TEN ELEMENTS IN THE IDEAL TEACHING AND LEARNING PLACE!

Tuesday 10 October 2006

After a little break due to double bronchitis (see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001087.htm) I am back ruminating on pedagogy and planning.

Tonight we begin by looking at teaching in the learning classroom. What is, for me, the perfect teaching and learning place? If I had the freedom to plan, what would my ideal teaching and learning place?

PLACE

We speak of a learning place in recognition of our Aboriginal heritage. For the Aboriginal people, land - particular, defined locations - play a hugely significant role in the spiritual worldview of the people:

During the Dreaming, ancestral spirits came to earth and created the landforms, the animals and plants. The stories tell how the ancestral spirits moved through the land creating rivers, lakes and mountains. Today we know the places where the ancestral spirits have been and where they came to rest. ... In essence, the Dreaming comes from the land. In Aboriginal society people did not own the land it was part of them and it was part of their duty to respect and look after mother earth.

Source: http://www.dreamtime.net.au/indigenous/spirituality.cfm

For the Aboriginal peoples, the land on which they live and which supports them through its flora and fauna is more than merely a resource - it is the living link with their ancestors and their ancestral spirits; and coming to the land, living on the land, is an inherently sacred activity.

Hopefully, the classroom - the learning place - can also have a sense of place: a sense of significance beyond the mere fact that this is where the students sit and where the teacher teaches. Hopefully the learning place can carry with it the sense of significance, of challenge, of encouragement, of excitement and discovery, of trust.

No doubt part of the sense of place will be effected by architecture and decoration. But a larger factor surely involves the idea of community - relations involving teacher and students, and relations bewteen students.