One of the almost universally accepted tenets of the new paradigm in education is the fact that students should take center role and become protagonists of their own learning. In a world where every person will need to carve out an opportunity and find their niche, students can no longer be passive recipients of their education and need to take responsibility and ownership of their own learning.
In that context, it is often difficult to find instances, in school life, where students and adults can truly share responsibility about learning. There are several innovative schools that have managed to instill elements of personalization in the curriculum, but, for most schools, it is difficult to insert elements of a student centered model of learning when other traditional measures of educational quality are at stake, i.e., standardized or external examinations that still form very much a part of school culture.
But it is also true that, in almost every school, there are opportunities to develop focused projects, within spaces that allow for the implementation of such innovative strategies, as for example in PSE or other workshop like spaces that many schools now have, and whose impact can be far-reaching even if, initially at least, these initiatives are targeted efforts to showcase how students can, indeed, thrive in an environment where they self-manage their learning.
The Learnerspace Project attempts to capture the essence of student centered learning initiatives in an effort to help schools implement a real life initiative that makes true on these principles.
Click here for more information or to inquire about The Learnerspace Project Workshop