Educational Change

From Traditional Education to Learning Communities

By (author) Clifford H. Edwards

Hardback - £72.00

Publication date:

16 January 2011

Length of book:

212 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

ISBN-13: 9781607099871

Educational Change: From Traditional Education to Learning Communities outlines the transition of curriculum and instruction as well as classroom discipline historically. Various discipline approaches are described that vary in their applications in terms of the degree of teacher control and student self-direction. Various issues are identified which impact decorum in the schools, in particular the No Child Left Behind Act and associated standardized testing. The need for change in the schools is detailed along with the appropriateness of moving from traditional classroom instruction to democratic discipline as applied in learning communities. The nature of classroom discipline is described in connection with specific components of learning communities. When learning communities are employed in school, the leadership structures needs to be changed. The nature of relationships between school learning communities and communities outside the school are also described. This book explains how the learning community approach to education can be successfully implemented with the modifications that will be required of both teachers and students in making associated changes.
Dr. Edwards presents a convincing case for the power of learning communities to more genuinely reflect the nature of the broader American society and to more authentically empower students as learners. How else can it be than the means necessarily being consistent with the ends? 'Shades of John Dewey,' you might say! Yes, but more validly, the research findings of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky is extensively actualized. That is, knowledge is constructed by the individual child/learner, while immersed in a social context, whether family or school. Traditional education has always ignored how children truly learn resulting in very limited learning outcomes, while the classroom itself has often been a scene of contrary wills between teacher and student.