Contextual Curriculum

The contextual curriculum - International
Idea Source The Contextual Curriculum

This curriculum has been prepared for use by Ideas School:

___________________ Dr. Derek W. Nicoll Ph.D. (Edinburgh)
B.A. (hons)(E. London)
Director of Curriculum design and
Academic research

___________________ Date

___________________ Mr. Vann Sok Heng
Director of operations

___________________ Date


The contextual curriculum aims to provide an outstanding international education. We
strive to encourage our students to realise their full potential helping them develop
the universal building blocks of knowledge while practicing essential 21
st
century
skills. We stress a positive attitude to the world and global society through an inquiry
and competency based learning curriculum. This is essentially student centred that
is, a curriculum that attends to the strengths, interests, capacities and weaknesses of
the individual student. And it is creatively based this means much more than simply
developing artistic skills per se but ultimately considers the creative design of
systems, services, scenarios, business, scientific research, as much as the
authorship of print and digital media, arts and crafts, performance arts and comedy,
moreover, human interventions and interactions.

In practice this means we wish to develop excellence in a diverse mix of international
students, all of them possessing varying capacities, interests and aspirations,,
including parental aspirations for resilience to uncertain futures. They are all
concerned for their future. In this we are inspired by those educational approaches
which have been designated as progressive Montessori, Reggio Emilio, High
Scope, Waldorf. Each have their distinctive place in the pantheon of educational
approaches and styles, each have their own unique and characteristic differences,
but all have the child, their interests and capacities as central (please see the
appendix for an outline of these approaches). Maria Montessori for instance,
observed children, seeking to identify positive human behaviours in their interaction
with their environment. (Lillard, p.xix) She worked on a process of design and
redesign throughout her life to build learning environments and approaches which
encouraged positive human behaviours. In this sense, returning to the Cambodian
proverb above it is not the teacher who is the sage, but the child. By providing them
with designed and measured experiences, intentional experiences, we can listen to
accounts in words and pictures, or sounds regarding how they apprehend and
encounter. Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio Emilia approach to child
education has given us the phrase, "The Hundred Languages of Children," which
refers to the virtually infinite numbers of ways those children can express, explore,
and connect their thoughts, feelings and imaginings. These expanded ideas of
intelligence empower children and adults whose strengths too often go unrecognized,
and remind teachers that a narrow curriculum neglects the full range of significant
human capacities.

From early childhood, individuals encounter masses of complex, symbolic information
and diverse cultural products. They are also constantly called upon to renew their
social relations as they understand the social contract, forcing them to confront
The nature of a sage full of wisdom, without anyone willing
to ask questions, is akin to a large drum that does not have
anyone to beat it; when someone finally inquires of the
person, [the response] will be like pouring rain.


considerable novelty and ambiguity. As adults we have structured and essentially
fossilised many social relations and communicative patterns. This makes us fairly
narrow in how we may view children and childhood, even when we are [even
because we are] trained teachers. Such environments place a heavy burden on the
individuals adaptive capacity and resources. Learning is at the core of this process
with the teacher being more like a researcher of child and subject.

Given that any curriculum must include the totality of intellectual and emotional
experiences which are planned for young learners throughout their education, we
must consider where they are being educated: online, offline, inside of classrooms or
outside of school. And we must consider how this education is being delivered. For
us, teachers and academic management must be worldly wise, aware of the diverse
and wide range of learning contexts that contribute to the 21
st
century globalised
environment. They must be distinctly aware of the material, economic and social
environments, the communities and local industries, in which the learning takes
place, and which tools, technologies, practices and techniques, places, facilities and
people can help students make sense of them, work with and within them. This
includes digital media and communications, but could include seeds and plants,
sustainable methods of agriculture, alternative energy, and so forth. Our laboratory is
our local environment, community and geography, local markets and spaces of
production serves as economic models in every way as much as the internet and
books and pictures.

In order to do this we draw from the progressive approaches and also the best ideas
emerging from recent scientific research and knowledge. We also consider practice
emerging from the very best global teaching practices. Our benchmark for excellence
has to be Finland and Singapore every bit as much as the U.S. and U.K.

Founders

Dr. Derek W. Nicoll is an academic and academic consultant, with over 20 years of
teaching in the UK and internationally, in both experimental and traditional world-
class institutions. His experience informs the curriculum and he will be responsible for
the overall academic management. Through his experience he has a solid grounding
in what works, both in terms of blending technology, pedagogy and technique, and in
international standards and accreditation. This lends the standard and quality he and
his business partner, social entrepreneur Mr. Vann Sok Heng, wish to realise for
Ideasource learners.

We wish to share with students an experience of the results of the leadership,
infrastructure, architectural, and strategic planning that went into the schools
creation. But the process is far from complete.

In order to achieve true, lasting, and replicable success, we must continue to capture
on a daily basis and reflect upon what we have learnt from students, outline key
steps, illustrate critical insights, understand challenges, and share the solutions we
have found to have worked. Teaching staff and management, and other key
stakeholders such as parents should be encouraged to circulate their views. This is
so learning permeates all Idea Source activities, and channels through all our staff,
and to and from the local community. Children learn from staff and parents and the
members of the wider community, staffs learn from parents and children and the
community, and the community learns from staff, parents and children. The success

of the Kindergarten and school will only be based on the high quality and dedication
of the management, administration and teaching staff to formulate and promote
learning opportunities. It will also be bound with continuous professional development
opportunities, as well as the philosophy and curriculum outlined in this document.

Parents will also play an integral role to the continual improvement and evaluation of
the service we offer, through the Parent Liaison Group. Through this link and our
association with Indigo Psychological counselling services based in Phnom Pehn, we
aim to educate not only the children in the community, but wider members of the
community itself, most notably parents. We aim to help parents by advising on
positive parenting and helping realise a deeper understanding of the benefits of
quality education for their children, and the concomitant benefits for their community,
and also their towns, cities and nation.
The type of personality we will work to inculcate
While striving to balance between understanding and the acquisition of essential
knowledge, we focus on meeting the future needs of our preparing international
student body. We help them on their journey to become participating, confident,
successful, responsible and tolerant global and active citizens of tomorrow - a self-
actualizer an individual who is living creatively and fully using his or her full
potentials.
In his studies, the psychologist Abraham Maslow found that self-actualizers share
similarities. Whether famous or unknown, educated or not, rich or poor, self-
actualizers will tend to fit the following profile.
Efficient perceptions of reality. Self-actualizers are able to judge situations
correctly and honestly. They are very sensitive to the fake and dishonest, and
are free to see reality 'as it is'.
Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature. Self-actualizers accept their
own human nature with all its flaws. The shortcomings of others and the
contradictions of the human condition are accepted with humour and
tolerance.
Spontaneity. Maslow's subjects extended their creativity into everyday
activities. Actualizers tend to be unusually alive, engaged, and spontaneous.
Task centering. Most of Maslow's subjects had a mission to fulfill in life or
some task or problem beyond themselves (instead of outside of themselves)
to pursue. Humanitarians such as Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa are
considered to have possessed this quality.
Autonomy. Self-actualizers are free from reliance on external authorities or
other people. They tend to be resourceful and independent.
Continued freshness of appreciation. The self-actualizer seems to constantly
renew appreciation of life's basic goods. A sunset or a flower will be
experienced as intensely time after time as it was at first. The "innocence of
vision", that of an artist or child, is maintained.
Fellowship with humanity. Maslow's subjects felt a deep identification with
others and the human situation in general.
Profound interpersonal relationships. The interpersonal relationships of self-
actualizers are marked by deep loving bonds.
Comfort with solitude. Despite their satisfying relationships with others, self-
actualizing persons value solitude and are comfortable being alone.

Non-hostile sense of humor. This refers to the wonderful capacity to laugh at
oneself and not the faults or weaknesses of other people.
Peak experiences. All of Maslow's subjects reported the frequent occurrence
of peak experiences (temporary moments of self-actualization). These
occasions were marked by feelings of ecstasy, harmony, and deep meaning.
We will not make false claims regarding whether we can deliver a program, which,
entirely on its own merits can make every child a self-actualizer, as clearly such a
condition is also shaped by the support and attitudes of parents, family, friends and
the wider community. Nevertheless, we recognize ultimately that it is, by nature, the
product of the student themselves to do this and we will support the development of
such traits. The list above serves as something of a roadmap to and orientation
towards what we would consider desirable in the well-rounded person beyond purely
scholastic, academic and career aspirations. We align to this vision in our aspiration
for the individual learner.

Antonio Damasio (2000) offers us a convincing explanation of how rationality and
emotion work in tandem to allow us to make sense of the world. He suggests that
rational thought uses a less evolved part of our brains than that involved in creative
thinking. Creative thinking, it seems, marks the pinnacle of brain evolution, so
deserves a bit more respect than it often gets. Using our whole body to engage with
an experience in conjunction with other people means that our rationality,
intuition, creativity and physiological responses are all part of the picture. At best they
are aligned and working together. This is key when we talk of talk of co-creation or
living life as inquiry (i.e., Marshall, 1999), where objectivity and subjectivity become
irrelevant.

In the home and community, people face a wide range of choices that can only be
effectively resolved through learning. In our teaching we strive to be acutely centred
in the present, what Stacey (2002) speaks of as the living present. This present is
where problems are encountered. Most of us as adults experience problems in the
here and now as they range in scope and scale, from where to buy a coffee, to how
to fix ones car, to how to produce electricity, to how to compete in a global market
while making sure vulnerable members of society are protected. For children in the
classroom, it may be how to correct a messy picture, of how to tell a p from a q, or
b from a d. It may be coping with anger experienced when someone has chosen a
toy that we wanted to play with. This immediacy places the strategic intent of
teaching as a very professional job where all prospects, outcomes and possibilities
should be mapped beforehand by the teachers, meaning that they can guide or herd
ideas and students researches towards specific learning outcomes.

How we are affected by these problems, how we apprehend, consider, and
understand them, how we formulate and develop ideas and alternative solutions is a
major concern of our learning project and process.

In order to do this we need to develop a language to describe and identify these
problems of intellect and emotion. This may be the need to inculcate language and
numerical skills at appropriate levels, we need knowledge derived from studies of
history and geography philosophy and science, from the humanities and social
sciences, and any other relevant spheres relevant to the research. It may be that we
need to develop a language of compromise, negotiation and mutual trust and respect
and find a way of working together.

We need presentations and communication skills to disseminate and pitch findings,
ideas and proposals. The ability to accomplish all the above in a confident,
compelling and persuasive manner is the endgame of an Ideasource education. But
this does not mean that we should not start early in the young learners education to
prime and prepare them with the solid foundational skills necessary to do this.

The individual learners future

We consider forthright that in considering scholastic, academic and career
aspirations; it would be a mistake to think of these only as something which pertains
to the present time and state of the economy. What will the local, regional and global
look like in 2028? What sort of personality, knowledge and skills requirements will be
needed? We only need consider what the world of work looked like in 1998 at local
and global levels to understand that for some time now change and disruption must
be considered as usual, and in many senses it will be profound and radical. What
kind of businesses and social practices will dominate in 2028, which will have died
out, which are only just appearing? What kind of values will people have? Will there
be more global opportunities than local, and so forth.

When we consider the child we must also think in terms of the Three Ps and a W,
used in scenario planning and which represent possible, probable, and preferable
futures, plus wildcards.

Possible these are scenarios and types of problems and opportunities
which may happen. We can paint a picture of positive, stable state or negative
and outline the features and characteristics of each senior with relation to how
the childs future may be affected and what we must do to prepare them for
this.

Probable this largely follow a trajectory based upon the changes noted from
the previous 15 years, and assumes that changes will move in a relatively
constant manner, that politics, economy, technology and cultural values
change according to perceivable trends. Familiar problems may intensify or
deepen (the need for alternative energy), opportunities will open in semi-
predictable ways (such as catering for an ageing increasingly young
population). It does not account for radical or drastic disruption, or goals and
boons. If things do go according to plan, how does or will the individual child fit
into this world? What must we, as educators, provide for this reality?

Preferable- Many people hold some vision of how they would like to see their
personal, family, community, city, province and countrys situation improved.
This could range from physical changes, such as cleaner and tidier
environment, more agriculture, improved tourism, more parks, more eco-
friendly, it may mean healthier lifestyles and access to more healthful foods, it
may mean more community-based resources, more independence etc. If they
do have such visions, how does or will the individual child provide for this
world? What must we do to help them? What kinds of new problems and
opportunities will arise if these aims are met?

Wildcards, Outliers or Black Swan Events these are low probability but
high impact events (positive or negative) should they occur. These include

events we have little control over; sudden economic bubbles and collapse,
illness, bereavement, family disputes, radcial changes in politics and laws,
wars and natural disaster. We hardly focus on the extreme impact of certain
kinds of rare and unpredictable events and humans' tendency to find simplistic
explanations for these events retrospectively. If they do how does or will the
individual child cope with this world? Radical new and unexpected problems
and opportunities arise, how are they coped with, dealt with and handled?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggested that a Black Swan Event - a metaphor that
describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major effect, and after
the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight - depends on
who is observing (Taleb, 2007). What may be a Black Swan surprise for a chicken is
not a Black Swan surprise for its butcher - hence the objective should be to "avoid
being the turkey" by identifying areas of vulnerability in order to "turn the Black
Swans white". Something of a similar idea is put forward by the media ecologist
Douglas Rushkoff, who indicates that we must program or be programmed. He
indicates a future where those who are in command of information technology and
programming will be those who determine the lives, activities and realities of others.

In either case the type of knowledge and perspective necessary extends far beyond
the thinking employed in learning differential calculus from a blackboard. It requires
new disciplinary knowledge such as:

Systems Thinking emphasizes our need to understand a whole system and
the relationships between its parts rather than focusing on its parts in isolation.
The goal is to uncover those aspects of the system that with the greatest
potential to change the system as a whole. It relates to networks, webs,
cooperation, participatory social and business. It considers the dangers of
bounded rationale where we focus in a much too focused way, such as only
on a particular area of life and existence to the exclusion of all other
possibilities, making such that we cannot see the wood for the trees. When it
embraces complexity, the notions that there are too many variables so as to
confound orthodox linear rational thinking, it can produce novel emergent
results. In recent years, the complexity sciences have thrown into question
much of our thinking about how society works and how knowledge is created
(Stacey, 2003).Living systems present too many variables for us to rely on one
assumed future scenario. Broadly, it describes how larger patterns arise from
local-level interactions. These patterns cannot be understood or predicted
from the behaviour of the lower-level interactions alone. Neither can they be
understood in a linear way, e.g. as cause and effect, the Newtonian clockwork
world. Life in beta is Bruce Nussbaums term for the notion of continuously
sensing, interpreting and acting on shifting environmental conditions.
Emergent inquiry is a mind-set or a way of practicing, rather than a
methodology. Research becomes more like real life; messier, richer, more
contradictory. We move from a linear to a non-linear perspective, i.e. think
network of relationships rather than cause and effect.
Design Thinking begins by understanding both the tacit and explicit needs of
stakeholders, and then carries this understanding through to problem
definition, concept development, prototyping and implementation of new
solutions. In this context, design thinking is the process of taking an
imaginative leap into the future and working back from the desired outcome to
identify what must then happen. Service design is a related term which looks

at how value is systemically created in services. Instead of thinking of society
and culture as a collection of things, i.e. people, organisations, job roles,
information, the emphasis within complexity thinking is on relationships
between things. Again, these emerging fields are an attempt to consider
implications, cause and effect, and reduce unexpected consequences or at
least their effects and negative impacts.

Concepts from complexity science point the way to a healthier world for business,
communities and individuals. We have to abandon illusions of predictability) in order
to pursue agility and resilience. Consider, that much of the benefits of modern
society rest upon only a few pervasive innovations with roots over a hundred years
ago namely, electricity and electric power and lighting, radio and television, the
telephone, and the internal combustion engine. All are systemic in nature. The
American inventor Thomas Edisons genius lay in his ability to conceive of a fully
developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device i.e. the lightbulb. He
envisioned how people would want to use what he made, and he engineered toward
that insight. He was not always prescient (he originally believed the phonograph
would be used mainly as a business machine for recording and replaying dictation),
but he invariably gave great consideration to users needs and preferences. This
helps us realize new valuable ideas that will shape the future, yet ground it in what
people need or want. It also helps see the big picture not just the product or
service itself but moreover, its implications, how it links to wider systems to create
value propositions or unexpected consequences. Edison underscores the need for
drive, motivation, vision and creativity to make breakthrough innovations, but also to
think systemically not only in terms of technical systems, but also into the more
humanly defined areas of purpose, use, usage and utility. Similar understandings
were made by Alexander Graham Bell with respect to the telephone, and Henry Ford
with the development of the automobile and assembly line.

