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© WERDELIN 2013
Cooperative Learning & Community building
Schools & Stakeholders
It is my belief that schools could, and should, operate with their local community in an open debate about various stakeholders' needs.
Werdelin Education working with the local school community in Norwich to develop the Enquiry & Immersion outreach programme is a tentative example of such an endeavour.
Potentially, the collaboration skills provided by the Cooperative Learning classroom are transferable to community building as they are infused with the democratic value of debating.
‘‘...we’ve got to have students as leaders in schools and co-constructors, they must be active participants’’
- Sue Williamson
Chief Executive at the SSAT, National Teacher Enquiry Network presentation, May 20, 2014
more on
Redesigning schooling; Quotes from National Teacher Enquiry Network
werdelin E D U C A T I O N
facilitating 21st century skills through Cooperative Learning
‘‘Scary at first but after getting used to it, I began to interact more with the class as everybody needed your information and listened to you.’’
- Year 8 student,
Norwich High School for Girls,
Connected Curriculum course, 2014
Norwich High School for Girls
Tailored workshop
Life in the Global Village
A series of four tailored 60 minute workshops allowed students to collaboratively construct a mental framework to help them get the most out of this two-week Connected Curriculum theme. Our focus was the situation in Syria and its impact on education.
Mutually interdependent and individually accountable, students classified, summarised, presented and negotiated meaning of interviews, scholarly research papers, public statements and news articles from various sources.
Some areas covered were area history, reflections on pre-modern societies opposed to post-colonial nations, an enquiry into the conflict and the role UN and various states, NGOs and political and paramilitary movements in the area and an assessment of their overt and covert motives.
All told, this is a model example of the focused enquiry afforded by Cooperative Learning.
‘‘...enjoyed working independently and under pressure, concise yet detailed, curiosity evoked...’’
- participant student at NHSG
Ihsan Mosque,
Norwich
Enquiry & Immersion Full-Day Field Trip
To establish the Muslims of Norwich as a valuable resource for education and to moderate negative stereotyping by facilitating religious literacy through independent enquiry and personal encounters, Werdelin Education has been commissioned to develop and organise the new Enquiry & Immersion Full-Day Field Trip to Ihsan Mosque in Norwich.
Here, students will be introduced to Islam through an enquiry exercise in the adjacent centre, after which they will have the opportunity to informally engage with community members over lunch, see the prayer, and tour the mosque.
‘‘Learning from religion was very high... but then learning about religion was also very high..’’
- Ian Burns, RE coordinator, Acle Academy,
November 2014
The program is available to Primary and Secondary in East Anglia, bookings open for 2015.
Please see formal invitation by Mr Jamal Sealey, community leader here.
Wisdom School,
Dubai
New school appplication for the KHDA
The founders' wish to "create a school community with an ethos and practice that goes beyond the academic imparting of information and techniques to nurture responsible and effective human beings who achieve personal success and contribute positively to society" is reflected in the name of this Dubai initiative.
The KHDA (Knowledge & Human Developent Authority) is the Dubai government office dealing with new school applications.
The task here was to operationalise the vision of the school in terms recognizsable and acceptable to the KHDA.
‘‘... to implement CPD to deploy Cooperative Learning (....) to facilitate an effective student-centered learning environment.’’
- Wisdom School Mission Statement, p. 3
The High Cost of Free Thinking; Debating Education Reforms in the Gulf
My 2014 Copenhagen University paper on the debate on student-centered learning in the Gulf
‘‘...many institutions or educators claim to be putting student-centred learning into practice, but in reality they are not.’’
Lea, S. J., D. Stephenson, and J. Troy (2003)
Higher Education Students’ Attitudes to Student Centred Learning: Beyond ‘educational bulimia’
Studies in Higher Education 28(3), 321–334 (Taylor & Francis Online)