This post, in which @emmamccrea has created a list of prompts to get students thinking, has got me thinking about the conditions for, and definitions of, learning and thinking.
Emma wrote the post following the suggestion from Robert Coe that 'learning happens when people have to think hard'.
I just don't know what this means. Does it mean that learning only happens when there is 'hard' mental challenge, that requires logical reasoning?
Are there other modes of learning that don't require thinking hard? What do we learn from having a conversation, by just spending time with others? What do we learn from seeing or hearing something in print, or on film, and so on? What do we learn through movement of the body?
Do we necessarily have to 'think hard' to learn, or can we learn by thinking 'softly', by being open, by listening, through sensual experience?
We learn so much through simply being open to other points of view, putting ourselves in the place of others, thus raising our awareness.
With this 'soft' view of learning, might we then widen the focus of education from the current obsession with the individual/logical to include the social/emotional?
Emma wrote the post following the suggestion from Robert Coe that 'learning happens when people have to think hard'.
I just don't know what this means. Does it mean that learning only happens when there is 'hard' mental challenge, that requires logical reasoning?
Are there other modes of learning that don't require thinking hard? What do we learn from having a conversation, by just spending time with others? What do we learn from seeing or hearing something in print, or on film, and so on? What do we learn through movement of the body?
Do we necessarily have to 'think hard' to learn, or can we learn by thinking 'softly', by being open, by listening, through sensual experience?
We learn so much through simply being open to other points of view, putting ourselves in the place of others, thus raising our awareness.
With this 'soft' view of learning, might we then widen the focus of education from the current obsession with the individual/logical to include the social/emotional?
