Childhood Education Innovations
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Childhood Education: Innovations is an education magazine that provides unique, stimulating information about educational programs around the world. Articles explore solutions to specific challenges affecting schools, teachers, and learners and showcase the most recent innovations being developed and implemented to address those challenges. Readers will find inspiration for transforming education to better serve children and society. Published 6 times a year, CE Innovations provides a window into the work being done to bring quality, equitable education to all children. It stands alongside the Journal of Research in Childhood Education as one of our signature publications.
CONTENTS
September/October 2023
“Mastery, Not Time: A Look at Competency-Based Education in Practice”
Preparing today’s students for success in their future careers and helping them live up to their fullest potential means we need to equip them with the necessary durable skills and transferable knowledge to do so. This means fundamentally rethinking how, when, and where learning happens. We must recognize that learning can happen both within and beyond the classroom walls through real-world projects in the community and work-based experiences. The good news is that there are efforts to do just this. We must rethink how time plays a role in education and instead put attention on student mastery, ensuring each student gets the support they need to build knowledge and skills to thrive. A growing interest in competency-based education offers a future-focused path to transform the educational experience.
“Everything’s Connected: Using Systems Maps for Inquiry Learning”
Systems maps differ from traditional graphic organizers because they are generated by students during class discussion. They are also distinct from web organizers because the emphasis is not on organizing information, but rather on student discovery of complexities in relationships within (and between) natural and social systems with both human and non-human elements. Additionally, systems mapping emphasizes repeated revision as new learning occurs. The author found three primary benefits to creating systems maps: they nurture inquiry learning, they promote culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, and they represent holistic systems thinking.
“The Wisdom Corridor Project”
Project FUEL (Forwarding the Understanding of Every Life Lesson), founded in 2009 by Deepak Ramola, collects life lessons from people all over the world. The organization archives these lessons and passes them along for others to learn from, using documents, social media, workshops, and interactive displays. As a subset of Project FUEL, Deepak and his team created The Wisdom Corridor Project for schools. Creating a Wisdom Corridor is a wonderful opportunity for students to get to know teachers outside of the formal curriculum, learn about their life lessons, and then transform the school corridors into vibrant learning environments that showcase the teachers’ powerful life lessons to share with everyone who passes through the school.
“Greetings From the Classroom of the Future”
The Future Classroom is the author’s attempt to disrupt the stagnant nature of learning, and it is working. It is a classroom without desks. Students are agile and the learning moves with them. The teacher is free to explore new practices. The author was inspired by schools like High Tech High, the Agora, and the newly formed London Interdisciplinary School. The Future Classroom is a fusion of potential — ideas yet to be realized. The author teaches Science, Computing, and Global Citizenship. Combined, these subjects offer a canvas to explore learning in a fresh way. The knowledge associated with these disciplines allow for ideas to overlap and for the content to transcend the traditional boundaries that insulate subjects.
“All for One and One for All: Integral Education for a Better World”
Focusing on developing discrete skills and content knowledge will not make our world a better place to live unless we make changes on a more fundamental level. We can raise children to be geniuses, but it will not help us if they do not realize how vital it is to develop positive and mutually supportive relationships with others. Looking at all our current crises, it is clear that these relationships need to transcend family-level, community-level, and nation-level boundaries. To have an impactful reach, we must seek global solutions in education. A guiding principle of integral education is the importance for children to learn firsthand to treat each other with kindness and to look after each other’s well-being.
“Implementing the Project Approach With Toddlers”
When children work on a project that interests them, they are more involved in reading and research than they are during teacher-directed teaching. The role of teachers is to carefully observe and listen to children in order to understand their curiosity and wonderings and use that understanding to develop playful and meaningful learning experiences through which children can investigate questions and collaborate with others. Engaging in the cycle of intentional teaching requires teachers to engage in 1) careful observation and documentation, 2) analysis of recorded documentation, 3) planning for learning experiences informed by observational analysis, and 4) reflection on the experiences in order to make adjustments.
“Lessons Learned Working in a New Cultural Context: The Preschools of Anguilla”
The authors are four experienced early childhood professionals who have been learning together for the past five years in ongoing professional development workshops on the island of Anguilla. They have much in common and are also very different from one another in many ways. Through their work, and the work of the other 35 preschool teachers on the island, they are defining what developmentally appropriate practice is like within the cultural context of Anguilla. The preschool teachers of Anguilla bring “their own experiences and contexts to their decision making.”
“Teacher as International Traveler: Global Citizenship Education With Young Children and Preservice Teachers”
The author, Sarah, was invited to join a group of educators traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal. They would explore cultural sites in and around Kathmandu, observe and have cross-cultural discussions with Nepali teachers and children in early education schools, and meet with faculty members at Kathmandu University. The children and preservice teachers were not traveling with her, but Sarah thought the trip posed a valuable opportunity to build a novel approach to GCE. She began thinking about ways to connect the children with her and the Nepali people and school sites during her visit, introducing a global aspect to the everyday curriculum through virtual involvement with a real-life travel experience.
“Coding as the Foundation for Learning”
Whether you are teaching in Europe, Asia, Australia, or the United States, coding must take its place among the fundamentals of education globally, along with literacy, numeracy, and the sciences. Many countries have recognized this need and thus have made computer science compulsory in schools. In other places, like the United States, schools are not required to offer the subject, which makes embedding coding into the existing curriculum even more crucial. The purpose of teaching students to code isn’t to turn them into the software developers of tomorrow — though it’s a wonderful avenue for doing so — but rather to give them a basic life skill of creating with technology, helping them understand its powers and limitations and how it can be used as a solution to the many challenges they will face.
“Technology-Assisted Education: A Double-Edged Sword for Children’s Learning and Safety”
The author has been working on a science fiction novel for a long time. Here, he presents a scenario about what learning will look like in the near future. One of the recurring dilemmas he often faces as an education scientist and father concerns choosing between safeguarding or potential neglect in terms of education. Here, he speculates on how quickly this ethical dilemma is increasing in a digitalized world and how it may become even more important in the near future.