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Situated Learning and Anchored Instruction As Vehicles for Social Education.
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Situated Learning and Anchored Instruction As Vehicles for Social Education • Hughes, A. S., & Sears, A. (2004). Situated learning and anchored instruction as vehicles for social education. In A. Sears & I. Wright (Eds.), Challenges & Prospects for Canadian Social Studies (pp. 259-273). Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press.
3 Components to Situated Learning & Anchored Instruction: • Constructivism • Paying attention to Prior Knowledge • Anchoring Instruction
1. Constructivist teachers: • Encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative. • Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content. • Use raw data and primary sources, along with manipulative, interactive and physical materials.
Engage “cognitive dissonance” • Inquire about students’ understandings of concepts before sharing their own understandings of those concepts. • Encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another. • Encourage students to engage in reflective thinking. From: Brown, S.C. & Kysilka, M. L. (2002). The Instruction. Applying multicultural and global concepts in the classroom and beyond (128-148). Toronto: Allyn and Bacon.
2. The Importance of Prior Knowledge • Students are not “blank slates” • Prior knowledge is often resistant to change • Teachers’ job: to help students construct new knowledge on their pre-existing foundation of prior knowledge • help students tear apart and reconstruct that same prior knowledge when needed.
Create cognitive dissonance • Find ways to uncover what students already know by: • Listening to our students (generally) • Strategically planning to uncover their thinking • Paying attention to relevant research
3. Anchoring Instruction in Situations • “Anchors” or “Springboards” – are interesting, real world situations that enable the exploration of concepts. • Example: “no hats rule” + diversity
Effective springboards are: • Authentic – best ones tend to be drawn from actual events • Vivid – have to catch and hold student interest and enthusiasm • Succinct – the springboards are only the starting point.
Multidimensional – explore concepts at a number of different levels and/or from a number of different perspectives • Deliberately ambiguous – purpose of springboards is to promote questioning and investigation, not to provide answers. The best ones are open-ended and open to interpretation. • Representative – springboards should open up students to the wider world
Postscript: Fostering Dialogue Important to foster 2 kinds of dialogue during this process: • Interpersonal dialogue can happen between: • Students and the teacher • Student(s) to student(s) • Students and historical figures • Intrapersonal dialogue: students think deeply about their thinking