Answers About Education

By upholding personal relevance and transferability as core tenants of education, a large degree of responsibility is placed upon the student's ability and eagerness to learn. The tenants assume that the student is mature enough to take his education seriously and to challenge himself. The ideal student is self-motivated in fulfilling his own curiosity. He is developed enough in his thought to appropriately make connections between class content and personal interest.
In essence, a relevance-centered education requires that the he is self-aware enough to realise his ability, talent, and limits; and to know when to ask the teacher for assistance. The teacher must not only recognise these domains, but also try to understand how the students are attempting to solve them. This does not require that the teacher make lengthily records and descriptions of student behaviour for reference; rather, she should keep a mental tab of their emotional and intellectual abilities.
With this in mind, she is better able to understand her students without overburdening herself with work. Nel Nodding describes how she attempts to engross herself completely in the student's mindset when helping them: Online Homework Help 3rd Grade Program If I care about students who are attempting to solve a problem, I must do two things: I must make the problem my own, receive it intellectually, immerse myself in it; I must also bring the students into proximity, receive such students personally.
(659 Goldstein) Take for example a high school level English classroom. The first few tests given in reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary should be paid particular attention to. If the student has trouble with reading comprehension, or using and appropriate, ‘academic' style in papers, the teacher should make a mental note of this (or brief notes on paper, if her class is particularly large or her student's handicaps specific).
Transferability of knowledge is essential to relevant education. Without it, the student is not able to take what he learns in the classroom and apply it to his extracurricular interests; or vise versa. However, it is a more difficult task to ensure that the student is focused and motivated enough to take interest in transferring his understanding to begin with. I will give several examples of this. First, the student should be able to make connections between his personal interests and musings: if he likes graphic novels or songwriting, his English course might allow him to study those forms of narrative.
If he is interested in sports, then his anatomy course should allow him to explore the basic concepts of sports nutrition. Should he be interested in computer programming, than his math course should let him incorporate introductory logic or number theory. These are all examples of how a student's pastimes and hobbies could be integrated into different subjects in a constructive manner. They demonstrate what Thomas Zane calls ‘domain definition', by "defining real-world, integrated tasks as opposed to listing a series of content topics or decontextualized knowledge components" (83 Zane, Part 1).
The ‘domains' essential to student-relevant education are those that the student thinks are important to him.
Group activity
- Vaux created the group Answers About EducationBy upholding personal relevance and transferability as core tenants of education, a large degree of responsibility is placed upon the student's ability and eagerness to learn. The tenants assume that the student is mature enough to take his...