A revolution in the learning process

Ten years ago, in America, Professor Lauren Resnick wrote:

“It is increasingly evident that the educational methods we have been using for the past 70 years no longer suffice. They are based on scientific assumptions about…the learning process that have been eclipsed by new discoveries. Yet changing them has been slow because the nature of educational reform is largely one of tinkering with institutional arrangements. Rarely has reform penetrated the ‘educational core’.“ Lauren Resnick (1999), Making America smarter, Education Week Century Series, 18(40), pp. 38-40.

And so now, in 2010, it gives me great pleasure to announce the arrival of a new research report (commissioned by Edge, and to be launched in early March) by Guy Claxton, Bill Lucas and Rob Webster, from the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester.

They build on their view that attempts to generate ‘parity of esteem’ between so-called academic and practical learning are unlikely to succeed unless deep-seated assumptions about both the separation of mind and body and the primacy of mind over body remain. They look at the ways in which the sciences of learning can contribute to raising the esteem of practical and vocational education, and then go on to develop a working model of real-world learning for different learning contexts. Let me give you a couple of quotes to whet the appetite:

“As students are learning the safety procedures of the workshop, or the nature of the chemicals that colour hair, they are (or could be) also serving an apprenticeship in the craft of lifelong learning: learning new and stronger ways to attend, research, tinker, visualise, and – yes – think and reason. They are (or could be) developing their inclination to be curious and questioning, brave and determined, resourceful and ingenious, sociable and open-minded, reflective and self-aware, wise and strategic in their learning choices and challenges.”

“So the foundations on which the old disparity of esteem between ‘practical’ and ‘academic’ has been built have crumbled. The assumption that ‘those who can, think, while those who can’t think, do’ has no basis in science, and no place in an informed and egalitarian society. It is a deeper understanding of the true nature of learning, and the delicate ways in which body and mind interweave on the learning journey, that can rectify that disparity of esteem – not yet another round of tinkering with curricula, qualifications or funding.“

Amen.