What kind of society and world is the child growing up, both within and into? What will
they need to know, be able to do, be able to work with, and who will they work
alongside with or who will they be working for in the future?

As we have already noted, regardless of where one comes from in the world, most
parents need only consider the changes they have witnessed in their own lives to
realize this is a world which is dynamic and volatile. It is ever changing if one does
not change, if one does not renew and innovate, adapt, adopt, acknowledge this,
then they, they lifestyles and businesses will be changed by external forces, such as
competitors in local, regional and global levels. Staring uncertainty in the face, and
inculcating flexibility, creativity and entrepreneurship in our students is the best
strategy we can offer in preparation for opportunities and threats as yet unforeseen.
This can be calibrated very early in childhood at very elementary levels of schooling,
through teaching language, numbers, art and science using design, management,
and strategic planning ideas in a very basic sense. Concepts from complexity
science point the way to a healthier world for business, communities and individuals.

This comes to relevancy when we consider the kinds and types of competencies we
wish to encourage. Following the late system thinker Stafford Beer in "Brain of the
Organization" (p. 163), and working closely with the students, we create and foster a
thinking and creative learning environment: one which characterized by the following:


Actuality: What students are managing to do already, on entry we assess the
ideas, knowledge and skills they have brought them when they come to us, or
independently of any intervention, with existing ready-to-hand resources,
under existing and prevailing constraints.
Capability: Professional teachers/facilitators with an awareness of what they
could be doing (still right now) with existing resources, under existing
constraints, if they really worked at it.
Potentiality: This is what the student ought to be doing by developing their
resources and removing constraints, although still having them still operating
within the bounds of what is already known to be feasible.
In summary, it is not that we wish to develop business administrators that are three
years old, which by 18 are ready to take up a leadership role in a major transnational
corporation. Our main focus is inculcate learners who emotionally feel safe, who do
not feel anxious, who feel accepted, not excluded, who feel loved and are loving, and
who are polite, gracious, competent and well meaning, living a fulfilling life as decent
self-actualised human beings. Beyond these admirable, personal and emotional
capacities we want them to be able to think of the big picture. That is understand
cause and effect, think beyond, above, around, and through the problem to identify
solutions and positive outcomes, employ powerful rationale and logic in their
criticisms, think systemically regarding social, economic and technical problems, and
to be flexible and versatile, and like bamboo, to also be strong, confident and able to
wisely handle or cope with change, to take advantage of change, to sustain and
protect their families from the threats of change, and yet be open minded enough
able to realise the opportunities and bounties that change delivers and that deliver
change.
Adapted from Getting to Maybe by Westley, Zimmerman & Patton
SIMPLE COMPLICATED COMPLEX

baking a cake constructing a building sustaining a business
or raising and
educating a child

linear instructions,
predictable outcome
experts coordinate many sets
of instructions to achieve a
specific outcome
Inherent variety and
uncertainty in a dynamic
environment that
requires continuous
interpreting and sensing;
may lead to SURPRISE

Origins

Young children must learn is a misnomer. Everyone learns, and they do so all the
time, and over their entire life the saying is you learn something new every day.
Sometimes this is a must due to changing circumstances. No day is exactly the
same; no place is identical, knowledge is not identical, no human being is the same
as any other and even human twins differ. What we learn and why we learn it, its
relevance and importance will vary depending upon time and place, upon
circumstance, as does our individual capacity to learn, to memorize and to recall, as
does our ability to apply and take advantage of it.

The difference between human beings becomes mitigated to our needs. All people,
rich and poor, fat and slim, tall and short need water. This suggests an extraordinary
range of potential learning prospects. One must learn to live both with success and
adversary throughout life and see and recognize failure as a gift of learning. Failure
and success open new needs and call for new techniques and attitudes in order for
the person to sustain, support, survive, participate, develop and grow. It was
Abraham Maslow that suggested a hierarchy of needs, which begin with basic
biological needs, such as for water and sustenance and move through a succession
needs towards self-actualization. We are drawn together, and our differences
grounded in the fact that we all need to eat and access water. We become more
individuated as we progress through his hierarchy towards self-
actualization.Maslows famous hierarchy of needs should serve as a basis for
pinning, introducing and learning history [history of the human search for food and
water, food and water security, the history of property, land and grazing rights, etc.]
geography [the geographic shaping of human communities, how humans spread
throughout the world, how the environment and weather shaped human habitats, skin
colour etc.], technology [moving from stone hand tools, to wheels, metals,
technologies of agriculture, symbols and communication, , science, and economics]
again calibrated to be comprehensible for the age group. Most of the home runs of
marketing history occurred when people sensed the fundamental job that customers
were trying to do - and then found a way to help more people do it more effectively,
conveniently, and affordably.

Language and other knowledge acquisition

Maria Montessori suggested that young childrens brains are a sponge for
knowledge and this is largely held out by recent neuroscience where it does appear
that children acquire language most easily between the ages of 3-7 years. This is
providing it is there and present and active in their environment. It may be true of
other forms of knowledge, but this has yet to be shown. Talking about things, feelings
and environments - nouns - in everyday life, talking about food, water, chairs, cups,
doors, floors, colours, sizes, in the room are phenomena there and present and
that we will be active with in their environment. But what we are certain of is how
safe, stimulating and rich interactive environments contrast with the behaviors and
minds of children who are, for whatever reason, neglected and left to their own
device, or in the worst cases even deprived of social and linguistic stimulation.

We wish to restrict an overreliance on fantasies created for children, preferring
instead that we elicit the childs own propensities for imagination and fantasy. We
want them to fabricate, manufacture and create scenarios, rather than them being sat
in front of fully formed constructions made by adults with children in mind, and most
definitely we would prefer to remove pictures, video, television, books and stories

which over stimulate. We would prefer that such material was also metered and
restricted at home [i.e. kept to week-end use, and even then only for restricted time
periods].

On the converse of over-stimulated children are under- stimulated, deprived and
neglected children. They also possess brains which learn and are sponges, they
learn to cope with an environment which is monotonous, chaotic and nameless; with
no cause and effect and little need for logic. They have difficulties adjusting to and
integrating within a world where we so much rely on order, social skills, repetitive
habit and ritual and convention, and with no language they will find it impossible to
interface with others or often have little to no control over their own emotions.

So to begin with young children is of course a category and not a reference to one
individual learner who may learn in different and particular ways and may have
different propensities to learn particular things at different times, or at different rates.
They may also have different needs, varying depths of knowledge, and quite different
learning styles. While Howard Gardners model of multiple intelligences remains a
matter of some dispute, it is clear that children have different talents and all must be
exercised and understood. Their learning is furthermore depended upon their own
intrinsic capacities and drives, their abilities to settle their minds and focus and
concentrate. Depending on what resources, materials and explicated methods are at
hand in a rich environment which includes the equipment, materials, and teacher, the
curriculum should be designed to accommodate the following principles
1
:

Challenge and enjoyment, reducing monotony pitching and calibrating
projects, tasks and exercises so they do not overwhelm with complexity,
difficulty, but offering just the right level of resistance so that successful
completion is possible for the individual learner. There is mounting evidence
that students learning is maximized when content is delivered just above
their current capabilities - not too much of a stretch, and not too easy.
Customization to the just above level for each student is much easier to
achieve in software than in the current monolithic delivery model of traditional
schooling. This idea relates closely to the notion of the Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD), which was developed by Lev Vygotsky, a Soviet
psychologist. An often cited definition of his term is, the distance between the
actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and
the level of potential development as determined through problem solving
under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers as written
in his own work (see L.S. Vygotsky: Mind in Society: Development of Higher
Psychological Processes (Cambridge: Harvard, 1978), p. 86.).. Peterson says:
Working on problems that are of the right level of difficulty is rewarding, but
working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant. Paul E.
Peterson, Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning (Cambridge:
Harvard, 2010) p. 253.
Breadth Unlike in the traditional curriculum where subjects are
compartmentalised and largely treated as mutually exclusive, a wide range of
knowledge skills and expertise must come to play in the completion of
projects, tasks and exercises. A house for instance is not only a quality of
bricks and concrete, it has a history, it sits in a geography, it can be a
business [rented, or built to sell], it can a be a home, it may be designed, it

1
Drawn from the Scottish National Curriculum of Excellence, 2011

uses water and electricity and so on. There is room to understand house
nested in a serious of subject related contexts this is the crux of the
contextual curriculum.
Progression As already mentioned progression is critical simple ideas lay
foundation to move elaborate, encompassing assemblages of skills and
knowledge which must match the learners individual and groups abilities and
capacities. Young children will do simple and foundational tasks and projects
lasting no more than an hour, maximum two hours a day (3-6 age group). This
will extend to a few days (6-9 age group), one week (9-12 age group), and 1
month (12-15 age group) and 6 months (15-18 age group) as they progress
through their studies. Unlike traditional schooling where one is supposed to
learn all subjects at the same rate, we should expect nonlinear progress.
(there will be ups and downs between and within subject areas) The creative
process depends on the learning that emerges from each trial and error
iteration. Instead of being surprised and daunted by a naturally bumpy
process, it can be recognized as a progressive journey. This view is not a
matter of positive thinking; its derived from the realities of adaptive systems.

Depth As progression and breadth play out so will depth in particular subject
areas with respect to the nature of the project, task, or exercise. Not all
projects for instance will place demands on depth in all subject areas. For
instance, a project on rice cultivation will place emphasis upon the history of
growing methods and techniques, great emphasis on geography, biology and
agribusiness, than physics and maths.
Personalisation and choice The work that students participate in should
reflect the talents and capacities of the individual learner, what they want to
learn, or what they have negotiated that they will learn with their parents,
school and their group.
Coherence Cohrence in terms of what we offer means making sure of our
connections between all the learning materials, and contents of learning
materials. For instance if Tad is a tadpole in which ways does he relate to
Mr. Frog more than him just being the Dad, do the young learners realise the
reality of how tadpoles change into frogs, what do Frogs really do in their lives
etc.? How does that character in this video relate to work outwith that video,
i.e. in real human relationships? How does this game relate to what we are
doing in numbers and language with learners, can some of the visual
elements of the movie become the basis of a game, or link with another
character in another video or online site? There are times when we must make
sure elements, games, themes, equipment, sites, objects, words, numbers,
link in manners in which will make sense to learners, there are also times to
hold off, to allow learners slack to make their own coherence between
phenomena.
Relevance relevance is twofold here, the first is the relevance of what is
made coherent, either by teacher/facilitators, and school and curriculum
designers, and what is made coherent by learners themselves. Ultimately this
is tied to assessment of the overall functional or material success of a project
and not the process and method components. Did they make their objectives,
or can they say precisely why they didnt while offering reasonable and well-
thought out solutions.

Game playing is an act of challenge and enjoyment. This is why we wholeheartedly
bring game playing aspects or gamification to our learning environment. When

there is no challenge there is no learning and little gratification. We aim to match our
expectations and our ability to set challenges at the appropriate level for the
development of the individual child.

Moreover, we wish to offer breadth through drawing upon a wide range of subjects
from a handling of their elementary level through helping students master key
foundational elements and work though progressively to more sophisticated webs-
of-meaning which will add depth to the studies suitable for the various age groups
and capacities of the learners.

It is incredibly important that learners take ownership of their work, and that which
they do with others. Life invariably is about choice and making decisions, some of
which can have profound implications. By empowering and encouraging students to
personalise their learning orientations.

Coherence and relevance are key ideas to the contextual curriculum which will be
explored more in depth later in this document. Suffice to say here is that the
coherence between ideas, methods and uses for the key category water needs to
be drawn by the student themselves under the tutelage if need be, of the teacher
/facilitator. Ultimately, relevance is something which forms out of a coherence in
ideas and their associative properties. Students are considered as open systems
and not blank slates in as far as they will always come to us with experiences drawn
from their interactions with the world beyond the school, with objects, family and
friends (an existing coherence) We carry the view of children viewed as open
systems and not blank slates in as far as they will always come to us with
experiences drawn from their interactions in the wider world beyond the school, with
objects, technologies, family and friends. Complex Adaptive Systems are diverse
living elements made up of multiple interconnected agents that have the capacity to
change and learn from experience. On the one hand we have the rigid protocols and
assumed objectivity stemming from classical or Newtonian science, and its focus
on reducing things to their smallest possible components. On the other, theres the
fluid, exploratory approach, the systemic view, which wishes to consider all things, all
knowledge, all behaviour in context. The new sciences, including complexity,
quantum physics and evolutionary psychology offer a very different way of
understanding the world, over one which looks at events and eventualities as a linear
chain of components and sub-routines.

This forms a coherence which is an actuality regarding what they can do already and
what they do know. Teacher/facilitators, open emergent curriculum material and
a prepared environment or boundary [more like a skin, cell membrane with
porous qualities], consisting of materials, spaces and communications, are the
coherence help them build and prepare internal associations, behaviours, and skills
which will help them better versatility and capability to integrate and intervene in a
positive way within their communities, society and the world. The interaction of the
learners with this environment, the cohesion that they make for the emergence or
possibility of future states which match the environment as it may present.
Our approach acknowledges children for who, and what, they are, not for what they
are intended to be. And so with respect to learning, we do not hold any abstracted
reified view of the young Children are to be treated as human beings with
identifiable needs, and with abilities to articulate and communicate them and explore
and find means of satisfying them.

Brookfield (1987) suggests that two activities are central to critical thinking: (1)
identifying and challenging assumptions and (2) exploring and imagining alternatives.
More than be encouraged to be critical and to seek out alternative explanations,, We
emphasize the understanding of alternative points or view and perspectives, and
realize that there is always need for empathy, compromise, negotiation and
persuasion. They should learn to criticize and accept criticism without overdue
emotional reaction. Cooper and Sauraf (1998), in their book on emotional intelligence
in the workplace, draw reference to states of consciousness such as the flow
experience discussed by Mihly Cskszentmihlyi. Flow is where one becomes
completely absorbed in the task at hand for its own sake. Those who experience flow
are intrinsically motivated to engage in work that is they are driven by the positive
feeling deprived from participating in the work itself. The work of Jean Henry in the
innovation management realm is also relevant to this field - her book includes a
chapter by Cskszentmihlyi (Henry, 1991; 2001). This is highly desirable in the case
of young people learning, to be problem-solvers, artists, scientists, comedians and
entrepreneurs.

Daniel T. Willingham writes in Chapter 1 of his book Why Dont Students Like
School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and
What It Means for the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009):
Solving problems brings pleasure. When I say problem solving in this book, I
mean any cognitive work that succeeds; it might be understanding a difficult
passage of prose, planning a garden, or sizing up an investment opportunity.
There is a sense of satisfaction, of fulfillment, in successful thinking. In the last
ten years neuroscientists have discovered that there is overlap between the
brain areas and chemicals that are important in learning and those that are
important in the brains natural reward system. Many neuroscientists suspect
that the two systems are related. Rats in a maze learn better when rewarded
with cheese. When you solve a problem, your brain may reward itself with a
small dose of dopamine, a naturally occurring chemical that is important to the
brains pleasure system. Neuroscientists know that dopamine is important in
both systems - learning and pleasure - but havent yet worked out the explicit
tie between them. Even though the neurochemistry is not completely
understood, it seems undeniable that people take pleasure in solving
problems. ... Its notable too that the pleasure is in the solving of the problem.
Working on a problem with no sense that youre making progress is not
pleasurable.
Handling problems and finding solutions, learning and game playing each have a role
to play in the overall well-being of the individual. By engaging with problems and
gaining mastery, one can develop the intrinsic motivation that drives curiosity and
lifelong learning, an approach to life as an endeavour and a game.
We wish to offer breadth through drawing upon a wide range of subjects from a
handling of their elementary level through helping students master key foundational
elements and work though progressively to more sophisticated webs-of-meaning
which will add depth to the studies suitable for the various age groups and capacities
of individual learners. Handling problems and finding solutions, learning to do,

developing knowledge and physical and mental game playing each have a role to
play in the overall well-being of the individual. By engaging with problems and
gaining mastery, one can develop the intrinsic motivation that drives curiosity and
lifelong learning, an approach to life as an endeavour and a game.

