Week 2: Active learning in practice

Introduction

In Week 1 you examined global and national policies on teaching and the shift to a more participatory pedagogy. The focus this week is on how such participatory pedagogy can be enacted in practice in schools and colleges by teachers and teacher educators.

The week starts by looking at key features of a participatory pedagogy. You will then explore some of the TESS-India OER in detail and begin to identify how these encourage teachers to move to more active approaches to learning in their classrooms. There are six activities for you to complete this week, including Activity 2.6 that is part of your portfolio of participation. The image below is a scene that can be found in many classrooms across the world.

Described image
Figure 1

Reflection point

To what extent does this picture reflect your own experience of learning at school? How effective was this way of learning in helping you to understand difficult concepts? How motivating is this style of teaching for the learner? Which teachers do you remember from your schooling, and why? 

All teachers carry images of and ideas about teachers and the teaching role. Their memories of their own schooling will influence their views of what good teachers do and they will also be swayed by the images of teachers around them in films, books and TV shows. Research from around the world shows the difficulty of changing teachers’ attitudes and assumptions about teaching. In order to change, teachers need to experience different ways of learning, try new approaches and analyse evidence of the effectiveness of new practices.

1 Learning through active participation