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report 2: Learning by Accident!
THE REPORT OF A PERSONALISED LEARNING PROJECT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AT RISK OF DISENGAGEMENT
The ViTaL Development & Research Programme
Report No. 2
This project is an extension of work carried out by the RSA, St John's School and Community College, London Academy, University of Bristol and University of Newcastle.
The partner organisations - RSA, St John's School, London Academy, Newcastle and Bristol Universities and ViTaL Partnerships - are collaborating on a combination of radical approaches to teaching and learning with a view to developing understanding of how:
- personalised learning can work in the classroom and other education settings
- the RSA competences and the dynamic assessment of learning power, using the Seven Dimensions of Learning Power in the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI), can combine to facilitate students' independent learning.
A series of closed seminars was held, hosted by the RSA to ensure that all of the 'learning' from a range of projects was captured and made available to practitioners and academic researchers in the most appropriate formats.
One possible outcome of this work is the identification and recommendation for further research of an experimental, 'personalised learning methodology', based on the following eight-step process:
First, the student is encouraged to choose an object or place that fascinates her.
Second, she observes and analyses the chosen object/place, both as a separate, objective entity and in relation to her own interest and reasons for choosing it.
Third, she starts asking questions: obvious, but open ones, such as: How did it get there? What was there before? Why is it how it is? Who uses it? How and why did they get involved?
Fourth, the questioning leads to the identification of narratives, both around the chosen object and in the students' unfolding of new learning.
Fifth, the learner begins to discern that these narratives lead in turn to new, concepts, skills and understanding. The learning becomes a 'knowledge map'.
Sixth, the student's widening 'map' of knowledge can be related to existing 'public' maps or models of the world.
Seventh, the student arrives at the interface between her personal enquiry and the specialist requirements of curriculum, course, examination or accreditation.
Eighth and last, the student can forge links between what she now knows and institutional and social structures receptive to it. She has created a pathway from subjective response and observation towards the interface with established knowledge.
Two new partners agreed to contribute to this work by offering a context for additional development work: (i) Vinney Green Secure Unit, South Gloucestershire and (ii) Bath & North-east Somerset Training Services. They are both organisations working with 'hard-to-reach' young people – young offenders and 'NEET Learners' (not in education, employment or training) respectively – whom the schooling system has not yet enabled to make a positive contribution and/or achieve economic well-being.
Naomi Millner, a new Graduate of the University of Cambridge, worked with these additional partners and their students for the whole of July and August 2006 to design and implement this extension project.
The aim of the project was to "test and evaluate the personalised learning methodology (described above) with a cohort of young people at risk of disengagement from formal learning and society."
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