How we are affected by problems, how we apprehend, consider, and understand
them, how we formulate and develop ideas and alternative solutions is a major
concern of our learning project and processes. In order to do this we need to develop
a language to describe and identify problems of intellect, ethics and emotion. This will
include the need to inculcate language and numerical skills at appropriate levels for
their capacities and developmental age, and also knowledge derived from studies of
history and geography philosophy and science, from the humanities and social
sciences, and any other relevant spheres relevant to the research. As such they will
adhere to international common core curricula enabling students to participate in
British O and A levels or American SAT or ACT university entrance examinations.

The relations to traditional Cambodian wisdom

In a discussion of modern teaching method it is perhaps ironic, but the fundamental
propositions of the contextual approach to curriculum links very strongly with the
common-sense traditional values and wisdom handed down through Cambodian
folklore. This was itself strongly influenced by influenced by Buddhist thinking.

200+ years of industrial progress have not only left behind tangible liabilities such as
toxic landfill, people wearing mask in Beijing, and an overreliance on a finite fuel
source, which is set to decline. They have left intangible liabilities such as self
defeating ways of working, many of which run the risk of being out-dated by the
decreasing costs of automation. The have also left a bankrupt model of education
which at its roots is aimed at creating industrial workers to man factories and offices.
This is not a system aimed at creating creatives, innovators and entrepreneurs that
can add value to businesses which they themselves create and foster, or to
businesses and partnerships they join. Lingering machine age practices can actually
be barriers to prosperity. Over use of command and control, rigidity and iron cage
mentalities reduce efficiency and effectiveness in tasks.

We may be offering the kind of education that occurred in the community-situated
Wat-based training which occurred before the French colonialists brought an
industrial age western-style curriculum. Industrial era notions of control came about
when people were viewed as extensions of machines. It offered compartmentalised
subjects, like the different functions of the factory, where maths (production
management) is a separate and different knowledge universe to geography (say,
marketing), and treated as such, and chemistry (research and development) is
treated as a knowledge domain completely separate from history (customer service)
and so on. This is if maths (production management) and chemistry (research and
development) have no histories of their own that are relevant or interesting, or that
there is no maths in chemistry or geography. Clearly, this is not true. Let us face it;
chemistry can begin with the periodic table, or a story of the mixing of compound and
materials, or the relevance of it to the development of process and technology. Step

bystep training prepares people for repetitive, judgmentfree procedures. But
business skills such as sensing, sensemaking and taking appropriate action are
improved through a process of inquiry and reflection on real, messy human
experiences. We need teacher/facilitators and students who consciously learn from
daily experience, and do not revert to previous instructions on how to do things.

And like a factory the pupils pass through the system in batch processing style
according to age groups, with each successive year wrenching them up in terms of
difficulty of subject leading to a penultimate quality test termed a final exam.

Progressive (open, diverse,
emergent)
Traditional (closed, monolithic,
predictable)
purpose and boundaries tight, uniform control
attract, work through impose, force feed
open, flexible system closed, rigid system
cooperate to create conditions for
abundance
closed, rigid system scarcity mindset
solutions emerge /expect surprises predetermined /
attempt to predict
A belief that things can be messy and
still have order under the veneer of
chaos. A belief in varying
interpretation.
A belief that things can be labelled
and put in a correct place or slot,
assembled and ordered precisely
things are only right when they are in
a particular fashion. A belief in
indisputable facts
Opinion, feeling, fun and emotion
subjectivities acknowledged and
embraced as essentially relevant to
human inquiry.
Opinion, feeling, fun and emotion
disregarded and intentionally omitted
viewed as contaminants of
objectivity, the truth or the reality of
what is going on. An effort to become
supra-human, supra-rational
perspective employing an almost
disinterested alien or machine
perspective on reality.
Increasingly, emotional experience is acknowledged as a valid input to research. Our
opinions are not random or irrelevant. They arise in response to the interaction with
our research participants, our clients, our past experiences, our immersion in the
literature and other media relevant to the study at hand.

The practical nature of wat-based learning, and ours, is that they are/were
competency-based, which means that although we have benchmarks and targets
for age groups - that by age 4 a child should be able to identify, join and separate
sets & numbers to 20, or classify & sort numbers and a range of other learning
outcomes - if a child learns these things before this age then they move forward. If
they do not they continue study at this level until they gain mastery. (Please see the
appendix at the end of this document detailing learning outcomes). By offering a
sufficient range of activities, offering choice and a range of options, we can follow the
child and detect what they are interested in, and have the capacity to address.

Many western scholars such as Graef (1998) comment specifically about the
relationship between Buddhism and pedagogy: In the traditional wat-based education

the students learned language and often practical crafts relevant to the community
who were those who paid for the education and upkeep of the temple, and derived
benefits from it.

"Buddhist views on education are very similar to the constructivist theory of
learning. For example, a general Buddhist philosophy is that there is no
teaching - it is the student's mind which is important. Essentially, Buddhism
uses a student-centered learning approach when it comes to learning.

This means active students pursuing the own directions in study facilitated by
teachers, rather than explicitly taught by teachers. It also mean a focus upon
developing ones thinking rather than developing a memory for dislocated abstract
facts passed to the learner, by others. It meant local knowledge and locally relevant
skills, and provided for local value. Data is all around, if we can recognise it, connect
with it and allow it to feed our thinking plus have the confidence to treat it as valid
learning input.

Seeing everyone as a learner is at the crux of the Learning Commons of the modern and wat based
learning process

While teachers, or external experts, may introduce key or foundational concepts or
procedures, students are encouraged to use their own combinational logics to create
new configurations. They must learn to do their own research, they must think
through and interrogate what they already know and practice in the belief that
knowledge should be tested by experimentation. While they research the other they
are researching themselves. Students are members of households, they are
members already of communities, they are members of schools, and they may be
expert in terms of particular knowledge or skill-sets (i.e. through helping in the family
business etc. This has it that learning is rooted in questions developed by the learner.
Learners then move on to ask further questions such as what?, why?, who?
where? and when? and do so perpetually until answers, or available knowledge,
are exhausted.


In the context of education in Cambodia (and Asia generally) it must be underscored
that the Buddha himself was amongst the earliest practitioners of the basic life skill of
critical thinking He used critical thinking not only to achieve his own enlightenment,
but instructed followers to use it in their own thinking processes. The Instruction of
the Kalamas (Kalama Sutta), is justly famous for its encouragement of free inquiry.
The spirit of the sutta signifies a teaching that is exempt from fanaticism, bigotry,
dogmatism, and intolerance; it is the Buddha's explicit expression of the importance
of critical thinking. In this address, rather than conducting a one-way (teacher-
centred) sermon, he used a Socratic question and answer-style (student-centred)
tutorial. (see appendix I for a fuller explanation of the Kalama Sutta).

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe
in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not
believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many
generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it. Believe nothing merely because you have been
told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the
teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be
kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that
doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

Other writers have also shown the nature of Buddhism makes the direct link between
its teachings and rational thinking:

"Buddhism was conceived as a rational way of thought, being entirely in
accordance with the latest findings of the natural sciences. In contrast with
Christianity, Buddhism was not based on 'dogmas of blind belief' and
revelation, but on rational thought and experiential examination." (Baumann,
2001)

To question what is, what is given or what appears is a major part of that which we
wish to encourage. One can imagine the morning session starting with some
stretching exercises and a short period where children sit in the circle, clam their
thoughts and see what appears when we focus on the theme of the day. We teach
early that students should not just rest with a given answer but should perpetually
ask who, what, why, where and when. One of the first ideas shared in class is an
explanation of the rules of the class behavior (detailed later). What do the children
think this means?

Our approach to knowledge is that it is not a fixed thing, but a fluid body which
always changes over time to suit context, situation and circumstance. It is as in the
Cambodian saying: Tek loeng trey sisra-mauch, tek hauch sra-mauch si trey - when
water raises, fish eats ant, when water decreases, ant eats fish. A powerful person [a
strong idea, knowledge, technology or way of doing things] will certainly powerless in
some circumstance, and the powerless person will be powerful in another
circumstance. Circumstances can change a persons or familys power status, and
also the prominence of things, objects, artefacts, devices and ideas.


Phnom Pehn was once a city dominated by cyclos, pedal rickshaw taxis, now it is
dominated by motor bikes and cars and increasingly skyscrapers. A serious hike in
fossil fuel prices may see it one day again be dominated by cyclos. This is an
important pivotal idea in the contextual curriculum, that only some aspects of that
which is relevant today will be relevant in tomorrows Cambodia, or tomorrows
ASEAN, or tomorrows world.

As such we hold that such an approach it is completely concordant with traditional
Khmer thinking and attitude towards learning and change, and this is further captured
in other examples drawn from the literary wisdom of Cambodia:

Cambodian English Meaning Translation into our
practice
Ches min
chhnah chorng
Knowing is not
better than
willingness

Willingness get more
successes than knowledge. It
gives values to persons
attitudes rather than his or her
knowledge.
We strive to encourage our
students to realise their full
potential by developing their
basic skills, gaining a positive
attitude to work through an
inquiry based learning
curriculum. Whereas teachers
merely represent knowledge
they cannot develop interest
and motivation in students to
learn. The contextual
approaches work from the
interests of the students
based upon their lives,
communities, and interests
and make these the focus of
study in the areas of
language, maths, social
studies, geography, history,
and business.
Ches mok pi
rean,mean mok
pi rork
Knowledge come
from learning,
wealth from
business
This saying encourages
people to learn and to work
hard (not lazy), if s/he
wishes to become
knowledgeable and rich.

We question, and we
encourage, students to
question, in which ways does
and can knowledge interact
with skills, industry, business,
and community to make
betterment for all. Work in
study is not memorising, it is
researching and thinking
things through in a thorough
manner. That is working with
knowledge as a material to be
crafted.
Ches dob min
smoeuning
prasab mouy
Know 10 is not
equal than 1
skillfulness
Being skillful is far better than
just having knowledge. This
saying gives more values to
peoples talent and their
creativity in achieving the
goal.

Skill means the application of
knowledge. This is as true for
modern endeavours such as
publicity and marketing, as
much as it is true for repairing
or recycling old computers, or
shaping wood into ornamental
facings.
Damrey
choeung bourn
kung mean
ploat, nek prach
ches stoat kung
mean phlek
4-feet elephant will
surely trip,
professional wise
man will surely
forget
Everyone makes mistakes. No
one can avoid mistakes.
Making mistakes is human.
Mistakes are an inherent part
of action; only those who risk
nothing and do nothing will not
make mistakes. Mistakes are
valuable and a key part to the
learning process throughout
life.
Kmas lngung Feeling shame of Being sensitive to your The best arbitrator of

toeb ches,Kmas
kror toeb mean
being ignorant
leads to be
knowledgeable,
feeling shame of
poor leads to be
rich.
weaknesses so that you can
overcome them.
If you dont care about them,
nothing will be improved.

performance is the person
themselves. Of course
feedback from peers is
important, but it should not
dominate and detract from the
case that one should seek out
to identify and address [with or
without the help of others]
their own weaknesses.
The function of
great knowledge is
not to simply
weigh down your
brain, just as a
woman does not
wear costly jewelry
simply to weigh
herself down.
Knowledge only has value
when it is shared and of social
use.
It is very important not only to
be able to think in a sound
rational and logically manner,
but also to research and
express your ideas clearly,
confidently and convincingly.
Much of what we commonly
understand as intelligence is
actually abilities to interpret
and communicate.

Contextual usability

The origins of the contextual curriculum as an idea lie in the contextual usability
thesis of Derek W. Nicoll (i.e. Nicoll, 2001). Usability is a technical term which
denotes how easy or intuitive a designed and man-made object device, computer,
machine, book, and curriculum - is to use.

Most often it is a quality of the product developed during the design phase so as to
make the use process involved with that object more efficient, easier to learn, or
more satisfying. Usability as an idea derives from industry, and more specifically the
lab and the workplace, and carries with it a penchant for being a quasi-scientific
approach aimed at improving gross effectiveness and efficiency. One can apply
these rubrics to a physical toy, an online learning site, an educational video, a text
book, or an entire curriculum. Efficiency in these cases would refer to more than the
task does it do what it says on the box? What is the task of having fun? Easier to
learn would short-cut the time taken in order to work proficiently with the device or
application, or learn a language, or perform complicated operations.

This could also be applied to being read and absorb a book at a certain level of
reading proficiency. Reading is a multifaceted process involving word recognition,
comprehension, fluency, and motivation. In recent years, researchers have examined
aspects of the brain that are involved when children think with numbers. Most
researchers agree that memory; language, attention, temporal-sequential ordering,
higher-order cognition, and spatial ordering are among the neurodevelopmental
functions that play a role when children think with numbers. So there is a real benefit
to using objects and ideas that challenge these abilities.


Fig. 1 Contextual Usability (Nicoll, 2001)

The question of challenge and enjoyment is a key idea here. Good usability would
accelerate the meeting of learning objectives in a curriculum. Montessori toys for
instance are not simply meant to be fun but offer challenges at the appropriate level
to a childs way of making sense of the world, and which through solving them, lead
to a deeper understanding of abstract principles of language, number, physics,
science and geography etc. Think of the power of holding up two cards, one with a
word or concept, and the other with a picture. What kind of associations. Do you
make.

More satisfying would here likely translate into students spending more time playing
with the usable toy or application than others. Otherwise, they would be spending
time, enjoying of perhaps discussing and commenting more profusely on a books
contents or story, or a video watched, looking for further material of a like or similar
nature, and feeling more confident and comfortable with what they are learning
overall within the curriculum. In other words they would enjoy coming to school, and
they would enjoy the challenges and activities involved in learning. This also links to
the theory of flow or intrinsic motivation described earlier children getting lost in
their studies and work.

It is clear then from the above points that usability, measured in workplace studies, is
where these rubrics are considered against issues such as task performance or
production [i.e. how many letters can a secretary produce if we make changes to the
interface in this way as opposed that? or how can we optimise staff training by
reducing the complexity of the job and the machine? or By reorganising the office
furniture and including more plants people started to feel more relaxed.]

By changing challenging aspects of the interface, environment and organisation and
noting any correlations with improved productive output or positive feedback from
employee surveys one begins to understand the value in experimenting and applying
design changes. Changes to curriculum, given the time intervals involved is not so
easy. Do you make changes after a week, month, semester, academic year, or over
five years or fifteen? Can you be sure who, what, why and where to change come to
that?


Teacher/facilitators should not fall entirely into the trap that they need to perform the
entire time they are in class. They should be patient and practice active listening to
the children, even tape recording some explanations and expositions of activities,
ideas, and imaginings. It is easier to analyse these later either for the
teacher/facilitators personal reference or as a shared reference with the child or
class. They should allow solutions to emerge that is - look beyond existing pieces of
the puzzle). They must avoid jumping to answers and making assumptions based on
direct cause and effect relationships. Instead, reframe questions to expand the
possibilities, then explore fast, cheap iterations in a process of
experiment/learn/adjust/repeat until a better solution becomes apparent.

However, what this suggests is that usability is not simply something which can be
designed, it is something which must be subjectively or experientially realised. And
this is not only in terms of satisfaction [itself a vague and fleeting emotional
construct]. For instance, using a software example, early spread sheet programmes
were notoriously difficult to use but because they were extremely useful to
businesses there were nevertheless widespread uptake and adoption and people
learned to use them regardless of their poor usability. We must also consider the
usability of a game. The game is supposed to produce challenges to the player;
otherwise it fails as a game. A good game promotes flow or intrinsic motivation, the
ability to lose track of time and immerse oneself experientially within the designed
experience. A broken key or button or a malfunction would have to be fatal before the
player gives up on the challenge.

We can say with a certain conviction that usability as an experiential quality is
context-bound, that is, a possible cornucopia of other factors exists to influence and
modulate its resistance in using something. "Meaning is context-bound, but context is
boundless," as Jonathan Culler (1997: p.67) tells us. Experiential qualities, namely
the usability or ease of use of something - a device, object, toy, lecture, or idea in
relation to exigencies which denote regularities and periodicities of use [usage], and
the value and utility of possessing and using [usefulness].

