To what extent should we require learners to learn what we want them to learn, rather than what they think they want to learn?
For example, the following quote comes from the article Teachers are wary about using IT in the classroom that I spotted some time ago on an eGov newswire:
Some young people became distracted and used the internet to learn things their teachers hadn't intended. The report says that effective teaching and learning with ICT involves finding ways of building bridges between 'idiosyncratic' and 'intended' learning.
My immediate thought was: if we're skilling people to be lifelong learners, shouldn't we find ways of exploiting idiosyncratic (learner motivated?) learning?
I can see the obvious tension within a system builit around tightly specified curricula and learning outcomes, but these approaches are implicitly based on a model in which the omniscient educator is able to clearly identify the fact stuff that a student should learn for some reason (I'm often unsure as to what that reason is, though!)
Anyway - when I originally posted the above on a departmental confernce, I got the following comment from David Chapman, another academic in the department:
"Don't worry, though, one day it will be included as a specified learning outcome:
"Knowledge and Understanding
.....
17: Learn at least three things you were not intended to learn"
Hmm - shouldn't that be a Practical Skill? ;-)
NB the origins of this post are interesting - I needed a footnote, or aside, in another post (see Trackback below for details), and this seemed the most sensible way of providing it).
Posted by ajh59 at November 5, 2005 10:00 AM