A New Culture of Learning

A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (Thomas & Brown, 2011) is a fantastic book that explains how our world has changed and why the way we learn in schools needs to change as well. It tells us that needing a new culture of learning comes down to one very simple question:

“What happens to learning when we move from the stable infrastructure of the twentieth century to the fluid infrastructure of the twenty-first century, where technology is constantly creating and responding to change?” (Thomas (Thomas & Brown, 2011) Brown, 2011, p. 17).

I believe they are right and that the question does indicate very simply why we need to change how learning takes place within school systems. What concerns me is that this book was published 12 years ago and almost 10 years prior to Covid-19 which is what, in my opinion, forced the most change upon our education system. It wasn’t the changing environment that we now live in, it wasn’t the changing of times, it was a world-wide pandemic that caused the most change I’ve seen in my life in education and not necessarily in the best way. From what I see in my small rural area of Texas, our teachers are still struggling to get the attention and interest from our students because they are required to focus so much on mandates that it takes away their freedom to teach.

How do we shift to a new significant learning environment?

In A New Culture of Learning (2012) video, Thomas talks about how passion, imagination, and constraint are critical in making sure our students learn. Thomas (2012) states, “learning is natural and easy everywhere but school”. I think the reason for this is because our students are not given the time needed to find passion and explore curiosity. As teachers, we are expected to teach certain things and then move on, whether we feel our students have received the full benefit from the learning experience or not. The method of teaching in our classrooms for quite some time has been focused on right and wrong answers which has led to little imagination, curiosity, and passion. The students are just doing the work because it is required, not because they are wanting to learn.

We need to shift to a learner focused environment versus a teacher taught environment. Shifting to a learning environment will allow our students to take ownership of their learning and be able to change with the times as they grow older. Technology has forever changed the way our world learns. What used to be a time when you only learned something from books or teachers has changed to a never-ending changing environment of information at your fingertips. Changing to a significant learning environment will mean that our teachers and students will coexist and teach each other instead of the teacher being the one to do all the teaching (Thomas and Brown, 2011).

Problems and challenges with trying to create a new significant learning environment

One of the problems faced will simply be the fact that it is change and different. Mindset changes will need to take place to shift from the “way we’ve always done it” to a better way for our future. Thomas & Brown (2011) tell us that “change forces us to learn differently” (p. 43). If we want our students to learn differently, then we as teachers need to learn how to teach differently. The multiple choice questions and end-of-chapter questions from the book need to be replaced with projects and research. Teaching our students where to search for answers instead of asking them to look only in the textbook will open their minds to other opportunities to learn and allow us to guide them in how to properly look for answers.

However, we must be careful not to just let our students "loose" with no guidance or instruction. Thomas & Brown (2011) tell us that it is important to have the learning develop with a students passion and interest but to combine that with boundaries and constraints. We want to have students explore their questions not just to find an answer but to have the experience and passion to explore what interests them.

These problems will impact my innovation plan in a few ways. First, some of the teachers in my district look at just "one more thing" that they have to do. They feel overwhelmed and do not feel as though they have the time to learn something else, even if that something else will benefit them and their students. I will say that over the last few years, since we've gone 1:1 with Chromebooks and added Promethean boards in every classroom, our teachers have started to open up to technology in the classroom. However, we must still work to help them learn how to shift their teaching so that the technology doesn't just become another tool to do what they've always done before.

Ideas for how to create a new significant learning environment and how it will impact my organization.

To help combat some of the struggles my teachers have had with using technology in the classroom, I've worked to model what it can do when I am with them. If I'm doing training, I use the same tools that they have in the classroom, even when the training has nothing to do with the technology I'm showing them. I also ask them questions when they come to me with questions. Often times, teachers think they know what tool they want to learn but after discussing their purpose and goals it turns out they need something else. Then I am able to direct them to different tools and allow them to investigate to see which one works best for them. I don't want to tell my teachers which tools they have to use anymore than I think the teachers need to always tell the students exactly how to solve their problems. The best method is to guide them based upon their needs and allow them to see what works for them.

How the mindset of all involved will influence the new significant learning environment.

I will admit that my mindset is still undergoing change in my position over the past few years. When I started in my position, it was new to the district and new to me. I found myself having the same fixed mindset that some of my teachers have and realized that is not going to help anybody. I also felt overwhelmed with starting the program from scratch and not knowing where to start so it sometimes felt easier to just not start at all. However, I have learned that taking just one step at a time will give me much more progress than I realized it would at first. I tell my teachers the same thing when they are overwhelmed with learning the new technology. I tell them to just learn one tool, or one part of the new Promethean board, and then build on it as they become more comfortable. I also work to provide them with a Tech Site that I've created for my district with videos and help guides so that as they have questions they have resources at their fingertips.

In conclusion, I have realized that while it seems little has changed in our classrooms when so much has changed in our world, that we still must go forward. We can't go back and change the progress we haven't made, but we can go forward and start making progress one step at a time.

References:

TEDx Talks. (2012, September 13). A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas at TEDxUFM [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Soulellis Studio.