In this model usability or ease of use or the lack of it, resists as we attempt to use it.
Consider our first fumblings in the shop with a new model of mobile phone, or when
we shifted from a simple phone to a smart, then touch-screen phone. Consider that
when we bought the new phone and gained mastery over it, how it influenced the
development of modified but regularised usage patterns and approaches, combined
to a new sense of usefulness, a value and meaning to what we use or have learned,
as one personalises and download apps that are relevant. How did this impact our
relationship with the PC or laptop based World Wide Web, or even the television?

I must admit that I have had little use for integral calculus in all of my adult life, even
though I was compelled to learn it in order to pass exams at school. In order to
achieve that end I surpassed the difficulties in understanding and using it to develop
the propensity to pass exams. There have been many criticisms of standardised
testing but is subjecting oneself to such tests not what many young players do when
they play video games?

With the rise of the internet and games came the availability of the cheat code
this lets the player hack into the game so as to award themselves infinite life, more
points, more advantages to winning the game than as originally programmed by the
designers. He realised after a while that in a sense the race is the prize, that short-

circuiting games with cheat codes only devalued the playing experience, the
designed challenges imputed by the games originators. In real life there are few
examinations to prove your worth or value, and there are also fewer cheat codes to
help finish the game faster and appear more proficient than your really are.

The very nature of "usefulness" as determined by the context in which a device is
used, a film is watched, some music listened to, a dance performed, a toy is played,
or a text is read can vary considerably along lines of experience and intention of both
designer, author, film maker, choreographer, composer and user, reader, viewer,
listener. Integral calculus has not proven useful, but knowing my times table has from
time to time. Both children and their teacher/facilitators must always know why they
are teaching or learning something, what is the context?

Contextual usability begins with an address of situational circumstances such as who
is using what, why they are using, where they are using, and when they use. For
instance many earlier usability studies were made in the context of the laboratory,
and when lab-based design updates were deployed in the field, the office or shop
floor, they were not as valid or effective.
2

This extends into educational practice by drawing back to the following questions.

Who is learning what, why, where, and when, under which circumstances,
under what conditions, within which parameters and in which environment?
Who is the learner?
Why do they have to learn this skill or knowledge?
Who is asking or persuading them to learn, and for what purpose?
Where is it best for them to learn this; in the field, or in the classroom, market,
street, beach or lab?

These are only some of the basic questions. There are many more targeted either at
the material and subject, or the process and method of teaching, or regarding the
drives, interests and motivations of the student. We do not learn to ride a bicycle or
swim or tie our shoe laces from a blackboard description or to pass a test. When is it
best to learn this, does it matter if it is morning or evening, raining or dry, is it best to
learn it in a quiet focussed individual mode, or better to learn it as part of a team or
group? Is it better to learn one skill first, before moving onto another, are they
prioritised in terms of sequence of learning etc.?

And what of the situation?

For example learning to grow food for profit may differ from growing food merely to
sustain oneself. Also performing this task will differ if you only have access to the plot
of land for one hour every day, or that you throw your seeds into rich fertile soil or
onto a semi-desert scrub land.

We have already drawn attention to how situations, circumstances and environments
contexts - immediately impinge upon the experience of usability of things, and not
only usability, but also how you use and for how long and how regularly you actually

2
This led to the development by Karen Holzblatt et al of Contextual Inquiry: Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K.,
Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco
(1997).

use or at least perceive yourself using, and what the value of using is, what are the
benefits or does this device, idea or knowledge generate its own benefits over time.

Ease of use in the computing or machine and system context means how easy it is
for a novice or advanced user to access and control both basic and advanced
functions depending upon their expertise of using.

This manifests in the graphical and physical interfaces such as icons, icon
placement, buttons, button placement that controls the machine, how it feedbacks
the device, system or machines operating parameters so as to allow decisions on
the next move. I press a key and on the screen appears a corresponding letter, I then
make a decision on what should happen or be input next. Other factors may come
into play, for instance, how intuitive the use of the new device is? Consider the
ponderous behaviour of those unused to computers as they type. It also, however,
pertains to the capacities of the user/operator, how proficient they are at using the
same or similar interfaces, application and devices. In using Microsoft Word for
instance I can highlight a word or passage and right click and select cut, or I can
highlight the text and press the little scissors icon in the menu, or I can press Ctrl-X,
all do the same thing, Ctrl-X perhaps being the most advanced and most quick.

It also helps if this becomes a convention, used across platforms and across different
programs. Perhaps it is similar to global English. It may not lead to perfect cross-
cultural communication, and there is still plenty of room for misinterpretation,
misrepresentation and misconception that is misfit and imperfection the very
adjectives that keeps things interesting, and keeps us diverse. Just as human bones
get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumours or riots intensify
when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder,
volatility, and turmoil. What Nassim Taleb has identified and calls antifragile is that
category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and
flourish. Their book quotes from the Japanese business strategist, Kerichi Omhae:
"Successful business strategies results not from rigorous analysis ... but from a
process which is creative and individual rather than rational" (cited in Cooper &
Sauraf, 1998, p152). In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable
and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile
(2012), Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary,
and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond
the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile
gets better and better.

Within a learning context this translates to how digestible an idea, fact, theory,
method or principle is. Is it like a Buddhist maxim which has an instantly recognisable
meaning and yet invocative of a deeper, more profound meaning, and certainly so if
one dwells on it, and thinks of its metaphorical connotations? Difficult reading, such
as certain texts of western philosophy, can appear as inaccessible
incomprehensible to the average reader. This does not detract from critical
recognition of the brilliance held within its insights, but this is something only the
experienced well-read and trained person may be able to unlock and realise. Just as
inspired literature acts as a living breathing entity, which seems to adjust itself to the
readers perspective, so goes the essence of inspired teaching. Teachers who are
born teachers understand the malleable dynamic of the teachable moment and
make going with the flow, following the envelope of the students learning a routine
part of the day. They match and work with, and sometimes provide prompts and

challenge to the individual students propensity within the context of projects, games,
stories, and activities. In this sense they bring them on, not in acts of direct
leadership but in much more subtle, subliminal, indirect and metaphorical acts of
provocation.

As with poorly designed devices and interfaces, those which hinder users [learners]
by boasting too many functions [too many teacher created facts, descriptions,
pictures, methods, processes and work], too many options, redundant features,
overdone ornamentation, poor function, complex operations, profusion of process
steps etc. A poorly written piece of information, wordy and poorly spelled can prevent
effortless and quick interpretation and understanding. Effective and efficient
interfaces and interactions are those which are economical in complexity, almost
minimal, whilst permitting easy access to key features, and perhaps the most
memorable, they prune away all that which is not needed, at least not in typical
everyday operation. They add depth, breadth, cohesion, and relevancies, they scope
and scale, and calibrate to where the student is with regards to their learning
endeavours. They remain simple so a child can use it independently. They are a
conscious effort to, as the Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching asserts, to return to the
uncarved block that is the true and pure nature of things as interpreted by the
student.

It is little surprise then that the inventors of the Google search engine, which has
maintained a very simple interface masking the vast complexity of content available
on the entire World Wide Web, had their formative education in a Montessori school.

Whereas use is the situational aspects of using, and usability how easy something is
to use, usage is about now how often and for how long you will use something. Is it
something so basic and fundamental that you will use it in a regular daily basis, like
food and water, a car, television or newspaper, or is it something you will likely use
once and rarely ever again, or only on special occasions for a few moments? This
has considerable implications for the development of mastery and expertise. Using
language as an example, and at least since people started philosophising, attention
has been drawn to the use of language in order to gain mastery. Immersing young
children from 18 months to about 6 years of age has shown their increased ability to
acquire language without effort. After this we can still learn language but we must
consciously work at it.

Usefulness is a value for something which is a composite of the contexts of use and
usage patterns. Writing and the written word were useful as they helped us record
and transport our thoughts over time and space. The telephone was useful as it
helped carry our voice over distance, and mobile telephony made this communication
mobile.

In education and learning we must consider the human relationship to technology
was marked for most of our evolution by the use of stone axes and tools in order to
facilitate a day to day hunter-gatherer existence. Most other everyday technologies
from the wheel to the smart phone very recent. Some artefacts and objects in daily
life have a wide spectrum of use, such as knives and motors and computers,
whereas some have quite narrow and very specific uses such as electron
microscopes and can openers. Some are personal like a computer or phone and
some are of shared value like an airline. Applied to learning and knowledge

acquisition, usefulness would draw to attention the relevance of some skills,
knowledge and learning over others.

The primacy of language and numeracy

No educational approach or philosophy disputes the necessity for basic command of
language and numeracy. The ability to describe things in the world in a social manner
depends on these skills. Beyond this socialisation takes place as one learns
histories, geographies, social etiquette, scientific facts and so forth. The usefulness
of knowledge depends again upon circumstances and context and also upon the
immediate, possible and prospective needs of the individual learner. But all this rests
upon a firm grasp of language and numbers, and the ability to analyse, process and
represent them.

We consider the individual needs, interests, and stage of development of each child
in our care, and must use this information to plan a balance of challenge and fun for
each child in all of the areas of learning and development. When we work with the
youngest children we expect to focus strongly on the three prime areas,
communication and language; physical development; and personal, social and
emotional development. These reflect the key skills and capacities all children need
to develop and learn effectively. It is expected that the balance will shift towards a
more equal focus on all areas of learning as children grow in confidence and ability
within the three prime areas.

Throughout the early years, if a childs progress in any prime area gives cause for
concern, this must discuss this with the childs parents and /or carers and agree how
to support the child. We must consider whether a child may have a special
educational need or disability which requires specialist support such as that offered
by Indigo in Phnom Pehn.

The ability to save all files, clear and reformat a hard drive, install an operating
system, locate and install all the drivers may be essential knowledge and a regular
set of tasks for a professional computer repairer, but something that an amateur does
[if they can, or have to, do at all] only infrequently. The knowledge and ability are
perfected through regular practice in the case of the professional, and are more
essential, that is more useful to their business than other forms of knowledge and
activity. In traditional subject-based school education each and every subject say
maths vs geography, and each topic or book chapter given, is presented as relevant,
necessary and as prominent as the next.

The enthusiasm or charisma or wit of the teacher is factored out, and it is hoped that
everyone will retain the same corpus of facts, the same means and methods of
interpretation and value and achieve the same A + in a standardised test. en,
because this system is designed to categorize students as excellent, average and
below average, it causes most students not to feel successful as they learn. The idea
that there is one perfectly correct, true real reason for attitudes and behaviours in
social science research has long been rendered implausible. We can never fully
understand why people behave in certain ways or why events occur because there
are so many different factors involved in even the simplest social interaction. Also
from the humanities, critical theory has shown that no text, story, or account can be
interpreted in a purely unbiased pure manner that is, as the author intended. It is

always a matter of individual interpretation, misinterpretation and reinterpretation.
[story wars] We interpret the world, each differently, through our own particular web
of perspectives and experiences. We construct it (Weick,1995). We are, however,
intrinsically social beings and construct our world through cultural parameters which
we jointly shape and are shaped by.

The implication in the standardised text or exam is that the student, examiner,
textbook author and exam writer, each of them possess the same enthusiasm for,
and grasp of, the topic and all subscribe to the same interpretation of their
importance to the individual, society and world, and to the future aspirations and
interests of the learner and their wider society. The great books project is an
example, where the study of a corpus of literary work is believed to present all the
main ideas upon that which western culture rests upon. But we understand culture as
not so much imposed on people from outside, as exposed from within (Seel, 2000).
Culture is being created all the time by all of us. Indeed, we have ideas bequeathed
by preceding generations but we, and our societal institutions, have no choice but to
interpretate them. Anthropologist, Mary Douglas describes this as the
admonitions, excuses and moral judgements by which the people mutually coerce
one another into conformity (Douglas, 1985). But, if we construct our world rather
than merely observe what is out there, then it follows that knowledge too is
constructed not discovered or merely transferred.

Therefore, by definition, culture is fluid and always changing. The implication is that
each chapter, each paragraph, each sentence are all as important as another in the
book. By missing out part, one may be missing that part, condemned to memory that
needs to be re-called in the exam. The deeper implication is that all this knowledge is
of the same purpose and value as all the rest. There should be no emphasis based
upon the needs of the user, only those aspects stressed by the bold type or
underlining by the author.

Clearly, this is rubbish; it is not true and never was true. Democracy, while being an
idea perhaps first recorded in ancient Greece, has had to be radically interpreted
anew in the light of how it is used in present global geopolitics and social and political
theory. It needs to be interrogated at classroom level, and its strengths and
weaknesses revealed. Knowledge, its learning, acquisition retention and application
are not flat; they are human phenomena, products of our needs and desire to
communicate with humans. And like humans, they are never identically accepted and
transmitted and are constantly under revision by experts and laymen alike. Some
people simply have more booming voices than others. Some people know how to
play the game of communication and influence more than others, so what is this
game and how is it played? Knowledge, in books, people, actions, devices,
computers vary in terms of generality of relevance, authenticity, reliability,
applicability, transference to different contexts and circumstances, differing values of
recipients and in terms of tasks at hand and tasks which become necessary. It is for
this reason that we have a focus on the user in this case the individual learner. This
is also the basis for the social networking phenomena and its applications in
education.

So what does the contextual curriculum take from contextual usability theory?
Basically, teachers must be aware of the reason and purpose of facts, and how they
connect to form bodies of knowledge. Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind
best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a

narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. This is why the teacher must a provocateur,
prompting, asking a lot of questions, making a lot of statements to children that evoke
certain natural associative responses within them. It is these responses within them
We will aim to strengthen and explicate this this by the use of associative techniques
such as mind maps.

The contextual curriculum as practice

The origins of the contextual curriculum as a practice are not new or original, and lie
largely in a one hundred year history of progressive education philosophy and
practice which is largely associated most prominently with the American educational
philosopher John Dewey, and also that of other notable practitioners such as the
Italian pediatrician Maria Montessori and those coming from the likes of the High
Scope and Reggio Emilio traditions [appendix III details these methods in depth]..

Each of these proponents stressed hands-on, activity-based teaching and learning
during which students develop their own frames of thought, rather than being led or
spoon-fed information by a teacher mainly using book and black board filled with
abstract symbols. A paradigmatic shift takes place in this progressive education over
traditional methods.. It is now recognized that the most significant person in the
interactions is the student, not the teacher. The students potentials and proclivities
account for most of the variance (what actually happens) in learning, not the
purported "powers" of the teacher. The teacher does not command the student, or
offer the pretence of being the fountainhead of all knowledge on a given subject
(even though they may boast expertise), rather, it is always a matter of offering
students the opportunity of responding to an idea. It is now recognized that the
teacher/facilitator offers the young learner many approaches to their learning
experience rather than imposing, implicitly or explicitly, learning techniques. The
concept of technique implies the mechanical and repetitious application of a
particular procedure in the same way to every patient with the intent of producing a
preconceived and predictable response, namely that they will remember all and
every little detail from the lecture and the prescribed course textbooks, and will be
able to recall this on-demand [typically in class or in the exam]. The concept of
approaches implies the profferance of alternatives to help each student bypass his or
her own particular learned limitations so that the various phenomena and novel
responses to it may be experienced.

Teacher/facilitators do not "control" the student; rather, they help the students learn
to "utilize" their own potentials and repertory of unconscious skills in new ways to

facilitate the desired learning outcome. This new orientation requires the
development of many observational and performance skills by teacher/facilitators.

More than ever it is required that they learn to recognize and appreciate each learner
as a unique individual, addressing actuality, capability and potentiality, the aspects
mentioned earlier. Every learning interaction is then essentially a creative endeavour;
certain known principles are being applied, but the infinite possibilities within each
patient require an essentially exploratory approach to achieve the learning goals.
When we learn things we do so on conscious, overt, explicit ways and we do so in
unconscious, tacit and implicit ways. A teacher/facilitator merely needs to know how
to talk to a learner in order to secure learning results. Teacher/facilitators need to
practice repeatedly attempting to get a learner to talk about something in ordinary,
everyday life. They need the practice of trying to get students to talk about,
phenomenological aspects of what may be happening at the given moment in time,
such as the lighting, for example, in the corner of the room. Of course, the lighting is
not important, but how you guide them to talking about it, being able to make it
prominent and of interest, are important.

