About Teaching for Lifelong Learning…
Are today’s students being prepared to live in a changing, uncertain world?Lifelong learning education is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that leads to greater success and better prepares students for a lifetime of learning.
Overview and Questionnaire
Most people understand that the world is rapidly changing. Shifts in work and career, social media, science and technology; cultural changes; citizenship issues; Artificial Intelligence (AI) advances; quality of life concerns; the pandemic; climate changes; and how we communicate and interact with the rest of the world have shaken up how we live now and will continue to do so in the future.
Also, research in learning has altered our understanding of how students learn best.
Given these societal changes and understanding about learning, how should teachers, classrooms, and schools prepare students to live in a world of change and uncertainty and engage students in important, meaningful work? What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do we want to assure that our students have that will prepare them for future success? What are the best methods and approaches to teach our students?
Below is a questionnaire - survey to help you and others think about some of the educational goals and practices to consider that should help prepare students for a lifetime of learning and success. Your answers to these questions should raise issues about the practical approaches to schooling that we need to emphasize now and in the future.
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Survey Instructions: On a scale from 1 to 4 (1= disagree strongly, 2= disagree, 3= agree, 4= agree strongly) rate how important you think these lifelong learning education ideas are to implement in classrooms and schools. After taking this survey, determine which items you either strongly agreed with or those that you agreed with (3 or 4 on the scale). Then describe the key changes suggested by your results in order to to promote a lifelong learning education. What role can you play in advancing a lifelong learning education agenda?
Take the lifelong learning education survey. See where you stand. Think about the implications of your results.
Today’s students should:
1. Be actively engaged in the learning process.
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If our students are to be continuous, lifelong learners, they need to be actively engaged in the learning process by discussing important questions, exploring meaningful ideas, asking questions, doing research, being thoughtful, reading widely, choosing their own learning experiences, doing projects, solving challenges, figuring things out, explaining how things work, and becoming involved in similar types of activities.
2. Maintain and develop curiosity, interest and a “growth mindset”.
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School learning only accounts for a small fraction of learning over a lifetime. Therefore, students need to maintain and develop their curiosity and interest in learning in schools and classrooms, and carry them over into adulthood. Students also need to develop a “growth mindset” that enables them to understand that they can solve problems and improve learning through persistence and effort.
3. Build a solid foundation of key understandings and complex skills in all subjects.
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Instead of learning fragmented knowledge divorced from understanding, teachers should focus on learning ideas and understandings that make learning relevant and important. Skill development should focus on how to read well, build understanding, do research, think, communicate, and collaborate.
4. Begin new learning by developing curiosity, interest and meaning.
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Teachers should “set the stage” for new learning experiences with activities such as initial discussions of key essential questions, engaging activities that invite student curiosity and interest, and diagnostic assessments that determine prior knowledge and skills. Providing a context for new learning can help make it relevant to the learner.
5. Develop meaningful ideas and learn critical, complex skills.
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Open-ended writing assignments and discussions, authentic tasks, and projects enable students to develop understanding, conduct research, create arguments, write narratives and essays, and solve challenging real life problems. Visual learning activities provide students with an alternative way of organizing and analyzing learning. These examples of assignments and tasks foster experiences that will help students actively engage in developing complex understandings and skills that carry over to lifelong learning experiences.
6. Have many opportunities to improve their learning and their work.
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Students should understand that there are many ways to grow and improve learning, which is a key message for lifelong learning. They should be given many opportunities to receive helpful feedback, reflect on their understanding, and improve their skills.
7. Be able to frequently self-reflect on their learning.
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Self-reflection is something we want students to do all their lives. What better way to practice it than to provide on-going self-reflection activities throughout the K-12 experience.
8. Be able to work independently and interdependently in order to use and apply what they have learned and dig deeper into their learning. 1 2 3 4
Students should have the opportunity to apply and use what they have learned and dig deeper into their learning through such activities as research projects, meaningful discussions, creative problem solving, or writing an original story. These types of activities increase depth of learning and create the confidence to continue to learn on their own in the future.
9. Be able to share their work, assess other’s work, and learn from others.
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Collaborative opportunities for students to share their work, assess other people’s work, and learn from others should be ongoing.
10. Be prepared for active citizenship in a democratic society.
1 2 3 4 Learning in all subject areas can contribute to active citizenship. Examples include: learning how to find reliable sources of information; learning science concepts and investigation processes; learning how to analyze statistics; examining current challenges through a historical lens; learning about democratic values and the Constitution, analyzing current issues, and requiring community service hours, among others.
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