So, lately I've been reading up about education and various educational philosophies

[conuly]

And some of this stuff is fascinating. But it's all so biased! It's "our school is the best!" or "omg these people fucked up my kid for life!" and I can't really get the nitty gritty details which are so interesting to read about.

So - any ideas? Links, books, commentary? Any and every possible educational concept is fair game, I'm just reading.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Cognitive psychology and child development textbooks, then branch out to social psychology. Read the major studies or summaries of them. Then you'll start to grasp the basic principles of how people learn and how behavior is shaped. Once you have that, it's easier to read biased material and pick out the useful bits and see the problems. I don't really have specifics for you, because what I did was go to university and study psychology, which isn't an option for everyone, but was really helpful for learning this sort of thing. But google scholar is pretty good and a lot of psych textbooks are decent, if the book sucks, it should have reasonably accurate summaries of most of the most important studies.

Look up info on the zone of proximal development. I love the zone of proximal development and think it's a really good concept for anyone who wants to help people learn. The idea is that there is the set of things a person can do on their own. There is a set of things well beyond them. But then there is the set of things they can sort of do if you help them out a little. You want to work with them within that third set, their zone of proximal development. Let them do the stuff they can do fine on their own without assistance, and don't push them to try to do what they can't, but look for those things where you can help them out a bit and show them how to do something until it becomes part of the first set and then stop helping them. It's a very basic idea that people tend to do somewhat anyway, but I think consciously thinking about it can help.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

Ooooh excellent point. I do in fact do this a great deal but it's nice to know there's an actual term for it. I always feel the best thing is not to give *too* much help - you really want them to figure it out on their own as much as possible, then you "own" that bit of learning SO much more. :-) For example, when one of Ana's playground friends was climbing trees with her, and had never done it before, I touched her to help out as little as possible, instead if she asked for help I would first point out where she had a foothold/handhold to reach for on her own. And bam! confidence was born lol .

[leora.livejournal.com]

I suspect a lot of people do this naturally. It really strikes me as common sense. But given that not everyone has a large supply of that, I think it's good to have something more impressive-sounding to pull out to explain why it's a good idea. :) And for those who simply haven't thought about it much.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

In that coincidental way that the world sometimes has, immediately after reading your reply to my comment I read this (http://alwyncosgrove.blogspot.com/2007/07/training-stress-continuum.html) blog entry which mentions the same concept but worded differently, for fitness professionals.