We hold that absorption of facts and information, their conversion into useful
knowledge, only happens when the recipients themselves make sense of it, in
situations where they clearly know why, in which way, and where it is useful, who it
may be useful for, and knows how to apply it to solve practical real-world problems. A
teacher who is struggling adopting the facilitative approach could produce a lecture in
a traditional fashion and have some 30 pages of personal, teacher notes to support
an hour long session, where it is expected that students take down their own notes
which should in turn look pretty much like those used by the teacher.

Opportunities Examples
Process

The opportunities for
learners to make sense of
the content
supports and scaffolds for learning (e.g., pathfinders,
graphic organizers, checklists, learning tools)
explicit skill instruction
just-in-time intervention
appropriate assistive technology
fostering metacognition of the skills and knowledge
being learned
Content

The means by which
learners become
acquainted with
information
professionally selected resource collection to support
diverse learning styles, abilities, reading levels and
interest with specialized resources for all learners and
students with identified learning needs
dedicated areas within the school library to support
specialized hardware and software (e.g., speech input
software, adaptive keyboards, screen magnification,
amplification devices)
Product

real world examples of products (exemplars)
student choice in displaying new learning and

The vehicles through
which learners show and
extend understanding
understandings
students sharing knowledge acquired as a result of rich
inquiry tasks
Environment

The conditions that set the
tone and expectations of
learning
multiple spaces for individual, small group, and whole
class learning
virtual library spaces for study, support, and relaxation
available 24/7
homework help from the school library webpage
management of student information resources and work
spaces, both physical and virtual

In fact, often teachers will print out the notes for the student which then leaves only
the style of the presentation and its delivery, and some supercilious, non-essential,
off-the-cuff cited examples and maybe even jokes or puns as extra. What would
happen if the session were cut to 25 pages of notes, 20, 15, 5, 1, page, 1 paragraph,
1 sentence, 1 word what would that word be? Would it be the tip of the iceberg?

What if the clues to the teacher notes were given in an expanding reverse order,
leaving it to the students to join-the-dots re-engineer and perhaps develop new
synthesis of knowledge, which perhaps takes on a different shape to what was
originally conceived by the teacher, yet for all intents and purposes, rationale and
meaningful, and maybe even useful and valuable?

The experiential and building block view of the contextual approach also rests on
the constructivist theories of the French Psychologist Jean Piaget and others such as
Jerome Bruner who had it that people construct their own understanding and
knowledge of the world primarily through experiencing things and reflecting on those
experiences, and building scaffolds between different sets of knowledge and
experience. Learning is primarily a state in which there is increased responsiveness
to ideas of all sorts. And one employs that responsiveness not by trying to force, but
by trying to elicit an immediate response - and to elicit it by having the learner
participate in their own learning. Jean Piaget notes that: each time one
prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered for himself, that
child is kept from inventing it and, consequently, from understanding it completely.

They exhibit the model of learning put forward by David Kolb in his where successive
stages of watching, thinking, doing, and feeling contribute to our how we view the
world. We hardly commit to a behaviour or action, or think or imagine a scenario,
concept or idea, without having some reasoning or being prompted by some context
to engage in it in the first place. School is a place to engage with actions and
behaviours which are aimed at making us good citizens, helpful and dutiful members
of the community, able and confident workers, lifelong learners capable of
reinventing and reorientating their self when faced with future challenges and the
requirement in a world of economic and technical opportunities and threats not yet
realised.

Fig .2 Kolbs Experiential Learning Model

We then have a focus then on process and method, rather than only content, result
or outcome. Students are further encouraged to learn from mistakes, individually and
in group work and play. The idea is to give students real life, contemporary problems
to tackle, opposed to purely abstract examples, say, brought from a different
geography, a different historical/cultural context, and set of values.

One can understand easily that the letter A means very little on its own. It is only in
combination with other letters that it takes on relevance and meaning. And so it is
with so many things, ideas in the world, they work in networks, chains webs and
systems. Learning is contextual: we do not learn isolated facts and theories in some
abstract ethereal land of the mind separate from the rest of our lives: we learn in
relationship to what else we know, what we believe, our prejudices and our fears.The
object of study beyond letters, words, sentences and paragraphs, adjectives, verbs
and nouns, beyond basic numeracy, beyond learning the difference and similarity
between shapes, colours and textures, weights, measures and heights, width and
depth is the students own life and interests.

This means their family and friends, their interests in books, games and websites,
their imaginations and creativity. This means the school and their homes more
immediate environments, which are our neighborhood, city, province and country.
Everything in the world we know is connected in networks, maps, matrixes, systems.
People are connected and act in social systems, goods and services and
production move through manufacturing and distribution systems, language itself is
a system of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs and stories and reports The
economy is a system, nature is built from systems, molecules, cells, organisms,
populations, ecosystems, planets and so on.

The geography, history, socio-economic make-up, and what commerce takes place
how do you rear pigs, why does it grow, what does it eat, how does that pig get to
market, how did its value improve, and how was it cooked before it came to my plate,
how does it taste, what nutrition does it offer me? This question could serve for any

product found in the cornucopia of the market, and serve as a learning aid regarding
any subject from animal husbandry, to biology, to supply chain management, to
retailing, to the chemistry of cooking, to social studies, to economics and business
modeling. Regardless of the complexity of the interlinking of subjects involved in such
inquiry, it can be reduced to very simple terms for very young students, while
maintaining power in depth for more longer lasting and intense studies by older
students.

The contextual curriculum is inspired by internationally recognised learning best
practice and based on an understanding of the work undertaken by colleagues
working in the world renowned pre-schools and infant toddler centres in Reggio
Emilia, in Northern Italy. The Inquire - Think - Learn curriculum focuses on inquiry
based learning where childrens ideas, interests and theories inform and extend the
design of curriculum experiences. Furthermore, it takes note of the recent
developments and findings in cognitive and neuroscience to tailor its approach to
developing the individual child.

Develop their observational skills by using their senses to gather and record
information. They will use their observations to identify simple patterns, make
predictions and discuss their ideas.

Explore the way objects and phenomena function and recognize basic cause
and effect relationships.
Examine change over varying time periods and know that different variables
and conditions may affect change.
Be aware of different perspectives and respect them.
Respect for themselves, other living things and the environment.
Communicate their ideas or provide explanations using their own scientific
experience and vocabulary.
Gain an understanding of themselves and the people around with focus
placed on themselves, families and their environment.

Young children must be offered many opportunities to engage with a wide range of
materials and resources to extend and challenge their thinking. Our curriculum invites
them to dig, explore, dismantle, discover, hypothesise, predict, problem solve,
construct and document in order to deepen their understandings of the world in which
we live. Our approach acknowledges the significance of socio-cultural theory in that
children learn via quality interactions and relationships with people, places and
things.

In this sense we may consider that the school provides the dots, that is provides
them with the building blocks of knowledge and skills, and the children draw the
lines in order to make a meaningful picture. As a concrete example of this,
kindergarten children will learn the alphabet the dots in order to build words
the picture. Words themselves then become the dots in order that children build
sentences the picture. Sentences become paragraphs, and paragraphs become
stories, reports and so forth. Similarly, science moves from atoms, through
molecules, to compounds, cells, organs, living beings, sociology, ecology, law and so
forth. Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when
they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive
theory. The development of mind maps indicate how a central phenomenon, the
letter A, a fruit or vegetable, a house, an animal, an idea of concept like time, can

act as the centre of an associative net of ideas. And this net can interpolate and join
with others to make complex and rich interwoven webs of meaning. This is what we
mean when we help students join the dots or build their own contexts.

Documentation, presentation, study, communication skills

One of the aspects of Reggio that sets it apart from other teaching styles is the level
and accuracy of documentation. This documentation focuses more intensively on
children's experience, memories, thoughts, and ideas in the course of their work,
than that of other teaching styles. Rather than looking for examples of what a child
should be learning at a particular stage, this more progressive documentation
typically includes samples of a child's work at several different stages of completion;
photographs showing work in progress; comments written by the teacher or other
adults working with the children; transcriptions of children's discussions, comments,
and explanations of intentions about the activity; and comments made by parents.
Observations, transcriptions of tape-recordings, and photographs of children
discussing their work can be included.

Examples of children's work and written reflections on the processes in which the
children engaged can be displayed in classrooms or hallways. The documents reveal
how the children planned, carried out, and completed the displayed work. There is
quite a bit of attention given to the aesthetic arrangement of work that is displayed
throughout the learning environment, which both encourages creativity and shows
the level of respect that is given to the childrens accomplishments.

The documentation stage happens in the individual and groupwork stages of the
childs day. outlines his theory that people are happiest when they are in a state of
flow a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and
the situation. It is a state in which children are so involved in an activity that nothing
else seems to matter (Cskszentmihlyi).

Thorndikes textbooks are classic illustrations of the decontextualized material
common in American textbooks today. For example, one Thorndike textbook problem
is: Tom had six cents in his bank and put in three cents more. How many cents were
in the bank then? (Thorndike, 1917, p.18). The Cambodian reader, or even the
American reader who knows the currency knows nothing about Tom or his bank, and
so must process disembodied information devoid of context (i.e. the wider economy
is in recession and lending is tight, or Tom has been made unemployed, or new
technology or a new international entrant into the market in which Toms business
operates, the currency is devalued, or there is civil war, or how much is actually in the
bank for real beyond Toms savings etc. In contrast, the problems one regularly
encounters outside of school tend to have a meaningful context.

Thorndike believed that children could not transfer learning from one context to
another unless elements of the situations were identical, so supplying context was
useless. This belief was based on his 1898 dissertation; one of the most frequently
cited studies in American psychology (Hilgard, 1987). In his study adults were asked
to estimate the area of different polygons (including rectangles), were then given
feedback (training) as they estimated the area of rectangles, and, in a final test
phase, were asked again to estimate the area of various polygons. Thorndike found
that training on rectangles did not lead to improved performance on all of the

polygons, but only on the rectangles. From this he inferred a general principle that
human learning does not transfer to different situations, and he concluded that one
could and should therefore educate children merely by strengthening bonds for the
very information they needed to know, stripped of context.

Thus, children were instructed in Thorndikes texts as follows: Learn this: 1 dime =
10 cents. 1 nickel = 5 cents (1917, p. 59). And so on. Thorndikes view that
knowledge can and should be presented in textbooks, as a set of disembodied,
unconnected written facts that children have to commit to memory to become
educated beings, still dominates. Psychological research since has quite clearly
demonstrated that children do in fact transfer learning from one context to another,
and that a more apt view of learning is that the child can construct knowledge, rather
than simply form associations (Bransford et al., 1999; Kuhn, 2001; Peterson,
Fenneman, Carpenter, & Loef, 1989). We also know today that learning with a
meaningful context can be far superior to learning that is unconnected to its use. For
example, street children who sell things show mathematical understanding that they
cannot even apply to the decontextualized problems an answer to the crisis in
education in schoolbooks (as discussed in chapter 7). Sometimes people have
knowledge ethat they can use in everyday situations but cannot transfer to the more
removed contexts of school. We also know that rewards can have detrimental effects
on childrens engagement in learning activities, and yet we continue to reward and
punish children with grades. Schools today commonly use programs in which
elementary school children read for pizza or other rewards (including money).
Despite advances in our understanding of how children learn, the legacy of
behaviorism is still quite clear in the textbooks, curricula, and methods of schooling in
place today.

This is the scaffolding that forms the basis of constructivist theory. This is the crux of
the contextual curriculum, ideas and concepts, academic subjects and disciplines,
are not handled vin isolation from each other as in the traditional approach to
education Whatever they watch in a video, whatever they read in a book, whatever
they use on the computer, must be translated by the teacher into a discussion, a
task, a game that makes sense of, and leans upon the theme of the day. Stories are
written to inform, beguile, to entertain, to amuse, to move, to enchant, to horrify, to
delight, to anger, to make us wonder.

First, second and third teachers
.
So we have the learner themselves as a kind of second teacher. A kind of third
teacher is the prepared environment of the school and its equipment. The first aim
of the prepared environment, is as far as possible, to render the growing child
independent of the adult. When children are allotted free time in the school it means
they are allotted time to spend exploring the environment and its specialised learning
toys. Walls are painted in neutral colours.

Shelves display a few objects at a time. This prepared environment provides a calm,
neutral, quiet background that encourages and supports learning. It should be noted
that the goal of artwork in a Montessori classroom is to add interest to the room, not
cover the walls. These pictures should be at the childrens eye level and not the
adults. The pictures should show real-life people, objects or scenes. Since children
need to learn to think about that which is real, the Montessori environment provides
materials that are real and not pretend.

When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with previous ideas and
experiences, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new
information as irrelevant. This happens continually, and it happens over all our life. In
any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. In order to do this, we must
ask questions, explore, interrogate and assess what we know. Our approach, then
follow progressive and constructivist approach in that we:

Focus on processes and methods of learning rather than on learning
behavior and content. This is because, beyond the rudiments of maths
and language, what is relevant today may not be relevant in 18 years
time when our 3-year olds leave university.
Believe that students construct understanding of the material to be
learned, that is interpretation of the material is an active process of
creation rather than a passive process of reception. Inculcating this
leads to learning to learn, a skill that one can take with them all through
their lives, not something predominately useful to pass high-stakes
exams.
Support a student-centered curriculum, rather than book and teacher
centered.
Focus on mental processes and strategies that students use to learn,
rather than any one-size-fits-all best-practice method offered by the
book or teacher. People are not machines, schools and universities
should not be treated as factories, but places where human beings
learn to human, doing things that only humans can, and learn of the
constituents, benefits and pitfalls of this learning.
See learning as an active, meaning-making process, rather than some
sort of passive meaning-accepting process where we are not just told
what to think but, moreover, how to think about it. We are all creative
when we make sense of something. If we accepted everything we
heard in the market place or from the media we would be in trouble. We
would pay whatever we were asked for, we would believe every
advertisement and buy goods we do not need.
Encourage students to be continuously involved in making sense of the
things that happen around them, we live in a dynamic and sometimes
volatile world either in our cities or in nature, understanding and coping
with these dynamics must form a major part of learning to be both a
useful employee, manager, business owner, farmer, husband, father
etc..
Have teacher/facilitators which realize that students learning is
influenced by prior knowledge, experience, attitudes, and social
interactions. Nobody is a blank slate, when you interact with a child you
interact with their family and their community, or which you and they are
only parts. Resistance arises most strongly when actors see that
changing patterns will result in direct losses (status, wealth, power, and
importance), competence losses (we only knew how to do it the old
way, we dont know a new way), or loyalty losses (asking people to do
things differently may subtly threaten their loyalty to their teachers,
ancestors or traditions).
Teacher facilitators that strive to be one step ahead, that have width
and depth to their thinking so as to accommodate and advise in any
knowledge domain that the student/s choose to work within, and

recognise ways out of quandaries and dead-ends when addressing
wicked problems. Treating resistance with compassion is much more
than having good negotiation skills. It is about deeply understanding
ones own inner resistance about threat and loss.

Teachers help students to construct knowledge rather than cajole and instruct them
to reproduce verbatim a series of facts. The constructivist teacher provides tools such
as problem-solving and inquiry-based learning activities with which students
formulate and test their ideas, draw conclusions and inferences, and pool and convey
their knowledge in a collaborative learning environment, which involves teachers,
students and at times other experts from the local community (artists, artisans,
filmmakers, musicians) to participate.

The structure of the day

Each day is divided into morning and afternoon sessions which move through four
main periods a period of individual work and study, a period of structured activities
and play, a period of group work, study and activity, and a period of free play within
the prepared environment.

Fig 3 The four period of the contextual curriculum day

Period 1 - Individual work and study

Maria Montessori believed that children were capable of great periods of
concentration and focus. This period is marked by children being encouraged to work
and study on their own, independent of anyone else. In an ideal sense it should be
marked by periods of research, study, and creation. Use workplans for the children.
That's a control for them; in terms of helping them make good choices and keep track
of their work. But sometimes even the workplan was too much for a child to handle.

It is considered that encouraging children to sit and focus for an hour and half may be
difficult to begin with, and as many aspects of this work, for some more than others.

