitated by the educational system and curriculum, which is only now being revamped in our country. Queen’s College, founded in 1847, for instance, still maintains much of the orientation and ethos from that time, while broadening its curriculum beyond the old Classics’ orientation.
But as we try to catch up with the rest of the world developmentally, we must take cognisance that the methods of delivering education have also changed in response to the new realities of the new communication age in which we now live. Take, for instance, the old “behaviourist” paradigm we still use to transmit “education” – passive learning – in which a teacher passes on information to a classroom of students who are expected to memorise it. However, in addition to the “subjects” taught changing, the 21st Century methods stress “learning by doing”.
There are many approaches to education that fit within this 21st Century paradigm, and we quote from a summary of some of them: “Cognitive Constructivism” proposes that we learn by constructing ideas in our heads (rather than having them inserted into our minds). We construct information when we place ideas in our working memory, compare it to our existing prior knowledge, and make decisions about how useful, truthful or valuable this new knowledge is to us before saving it, using it to change our minds, or discarding it. We don’t just take bits of information for granted: we ‘mull them over’ and ‘consider them’ before deciding how to use them.
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching strategy based on cognitive constructivism and involves learning through solving problems. This is clearly very different to learning by being told facts. That’s because students aren’t given answers to problems: they have to solve the problems themselves to discover the truth. That’s why sometimes we also call PBL discovery learning.
Problem-Posing Education (PPE) is very similar to problem-based learning. In a problem-posing environment, the teacher or student will come up with a problem, and present the problem to the class. The class and the teacher need to learn the answer to this problem together. So, not even the teacher enters the classroom with the answers in this approach. It therefore creates a very democratic co-learning atmosphere in the classroom.
Project-Based Learning is where students in a classroom would work on one big problem for many lessons (maybe even weeks or months) at a time. Students would often work together, and use resources around them, like community members or the Internet, to create something new (their project!).
Finally, there is Phenomenon-Based Learning, which is popular in Finland. Rather than learning through subjects (mathematics, languages, science, history), students focus on a ‘phenomenon’ (or ‘topic’) that requires them to use multiple different forms of knowledge from different subject areas to learn about the phenomenon in a holistic way.”
In education, as in biology, form determines function.