Each child can use their rug, or they can use the shelve tops as will facing desks to
perform their work.

Teacher/facilitators make sure that children get started on their work, showing
technique, and are available to answer any questions.

Period 2 - Structured Play

This is play and study led by the teacher who plays an active role in the lesson by
directing what is to be explored pendent on the theme of the day. It can consist of a
round table discussion of a subject, with the teacher intervening and controlling
discussion, it may be a second-language lesson, or a small project for the group to
complete. It can be a video followed by discussion, or a game, a site visit [joined with
the groupwork or sessions on the computer, children are encouraged to raise or
indicate problems they have experienced in their individual work, or it may be
physical exercise and dance.

The aim of structured play is to develop within the child the sense of being able to
follow instructions as part of a large class size group. It also permits the introduction
of competition as a mode of performance, and the opportunity to experience and
reproduce systems.

We will compile a list of options from which the teacher can choose, until they feel
confident to improvise.

Period 3 - Groupwork

This is where children are encouraged to complete a project together with only
minimal intervention. It can be a joint painting, or some research on the internet
which they document. They should be encouraged to choose their own topic or
manner to express the theme of the day, but failing this and if they are stuck the
teacher is close-by to come and prompt them to action. At the end there should be a
short presentation and explanation of their work to the other groups.
Cooperate to create abundance. (pure competition leads to scarcity) Machine age
economics were based on assumptions of gain or loss, rather than interdependence.
In natural, selforganizing systems the wellbeing of any given organism is dependent
on the success of the larger whole. Promote grassroots initiatives. (see the
weaknesses in topdown programs).

In contrast to topdown programs that invite resistance, small selforganizing
experiments can be contagious, with higher impact. These outlier (or pilot) projects
demonstrate a better way forward through positive deviance by mavericks who get
things done. Biodiversity is a condition for survival. Sameness and replication are
enemies of innovation. Diverse viewpoints lead to better solutions by challenging
assumptions, reframing questions and avoiding selflimiting either/or choices.


It is considered that also here encouraging children to sit together and focus for an
hour and half may be difficult to begin with, and as many aspects of this work, for
some more than others.

Period 4 - Unstructured play

This where children can do as they will. One teacher will supervise and ensure that
there are no conflicts or accidents. Children can explore and do whatever they wish
within the resources and confines of the school.

Assessment

The method of assessment to be used is continual assessment, competency-based.
We maintain end-of-year competency targets and each child will be assessed on
their developments towards these targets on a monthly basis. Daily notes and
records can be shared in a serious of reports, shared between the main teacher and
the assistants, and with parents and to the director for consideration for interventions.
Other notes will be taken on a daily basis to track student behaviour and
performance, the purpose of these is to effect intervention tactics early.

It is considered that there will be a cool down period before individual and group
work, where the children can settle their bodies and thoughts, and under the guided
visualisation of the teacher prepare their minds for the next session.

Discipline and morality

There are times when children are aggressive, competitive, and teasing with
each other. Their desire for social development deteriorates into socializing for
socializings sake. They seek to depend on a charismatic leader among their
peers, instead of developing genuine friendships that demand more of them
than hero worship. The regress to dependence on adults and attempted
manipulation of them. Their vast energies are displayed in keyed-up
behaviour, overexcitement, and hyperactivity. (Lillard, p.6)

The teacher/facilitator will no doubt encounter difficulties and resistance to what we
may or may not believe as they attempt to help people learn. When we speak of
resistance here, we are not usually concerned with the classical Freudian
psychoanalytic problem of a preconscious or unconscious force actively blocking the
entry of certain material into consciousness and memory, because it is too complex,,
not interpretable, or too advanced for the childs developmental level and capabilities.
We are speaking about lack of conformity or lack of complicity to the rules.
Young children are often exceedingly difficult as they dislike being away from carers
who may spoil them perhaps letting them have anything they want, letting them do
whatever they want, whenever they want, and also whatever they want whenever
they want. All this permissiveness leads to an expectation that the world is simply
exists to provide, and not take-away. Any form of restriction or the word no will
appear as strange of indecipherable to such a child. It has to be remembered that we
are not born knowing how to share and play co-operatively and the children need not
only to be told but also to learn by example.

Some may have been overstimulated by too much time spent in free play, and too
many videogames or television cartoons. We remain curious to meet some of the
obstacles that we will encounter in teaching young children to be independent
learners? Young children once they are over-stimulated or bored or seek out new
ways to undermine and play with boundaries are often exceedingly difficult. They do
not know how to handle themselves or they would not be a student.

Unlike other living species, whose behaviour is biologically set, humans have and
need social experiences to learn their culture and to survive or fit-in. Socialization
describes a process which may lead to desirable, accepted, or 'moral', outcomes in
the opinion of said society. Another form of desirable behavior is that of stilling the
mind, settling emotions and being in a state of mind which is calm enough to engage
in focused, concentrated directed study. Some students will still wish to test
boundaries, and this does not mean that they are stupid and cannot distinguish the
rules or their overall benefit to the group as a whole. For some it is merely their way
of expressing themselves and their power and individuality. Nevertheless, rules must
be adhered to, when it threatens to disrupt the peace for no more reason than a child
trying to entertain themselves, or for the reason a child has already learned that this
draws attention, or for the reason that the child is truly fearful or in psychological,
emotional or physical discomfort.

Children may be fearful of school and strangers to begin with, they may otherwise be
too familiar, they may be distressed - they do not know how to handle themselves or
they would not be your student. All this negative emotion stands in the way of
learning however we must recognise that it is learning. It is all learning.

As a teacher I am responsible for developing two kind of discipline in
my classroom. The first is internal discipline. This discipline is
developed through repeated work based on interest. I am responsible
for sparking that interest by introducing material to which the child can
respond. The second stage of discipline I must establish in my
classroom is external discipline. When a childs action springs from a
good motive, I do not always feel that I have to interfere. When it does
not spring from a good motive, I must always intervene. The key word is
always. The children positively must know that I will stop any such
behaviour immediately and consistently. Sometimes I get weary with
this But I persevere nonetheless. I always try to anticipate disorder
and avoid situations in which it is likely to develop. I must be organised
and remain undistracted in order to accomplish this. It is one reason I
prefer a classroom atmosphere of reflection and observation, and why I
ask children not to interrupt me but to wait quietly next to me until I can
give them my attention. (Lillard, p7.)

Likewise, there is a little discussed but often felt belief in some adults that children
will quickly disintegrate sober social relations into absolute chaos if not kept under
tight control and check. That they will entirely act upon unchecked impulse and are
essentially irrational and threatening [rather like Freud recognised that childhood
desires and impulse dominated the adult response to certain issues, the childlike and
child defined unconscious mind attempts to dominate rational adult or conscious
behaviour and responses.] .But we should remember that chaos is the site of most

amount of knowledge, stimulus and learning. Man is a social being. I believe that the
childs drive for development is fuelled not by narcissic desire or self-centred
energies, but by his unconscious desire to fulfil his destiny in society. The
dependence of man upon man, and in turn the interdependence between man and
his universe, are the framework within which I want my classroom to come to life
To full this goal, the structured environment has to reflect the outside world (Lillard,
p.8)

We are not only intellectual beings; humans are emotional creatures at any age
regardless of poise and demure. We supress irrational thoughts as adults and we
must learn to do this in a controlled conscious manner.

In a scenario of complete freedom would the choice of study and subject come down
to superficial explorations of topical, faddish and fashionable subjects? Would
children rather watch cartoons all day than learn math if given free reign? Again it
must be emphasized that freedom is only relative to sets and codes of behaviors
and requirements. Whatever the child presents to you in the class, you really ought to
use, just like a child can make a toy from apparently nothing. If they prevent you
from helping them learn by sighing or giggling or by moving about, take time to let
them do these things. If they insist on screaming let them do so but in a different
place. And when they are finished they may return to their work - whether that is
individual work, structured play, group work or free play.

Every available choice is a good one; it will be much easier for the child to make
good decisions. I never tell a student that he has to learn, rather, I suggest also that
he never tell me anything more than he really wants to tell me. I usually tell my
student that he can withhold whatever he wishes, and to be sure to withhold
whatever he wishes. In cases where extreme emotions are displayed we will have a
room for children to go with an assistant, with some books and toys and they can
spend time alone, apart from the class until they feel more relaxed, and more able to
focus and be social. Observation becomes so important. Each child may differ in their
ability to make correct choices. Some may need rules or controls that another child
doesn't. Others may repeatedly test guidelines that their peers leave alone. This
quote from Maria Montessori is especially helpful:

"It is clear therefore that the discipline which reveals itself in the Montessori
class is something which comes more from within than without. But this self-
discipline has not come into existence in a day, or a week, or even a month. It
is the result of a long inner growth, an achievement won through months of
training." (Montesori, in The Absorbent Mind).
It is the primary aim of Idea Source that every member of the school feels valued
and respected, and that each person is treated fairly and well. We are a caring
community, whose values are built on mutual trust and respect for all. The schools
behaviour policy is therefore designed to support the way in which all members of the
school can live and work together in a supportive way. It seeks to promote an
environment where everyone feels happy, safe and secure and to support the key
aims outlined below:
At Idea Source we believe that children and adults flourish best in an ordered
environment without fear of being hurt or hindered by anyone else. We aim to work
towards a situation in which children can develop self-discipline and self-esteem,

where their respect for others to ensure everyone knows what is expected of them
and children are free to develop their learning in an atmosphere of mutual respect
and encouragement. Jennifer Underwood is the named practitioner responsible for
behavior management issues.
In order to achieve this at Idea Source:
Different ways of dealing with unsociable behaviour are used and this is
regularly discussed and agreed within the Nursery school, and explained to all
newcomers, both children and adults. The implantation of high five rules was
implemented from the childrens suggestions
1. Listening ears
2. Listening eyes
3. Sitting nicely
4. Mouths closed
5. Hands up
6. = High five
Appropriate methods are implemented to manage childrens behaviour
including distraction, praise and reward and excellent nursery- home links.
Children are given 3 opportunities to show appropriate behavior. In the unlikely
situation of this unwanted behaviour continuing they are given a period of Clam
down with an adult. The parents would be informed about the inappropriate
behaviour at the end of the session.
All adults caring for children in Idea Source will ensure that the ideas of the
nursery are applied consistently, so those children have the security of knowing
what to expect and can build up useful habits of behaviour. In case of serious
behaviour such as bullying, racial or other abuse, the unacceptability of the
behaviour and attitudes will be made clear immediately, but by means of
explanations rather than personal blame. Again this would be explained to
parents at the end of the session.
All adults will be a positive role model for children with regard to friendliness, care
and courtesy. We praise the children constantly for positive behaviour. The
Nursery expects every member of their community to behave in a considerate
way towards others.
In any case of misbehaviour, it will always be made clear to the child or children in
question it is that the behavior and not the child that is unwelcome.
Adults in the Nursery school will praise and endorse desirable behaviour such as
kindness and willingness to share. The nursery uses reward stickers for good/kind
behaviour.
Adults will not raise their voice in a threatening way. As a team we will take
positive steps to avoid a situation in which children receive adult attention only in
return for undesirable behaviour.
Adults in the Nursery school will make themselves aware of, and respect, a range
of cultural expectations regarding interactions between people.
When children behave in unacceptable ways:
Any problems will be handled in a developmentally appropriate fashion, respecting
individual childrens level of understanding and maturity. If a child smacks or hurts

another child or adult, a member of staff will explain to the child what they have done
wrong and possibly remove them from the situation. If a child is displaying any other
forms of inappropriate behaviour with the risk of hurting themselves, others around
them or the Nursery environment he or she will be told 3 times that this action is
inappropriate and then removed from the situation as stated previously.
We always encourage children to say they are sorry. Children will never be sent out
of the room or left unattended in any situation.
Recurring problems will be tackled by the whole Nursery school, in partnership with
children and parents using objective observations to establish an understanding of
the cause.
Techniques intended to single out and humiliate individual children such as a
naughty chair will not be used.
Adults will be aware that some kinds of behaviour may arise from a special need; to
support this practitioners may implement an individual education plan (IEP), sourced
from an IAELD and Nurture Plan and they will be given one to one support and work
together to resolve behaviour issues.
Parents and carers will be told at the end of the session if their child has hurt another
child or it has been necessary to have acalm down time.
Children will be constantly reassured that they are always valued as individuals even
if their behaviour maybe unacceptable. We work together to solve any problems.
Physical punishment such as smacking or shaking will never be used nor threatened.
Restraints may be used if a child is having a temper tantrum or if a member of staff
felt that the child was in danger to themselves or others. The parents would be
informed of this action at the end of the session. This policy aims to help children
grow in a safe and secure environment, and to become positive, responsible and
increasingly independent members of the Nursery community. The nursery rewards
good behaviour, as it believes that this will develop an ethos of kindness and
cooperation. This policy is designed to promote good behaviour, rather than merely
deter anti-social behaviour.

The role of parents
The Nursery collaborates actively with parents, so that children receive consistent
messages about how to behave at home and at school.
Monitoring and review

The School managers monitor the effectiveness of this policy on a regular basis and
reports to the team on the effectiveness of the policy and, if necessary, make
recommendations for further improvements.
The School keeps a record concerning individual incidents of misbehavior for key
children. The school teachers record minor incidents. The team record those
incidents in their 'Behavior record book' file when a child is showing repetitive signs of
bad behaviour. This is then shared daily at the end of the session with the childs
parents.
Even in the open approaches of Montessori a relatively familiar set of school rules
will apply. Starting on the first day of school the teacher demonstrates a ground
rule. Each day another rule is demonstrated. Begin at the top of your list and move
to the end. When the end is reached move back to the top. Everyday the teacher
demonstrates one. The teacher/facilitator will go over all of the ground rules several
times during the first week of school.
2.) After a couple of months or so choose a child each day to demonstrate a rule
from the list. You tell the child to demonstrate how to carry a rug, etc. Be sure you
choose a child who knows. Again move down the list one rule a day and then back
up to the top.
3.) The teacher verbalizes a ground rule each day from list.
4.) Eventually the children are called on to verbalize the rule. This goes on until the
last day of school.
General class/school rules are:

1. We respect each other when people are doing individual work we do not
interrupt them, just as they do not interrupt us. We are not allowed to interfere
or disturb an activity that I have not chosen or asked to join; this is my
responsibility to the group. I do not need to join a group activity. I may
continue working with an individual exercise during group activities, or I may
stand apart from the group as an observer of group activities without
becoming an active participant, but I must not interfere..
2. We listen carefully to others, whether in group work, free play, or activities
with the teacher we wait until others have finished speaking or until we are
asked to speak before saying something.
3. We may calm ourselves down at anytime But especially after play we join
the circle and sit quietly and relax, we clear our minds and think about what
we will do in the next session.
4. When we speak we use quiet voices - polite kind words, please and
thank-you to each other all the time, everywhere in school.
5. We raise hands to get attention, or ask Excuse me - if we need help or
want to speak to each other in class.
6. We ask who, what, why, where, and when a lot of the time, to each other
and to the teachers we need to know these things from each other, it helps
us understand.
7. When you hear the rain stick, put all materials away quietly, come to the
circle line, and sit in silence.
8. We use two hands to carry all materials this prevents accidents.

9. We use a rug for all floor activities the rug is our space for our work,
otherwise we use a table, or a free space on top of the shelves.
a) all materials stay on the rug
b) sit next to the rug
c) walk around rugs of other people
d) roll rug and put away when finished
e) carry rug safely (hug to body)
10. No running or chasing inside school - this prevents accidents.
11. We try our best and try again if at first you dont succeed, try, try again
practice makes perfect.
12. We are all a team whether working on our own or together, we support each
other.
13. Mistakes help us learn there is no one right way, if there were no mistakes
how could there be learning?
14. We create, participate and produce - we do not just consume and use
we do not just use, watch, read, look, eat and listen to things people have
made for us, we make things for them.
15. We celebrate when we or someone else gets it right as we are a team
we all win when someone gets it right.
16. I must use the materials respectfully. I may not harm the materials, himself
or others. The child may not use materials in a way that disturbs the activities
of others.
17. If I dont want to work I am not allowed to disturb or distract others
activities. I am free to do nothing if I want. I can learn by observing others, I
may be thinking, or I may simply be relaxing.


Appendix I: Further modern exposition on the Kalama Sutta:

Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing. False or
incorrect information does not become true because it is repeated over and
over. People often defend a point of view by repeatedly asserting it, usually
with rising voices and tempers.
He cautions against legends which are stories based on unproven facts. A
legend or tradition appears factual but cannot be fully verified. Religion and

history are full of legends and traditions which are suggestive stories aimed at
exalting famous leaders or teachers, or to highlight the truth of a teaching.
He questions rumor, that is, information from unknown and unverified sources
usually circulated from one person to another. We also call it hearsay.
Through modern media urban legends and rumors spread rapidly.
Even scriptures are to be questioned. Scriptures gain their authority through
belief in their divine origin or that they record the words of a sage. In tradition
they become unquestioned. In Gotamas day, the Indian Vedic scriptures were
viewed as sacred revelations. In our day, the Bible is regarded by most
Christians as the Word of God, though conceptions vary. The belief in the
divine inspiration of the Bible is the basis for some of our highly polarized
social issues, where people invoke the Bible as the authority for political or
social views. Muslims regard the Quran as a revelation directly given to
Mohammed and accept the principles he taught as Gods (Allah) laws for
governing society. Jewish tradition regarded the Torah, first five books of the
Bible as a body of laws, similar to the later Quran. However, the Jewish
Rabbis (teachers) relied on reason to interpret the meaning and application of
those laws. A story is told that once in a dispute one rabbi insisted on his
opinion as the truth in the dispute, and threatened to call down the voice of
God back him up. However, the other rabbis replied that the voice of God is no
substitute for a good reason and argument and they would not accept the
decision even if the voice of God supported it. Revelation cannot replace
reason. In our modern time we are reminded by Porgys comment that whats
written in the Bible isn;t necessarily so.
We are not to simply accept a surmise, something accepted as true while as
yet unproven. We make surmises frequently, concluding that something is
true, though we may not have all the facts or information. Such conclusions
are easily shaped by prejudices and are to be questioned, even when
recognized authorities assert them.
We are not to accept something because it is an axiom, axiomatic, that is, an
unquestioned, apparently self-evident, or assumed truth. To question an
axiom seems to go against reason, but may be the highest reason. Many
things once accepted in society as axioms, givens, such as the separation of
races, male superiority, that the earth is flat, etc. have given way to
questioning, resulting in the progress of society and culture.
Specious reasoning asserts ideas which are plausible, seemingly correct or
logical but with investigation are found to be erroneous or false. They can be
what we regard as half-truths. Political campaigns and religious debate often
employ such assertions.
We are to check our biases or prejudices that arise from long study of a
teaching or subject matter.
We should not be swayed to accept ideas simply because of the ability or
expertise of the exponent. Having advanced academic degrees does not
automatically make a person an authority in any field other than the field
he/she has studied.
The final consideration questions even ones teacher. According to Gotama,
one should not accept a teaching simply because ones teacher advocates for
it. In all traditions this is the most difficult. Lecterns and pulpits are the
strongest barriers to questioning.


Appendix II Materials and equipment list

The materials and equipment will:

be available in a quantity and variety to occupy all children in attendance
be consistent with the developmental capabilities of children in attendance
be available for much the day
offer many types of play choices, for blocks of time, to provide different
opportunities for children to experiment, explore and learn
be accessible to children where they can reach and use the materials by
themselves with adaptations to furniture to meet all childrens needs
be organized into particular interest centres (may overlap into other centres)
be arranged so quiet and active centres do not interfere with one another
represent and encourage acceptance of diversity (race, culture, age, abilities,
gender) in all activity areas
be rotated and changed frequently based on the childrens interests
be provided indoors and outdoors to broaden childrens exploration and
experiences

(Daily living centre)
Materials/Equipment

1. Home Area:
child-sized stove, sink with cabinet for storing dishes, refrigerator, table and
chairs, bed,
dresser, dress up display and other furnishing such as washer/dryer
cooking utensils, such as pots/pans, eating utensils, dishes, muffin pan, wok,
toaster, play
food, collection of empty containers such as food products and spices
cleaning utensils such as mops, brooms, feather dusters, rags, pails, empty
containers of
cleaning products such as laundry detergent and dish soap
infant dolls, dolls representing adults, small dolls for doll houses (diverse
ethnic characteristics i.e. stilted house)
doll furniture, such as cradle/crib, high chair, stroller, wheelchairs, walkers,
baby carriers from various cultures
doll clothes and accessories such as bottles, blankets
full length unbreakable mirror
telephones, clocks, radios, cameras
stuffed animals
fabrics or blankets typical of various cultures
garage with small vehicles, doll house and accessories, barn with small toy
animals and accessories

2. Dress up clothes: (male and female; depicting the season)

jackets, shirts, dresses, skirts, pants
accessories such as jewellery, purses, tote bags, briefcases, suitcases,
sunglasses
hats, including hard hats, hats used in different jobs, sun hats

costumes
clip-on ties, scarves
boots, sandals, slippers, shoes

3. Prop boxes:
In addition to providing the home area, another theme should be provided such as:

gas station: work clothes, hats, empty oil cans, funnels, hose or tubing, toy tools,
larger toy vehicles

medical office: bandages, tape, doctors kit, dolls, blankets, stethoscope, white
shirts

farm: toy animals, pails, calf feeding bottle, oat bags, saddles, coveralls, caps/straw
hats

carpenter: carpenters aprons, hats, rulers, measuring tapes, tools, empty paint
cans, brushes, rollers

restaurant: tables and chairs, menus, play money, aprons, paper chef hats, table
cloths, empty ketchup/tuk tri bottles, cash registers grocery store: cash register,
paper bags, play money, empty food containers, aprons, toy shopping carts

office: shoulder strap tote/purses, cancelled stamps or seals, envelopes, paper,
rubber stamps, mailbox, flyers

Activity Area: Fine Motor
(Table toy centre, quiet thinking centre, manipulative centre)

Materials/Equipment
Some of each category:

1. Building toys:
small wooden blocks/cubes
interlocking blocks (Lego/Duplo)
magnetic blocks

2. Puzzles:

variety of textures foam, plastic, wood, multitexture

different complexities, knobbed, without knobs, variety of pieces (five to 30),
interlocking and individual pieces, sequence, floor

3. Manipulative:

small and large beads, strings, bead pattern cards, bead frames
sewing materials including blunt needles, wool, burlap, buttons, lacing cards
with laces/string
pegs and peg boards
pounding boards with mallets
parquet shapes with and without pattern cards

zip, snap and button dressing frames
gears
straws/sticks with connectors
links, linking stars
nuts and bolts, screws
train tracks and trains
potato-head figure and accessories
pop beads (snap together)
shape sorters

4. Art materials: see creative activity area

Storage/Furnishings/Space:
containers clear plastic, wicker/rattan baskets
child-size tables and chairs
low, open shelves
carpet area (floor puzzles)
puzzle rack

Activity Area: Creative
(Art centre, wood construction area)

Materials/Equipment
1. Drawing:
o large and small crayons
o pens, pencils, erasers, coloured pencils
o thick and thin washable markers
o chalk, chalk board, erasers
o paper (various sizes and colours, lined and blank) newspaper,
construction, tissue, coffee
o filters, computer, cards, paper plates
o dry-erase boards/markers

2. Painting:
o finger paints
o liquid tempera paints
o block/disk tempera paints and trays
o variety of paint utensils, paint brushes, rollers, squeeze and spray
bottles, sponges, Q-tips,
o paint scrapers

3. Collage:

glue/paste, glue sticks, glue/paste pots, glue brushes/spreaders
paper scraps, magazines, cards, wrapping paper, ribbon
cardboard tubes, boxes, rolls for construction
felt/fabric remnants
yarn/string
cotton balls, pompoms

glitter, buttons, sequins, gems (all small materials require supervision and for
use with
children three years of age and older)
natural objects (leaves, seeds, twigs, feathers)

Three-dimensional:
play dough
clay
wood for gluing/construction
pipe cleaners
plasticine

5. Tools:
safe scissors (left- and right-handed)
staplers
paper punches
tape (various types), tape holder
tools to use with play dough (craft sticks, blunt knives, scissors, pipe cleaners)
stencils

Storage/furnishings:
low, open shelves
containers clear plastic, wicker/rattan
easels
child-size table and chairs
paint shirts or smocks
facilities for drying, displaying and storing artwork

Activity Area: Block
(Block area)

Materials/Equipment

1. Blocks: (enough blocks for at least three children with at least two different sets of
blocks)

unit blocks come in different shapes and sizes such as triangles, squares,
rectangles, cylinders and arches (small blocks can be combined to create an
equally sized larger block, ex: two small square blocks = one rectangular
block)

large hollow blocks (hollow blocks with open sides)

tree blocks (oak, birch, basswood, pine, natural tree cookies, homemade or
store bought)

homemade blocks (large cardboard milk cartons, plastic containers, foam
containers, sturdy boxes, wood cut into block shapes)

2. Accessories: (at least two types)

vehicles small trucks, cars, trains, farm vehicles

traffic/road signs
floor road map/carpet
small toy people representing various ethnic groups, ages, abilities
small toy animals (zoo, farm, domestic, native, dinosaurs)
ramps, boards, cardboard cylinders
Storage/space:
open shelves labelled with unit block outlines
containers clear, plastic, wicker/rattan baskets
ample space and carpeted floor area

Activity Area: Reading
(Language reasoning, literacy, books and pictures, library area)

Materials/Equipment
An assortment of books is needed. They can be store-bought, adult and child-made
books, photo albums and childrens magazines. We have some from each of these
categories:

1. Factual books:
real animals
facts about animals and plants
real life experiences, ex: going to the doctor
number, shape, colour

1. Nature and science books:

five senses
human body
animal homes and lives

3. Race and cultures books:

historical and contemporary stories about people from various races and
cultures
books in various languages

4. Diverse abilities books:

books depicting individuals with additional needs (wheelchair, crutches,
hearing devices, etc.)

Fantasy books:

pretend stories about people
pretend stories about animals

6. Additional language materials:

flannel board and accessories
puppets, puppet theatre

poster sets (sets of winter scenes, etc.)
listening centre and recorded stories with or without headphones

Storage/furnishing:

book display
comfortable seating, child or adult size couch, pillows, covered mattress, adult
sized arm chair

Activity Area: Large Muscle
(Active role play area, space/equipment for gross motor play)
Materials/Equipment
Gross motor equipment should include some of the following:

1. Stationary equipment:
climbing equipment
slides low, balancing equipment
swings

2. Portable equipment:
balls (variety of sizes and textures)
sports equipment (child-size basket ball hoop, plastic bats, hockey sticks)
wheel toys (wagons, push/ pull toys, wheelbarrows, scooters)
riding toys (variety of sizes with and without pedals, for use by one or two
children)
tumbling mats
jump ropes
bean bags, targets/containers
hula hoops
ring toss game
parachutes tunnels
toboggans/sleds
large blocks (indoors and outdoors)
loose materials such as big cardboard boxes, blankets, gutters (plastic eve
troughs), wood pieces

Activity Area: Sand/Water
Materials/Equipment
1. Sand/water:
sand boxes, sand pits (outdoors), various types of sand/water tables such as
dishpans, plastic
bins, tubs, buckets, sinks
water sprinkler, hose
sand or sand substitute (modelling sand, play pellets)
waterproof aprons or smocks

2. Sand/water toys:

measuring cups/spoons, variety of containers/pails, plastic bottles
shovels, scoops, molds
pumps, siphons, sand/waterwheels
sponges, small water droppers, spray bottles, turkey basters

funnels, plastic tubes, pipes
trowels, rakes, sand scrapers, sifters
things that sink or float
nature items such as shells, pieces of wood, rocks

3. Dramatic play toys:
animals, dinosaurs, sea creatures, small people
small and large trucks and cars, diggers, boats
kitchen utensils spoons with and without strainer holes, egg beaters, tongs,
pots, pans,
muffin tins, whisks
Storage/space:
shelf under water/sand table
easy to clean flooring

Activity Area: Science
(Science discovery centre)

Materials/Equipment
Some of each category
:
1. Natural objects:
flowers
moss
leaves
shells
rocks
acorns
pine cones
bird nests, feathers
fossils, bones
wood, twigs, branches, drift wood

2. Living things:
pets (acceptable to health authorities)
plants, flowers, terrariums
aquariums/fish bowls with fish, snails, tadpoles
worm composting
garden
bird houses, feeders visible from a window

Nature science books/posters, games, puzzles:
factual books/posters such as animals, plants, birds, fish, human body,
seasons, weather,
planets, environment
maps, globe, atlas, x-rays
games with a nature theme, nature picture matching cards, nature sequence
cards
puzzles with nature or natural sequences, such as the life cycle, ex: frog,
butterfly, chicken, plant nature/science floor puzzle such as the human body
(heart, lungs)


4. Nature/science materials:
pinwheels, wind chimes, sources of wind such as fans
magnets with iron and non-iron objects
magnifying glasses, prepared slides/microscopes, bug viewers
sink and float items
pulleys/levers
shaking cans, smelling cans (filled with spices), feeling boxes
prisms, plastic translucent colour paddles/colour cards, kaleidoscopes,
coloured glasses
tornado tubs
realistic plastic insects
Storage/furnishing:
shelves/display areas
tables/chairs

Activity Area: Math/Number
Materials/Equipment

1. Measuring:
liquid/dry measuring sets (cups and spoons)
scales and weights
cloth tape measures, metre sticks, rulers, wind up metre tapes
thermometers
height charts
centimetre cubes/snap cubes
2. Shapes:
magnetic shapes
pattern or matching cards for any shape toys
attribute blocks (of different sizes, colours, shapes, thicknesses)
parquetry blocks
puzzles with different geometric shapes
unit blocks with outlines on shelves for organizing
3. Counting:
small objects to count such as coloured beads, animals, vehicles, with or
without pattern cards or sorting/counting tray
play money in the drama area
attribute beads and activity cards
pegs/peg boards
pegboards with numbers and holes to match
games or puzzles where quantities of objects are matched to written numbers,
dice games

Written numbers:
number books and posters
magnetic numbers
number puzzles
number lacing cards
number lottos
play telephones
dramatic play cash registers with play money
clocks

calendars
playing cards
5. Quantities:
dominos
playing cards
abacus
charts and graphs
nesting/stacking cups
toys and games to figure out more or less/fractions
snap cubes, centimetre cubes
puzzles or three-dimensional graduated cylinders showing a sequence of
different heights

Activity Area: Music/Movement
Materials/Equipment
1. Musical instruments: homemade or commercial
bells, piano, triangles, xylophones, rhythm sticks, tambourines, drums,
maracas, cymbals, tone blocks from various cultures
2. Dance props:
scarves, ribbons, streamers, hoops, dancing clothes and shoes (male and
female)
3. Audio equipment:
tape or CD player, tape recorder, radio tapes or CDs of different types of
music such as folk, classical, popular childrens songs, jazz,
rock, reggae, rhythm and blues, music from various cultures and in various
languages listening centre, with or without headphones
song books, microphones

Storage/furnishings/space:
low, open shelves
small tables/chairs
open area for

Activity Area: Technology Centre
(TV, video, computers)
Materials/Equipment
A technology centre is not an essential part of a preschool room and is not required
because children learn best from having hands-on contact with materials and
socializing with peers and adults.

If used, the audio/visual equipment including TV programs, movies, videos and
computer software must be culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate, with
no violent, frightening or sexually explicit content. Many childrens videos or TV
programs contain violence and are inappropriate. Useful materials might include:

video of a story that is considered childrens literature
computer software that has educational content in introducing concepts
such as numbers,
colours, matching
videos for children and staff to exercise to
videos showing familiar things such as baking cookies/ bread

videos that support a curricular/interests of children
Storage/furnishing:
computer tables and chairsdance/movement

:
[source for materials list]

All About the ECERS-R, Debby Cryer, Thelma Harms, Cathy Riley, 2003
Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale revised edition, Thelma Harms, Richard
M. Clifford, Debby Cryer, 2005
Caring Spaces, Learning Places, Childrens Environments that Work, Jim Greenman,
2005
The Complete Learning Centre Book, Rebecca Isbell, 1995

Montessori Equipment

Description

Brown Stair Package bear counters
Category Classifications Box 1 fischer tip number clock
Knobbed Cylinders Block double sandpaper letters
Manipulative nuts & bolts pizza party fraction circles
Dressing Frame - small buttons king of chinese characters
Dressing Frame - zipper plant cell model
Pink tower red blood cell model
Montessoir red rods magnetic actiivty kit -2
Cheese lacing clock shape sorter
Red rods w/stand matching number puzzle
sensorial starter pack foam letters -uppercase
plastic stacking cups- clearance geometric cabinet shapes cards
cards & plastic counters spindle box
fruits 1-9 beds hanger
veegetables learning abc stand
hand puppets - pig learning chinese characters magnetic
tracing tiles
learning chinese characters in a tub -
clearance
sandpaper letters lowercase -wood
sandpaper chinese strokes
characters wood
pink scheme word list wood tangram small
wooden shapes & tiles wooden tangram small
small number cards - uncut bank game n decimal system- partial
metal fraction circles base ten blocsk
3 part cards - continets decimal presentation beads
4 aprt cards- land and water forms geometric cabinet
4M - Science Magic glen doman dots - addition PDf
Montessori Addition & subtation board glen doman dots - subtraction - PDF
Animal Logic glen doman dots - multiplication PDF
Aquarium mighty mind tiles IQ gaem - paradise
Super Mind tiles IQ CAR - 160 challenges

Bank game n decimal system- golden
beads Logico board- picolo
binomial cube Mighty mind tiles
Blue Geo solids 100 and 100 bead chain
Brainstorm learning age 100 and 1000 golden bead chain
Bear math balance 1000 bead cahin
color box 3 - wooden 1000 cube
wall hanger & frame beads Large movable alphabet -aryclic
globe - continetns large number cads - wooden
IQ ogic Numbers logico chinese
Human anatomy - 27cm torso table number rods
knobless cylinders puzzle pin map of asia
objects for learning letter sounds 1 cm volume cubes
phonics blue scheme kit stamp game
power of 2 cube

Appendix III Different Approaches to Teaching: Comparing Three
Preschool Programs

As early childhood educators, we all have our own philosophies and approaches to education. Our
approach to teaching is created from a multitude of resources and probably includes knowledge from
early childhood theorists, an understanding of child development, and our experiences with children in
different learning environments. Whether you are a new teacher about to embark on an early
childhood career or a well-seasoned professional, it is helpful to know what other educators are doing
in different types of programs. New approaches to teaching and learning can be adapted within our
own environment and information about how your philosophy of education compares or differs from
others can be shared with parents considering your program for their children.

In this article, we will cover three different types of preschool programsMontessori, High/Scope,
and Reggio Emilia. The following questions will be considered for each of the three approaches:
What is the programs history?
What are its main components?
What is unique about the program?
How can one tell if a school is truly following the model?
The Montessori Method
Maria Montessori, Italys first woman physician, opened her first school in 1907. The first Montessori
school in the United States opened in 1911, and by 1916 the Montessori method was found in
locations across the world.

The use of natural observation in a prepared environment by an objective teacher led Montessori to
consider her method scientific. After Montessori completed her direct study of children, she specified
every particular detail of how the school should be operated to ensure accurate replication. The
teachers role in a Montessori school is to observe in order to connect the child with the suitable
materials (Goffin, 2001).

Two main branches of Montessori method have developed: the Association Montessori Internationale
(AMI) and the American Montessori Society (AMS). The Association Montessori Internationale was
founded in 1929 by Montessori, herself, to maintain the integrity of her lifes work and to ensure that it
would be perpetuated after her death. Nancy Rambush attempted to Americanize the Montessori
method and founded the American Montessori Society (AMS) in 1960. What is most important to note
about the two branches is that both are currently in preschools throughout the United States, and both
have excellent programs with credentials for teachers. Also, both AMI and AMS support the use of

Montessori materials. These learning materials are self correcting; they can only be used by a child
in one way, thus avoiding the possibility of the child learning the wrong way to use them.
What Are Montessoris Main Components?
Social
The link between family and school is important.
Most Montessori classrooms have multiple age groups, which is intended to give children
more opportunity to learn from each other.
Montessori advocated that children learn best by doing.
In order to help children focus, the teacher silently demonstrates the use of learning materials
to them. Children may then choose to practice on any material they have had a lesson
about.
Once children are given the lesson with the material, they may work on it independently, often
on a mat that designates their space.

Curriculum

There is a belief in sensory learning; children learn more by touching, seeing, smelling,
tasting, and exploring than by just listening.
The childs work as a purposeful, ordered activity toward a determined end is highly valued.
This applies both to exercises for practical life and language.
The main materials in the classroom are didactic. These are materials that involve sensory
experiences and are self-correcting. Montessori materials are designed to be aesthetically
pleasing, yet sturdy and were developed by Maria Montessori to help children develop
organization.
Evans (1971) summarized the preschool curriculum in a Montessori program as consisting
of three broad phases: exercises for practical life, sensory education, and language
activities (reading and writing). (p. 59)

Environmental Set-Up

Montessori believed that the environment should be prepared by matching the child to the
corresponding didactic material.
The environment should be comfortable for children (e.g., child-sized chairs that are
lightweight).
The environment should be homelike, so child can learn practical life issues. For example,
there should be a place for children to practice proper self-help skills, such as hand washing.
Since Montessori believed beauty helped with concentration, the setting is aesthetically
pleasing.
In the setting, each child is provided a place to keep her own belongings.
What Is Unique About the Program?
The environment is prepared with self-correcting materials for work, not play. The Montessori method
seeks to support the child in organization, thus pretend play and opportunities to learn creatively from
errors are less likely to be seen in a Montessori classroom. Chattin-McNichols (1992) clarifies how
Piaget, often called the father of constructivism, and Montessori both agreed that children learn from
errors, yet the set-up in which errors may occur is controlled differently in the Montessori classroom.
The didactic, self-correcting materials assist controlling error versus an adult correcting the child.
How Can One Tell If a School Is Truly Following the Montessori Method?
The first step to ensure whether a school truly practices the Montessori method is making sure that its
teachers are AMI or AMS credentialed. Not every Montessori school has teachers with Montessori
training.

Although Montessori schools are sometimes thought of as being elitist institutions for wealthy families,
this is not true. There are many charter and public Montessori schools. Nor, despite the fact that
Montessori began her work with poor special needs children in Rome, are Montessori schools
reserved for low -income children with disabilities.

The High/Scope Approach
High/Scope was founded in 1970 and emerged from the work Dave Weikart and Connie Kamii did
on the Perry Preschool Project. This project, initiated in 1962, involved teachers working with children
(three and four years old) a few hours a day at a school, attending staff meetings, and making weekly
home visits. The program was developed with the idea that early education could prevent school
failure in high school students from some of the poorest areas in Ypsilanti, MI (Kostelnik, 1999). The
Perry Preschool Program is one of the few longitudinal studies in the early childhood field and had
significant findings. For instance, compared with a matched control group, the children that were part
of the Perry Preschool Program had significantly more high school graduates and fewer arrests.

The High/Scope Foundation is an independent, nonprofit research, development, training, and public
advocacy organization. The Foundations principal goals are to promote the learning and development
of children worldwide from infancy through adolescence and to support and train educators and
parents as they help children learn.

The High/Scope Approach has roots in constructivist theory. Constructivists believe that we learn by
mentally and physically interacting with the environment and with others. Although errors may be
made during these interactions, they are considered just another part of the learning process.

Although both Constructivism and the Montessori Method involve learning by doing, there are
significant differences. In Montessori, for instance, the didactic, self-correcting materials are
specifically designed to help prevent errors. Children learn by repetition, instead of by trial and error.
The role of pretend play is also different in the two methods. In High/Scope, childrens creative
exploration is encouraged, and this sometimes leads to pretend play, while in Montessori, practical
life work that relates to the real world is stressed.

Although Constructivism is a theory of learning, as opposed to a theory of teaching, High/Scope has
exemplified an approach of teaching that supports Constructivist beliefs. Thus, children learn through
active involvement with people, materials, events, and ideas.
What Are High/Scopes Main Components?
Social
One of the fundamental points in the High/Scope approach is that children are encouraged to
be active in their learning through supportive adult interactions.
The High/Scope approach includes times for various grouping experiences in the classroom.
There are specific periods in each day for small group times, large group times, and for
children to play independently in learning centers through out the classroom.
Children are encouraged to share their thinking with teachers and peers.
Social interactions in the classroom community are encouraged. Teachers facilitate work on
problem resolution with children as conflicts arise.
When a child talks, the teachers listen and ask open-ended questions; they seek to ask
questions that encourage children to express their thoughts and be creative rather than a
closed question that would elicit more of a yes/no or simplistic answer.
Each day the High/Scope teacher observes and records what the children are doing. During
the year, teachers complete a High/Scope Child Observation Record from the daily
observations they have collected.

Curriculum
Key experiences were designed specifically for this approach. The following is a brief
summary of key experiences taken from Kostelnik, Soderman, & Whiren (1999, p. 32). The
key experiences for preschool children are:
-Creative representation
-Classification
-Language and literacy
-Seriation
-Initiative and social relation

-Number
-Movement
-Space
-Music
-Time
Plan-do-review is another major component of the High/Scope framework. Children are
encouraged to: 1) plan the area, materials, and methods they are going to work with; 2) do,
actually carry out their plan; and 3) review, articulate with the class-room community what they
actually did during work time. The review time helps children bring closure to their work and
link their actual work to their plan.
Cleanup time is a natural part of plan-do-review. Children are given a sense of control by
cleaning up. Representative labels help children return materials to appropriate places
(Roopnarine & Johnson, 1993).
The High/Scope classroom has a consistent routine. The purpose of the resulting predictability
is to help children understand what will happen next and encourage them to have more control
in their classroom.


The High/Scope classroom is a materials-rich learning environment. Usually, the locations
for classroom materials are labeled to help children learn organizational skills.
Materials are set-up so that they are easily accessible at a childs level. This helps facilitate
childrens active exploration.
Teachers set up the classroom areas purposefully for children to explore and build social
relationships, often with well-defined areas for different activities.
How Can One Tell If a School Is Truly Following the High/Scope Approach?
Teachers new to the High/Scope curriculum sometimes find work confusing because they are not sure
of their roles (Roopnarine & Johnson, 1993). Sometimes, a list of the key experiences is displayed in
the classroom, but then most of the day is spent in teacher-directed activities. This is not what was
meant by key experiences! Key experiences in which the children have plenty of time for active
exploration in the classroom, is a major component of the High/Scope approach. Furthermore, the
teacher is not just passively facilitating while the children play. Rather, teachers in High/Scope
classrooms are interactive (though not interruptive of peers playing). Often the role of a High/Scope
teacher is to be actively observing and setting up problem solving situations for children.

Plan-do-review was developed to help play become meaningful. There are many ways of
implementing the review piece of plan-do-review. One example of successful review is when the
children draw of a picture of what they worked on. However, it is not usually successful for children to
each individually recall during a long large group time. For example, when children sit for a long period
of time through large group time and each child is asked to say something (sometimes anything).
These group times can grow long and the children get restless or drift off.
What Is Unique About High/Scope?
Key experiences, plan-do-review, and the High/Scope Child Observation Record are all unique
components of the High/Scope framework.
The Reggio Emilia Approach History
Reggio Emilia is a small town of about 130,000 people in Northern Italy. In 1991, Newsweek magazine
noted that the system of 33 infant/toddler schools and preschools in Reggio Emilia were among the
ten best school systems in the world. Over the last 35 years, the teachers in the Reggio Emilia schools
have taken the time to carry out a process of collaborative examination and analysis of teaching and
learning about children. This examination and analysis has broadened constructivist theory, and the
results have been demonstrated to experts in education. (As previously mentioned, constructivist
theory refers to learning by doing and the development of knowledge and understanding based on
the childs own interests.) For example, in The Hundred Languages of Children (1998) Gardner
recognizes how the Reggio approach beautifully connects important early childhood theory with
practice.

The Reggio Emilia approach will be covered in greater detail than the High/Scope approach and the
Montessori method for a number of reasons. First, familiarity with the Reggio Emilia approach is
integral to recent developments in early childhood theory and practice. The approach reflects on both
constructivism and co-constructivism. Furthermore, adaptations of the Reggio Emilia approach have
not been implemented as long as the other two program models in the United States. Thus, fewer
people have actually had experience with Reggio. And finally, its a complex approach from a different
culture.
What Are the Reggio Emilia Approachs Main Components?
Social
Cooperation and collaboration are terms that stress the value of revisiting social learning.
First, children must become members of a community that is working together (cooperation).
Once there is a foundation of trust between the children and adults, constructive conflict may
be helpful in gaining new insights (collaboration).
Co-construction refers to the fact that the meaning of an experience often is built in a social
context.
An atelierista is a teacher who has a special training that supports the curriculum development
of the children and other faculty members. There is an atelierista in each of the Reggio Emilia
preprimary schools.
Pedagogistas are built in as part of the carefully planned support system of the Reggio Emilia
schools. The word pedagogista is difficult to translate into English. They are educational
consultants that strive to implement the philosophy of the system and advocate for seeing
children as the competent and capable people they are. They also make critical connections
between families, schools, and community.

Curriculum

One of the special features of the Reggio Emilia approach is called documentation.
Documentation is a sophisticated approach to purposefully using the environment to explain
the history of projects and the school community. It does not simply refer to the beautiful
classroom artwork commonly found throughout schools following Reggio Emilia Approach.
And, even though it often incorporates concrete examples of both the processes and products
that are part of a childs education, it is more than just that. It is a fundamental way of building
connections. Documentation is discussed in more detail in the next section that describes the
uniqueness of the Reggio Emilia Approach.
Co-construction increases the level of knowledge being developed. This occurs when active
learning happens in conjunction with working with others (e.g. having opportunities for work to
be discussed, questioned, and explored). Having to explain ideas to someone else clarifies
these ideas. In addition, conflicts and questions facilitate more connections and extensions.
There is an opportunity to bring in different expertise. Thus, to facilitate co-construction,
teachers need to aggressively listen and foster collaboration between all the members of the
community whenever possible. Real learning takes place when they check, evaluate, and then
possibly add to each others work.
Long-term projects are studies that encompass the explorations of teachers and children.
Flowcharts are an organized system of recording curriculum planning and assessment based
on ongoing collaboration and careful review.
Portfolios are a collection of a childs work that demonstrates the childs efforts, progress, and
achievements over time.


In Reggio Emilia, the environment is similar to that found in Montessori schools. However, the
environmental set-up as a third teacher has been enhanced and extended in the Reggio
Emilia approach.
Like Montessori, it is believed beauty helps with concentration; the setting is aesthetically
pleasing.
Reggio Emilia schools create homelike environments. In Reggio, the homelike atmosphere is
designed to help make children feel comfortable and learn practical life issues.

Each child is provided a place to keep her own belongings.
Documentation is a major part of the environmental set-up. Documentation illustrates both the
process and the product. In documentation, the child is seen as an individual but also in
relation to a group, with various possibilities for the individual.

What Is Unique About the Reggio Emilia Approach?
Reggio Emilia has become so popular in the early childhood field because it offers many unique
curriculum ideas, because of the strong infrastructure for the Reggio schools, and because of the
attention to co-construction.

In terms of curriculum, the length and depth of projects is unique in the Reggio Emilia
Approach. According to Amelia Gambettis presentation for the University of Missouri in
Kansas City (April 15, 1993), three weeks is a relatively short project in the Reggio Emilia
schools.

Using the environment as a third teacher is stressed in the Reggio Emilia Schools.
Documentation helps facilitate the environment as a teacher. There are numerous
connections to which documentation is integral. Three major connections are the connection
between:

the many audiences (e.g., parents, children, administrators, community, and staff personnel)
and the experience

the work itself and the producers (e.g., by revisiting a project at a later time or by redoing a
project using a different medium)

theory and practice

Flowcharts enhance the Reggio curriculum. A flowchart records information in such a way
that one can see the step-by-step process of how relationships are built; they help the
teachers organize and keep in mind the nature and purpose of the curriculum. The purpose of
a flowchart is to tell the past (what happened before), the present (what is being discussed
now), and the future (what predictions can be made in preparation for what may emerge).
There is an excitement about this process because teachers will see themselves as
researchers and look for solutions. Flowcharts are an essential tool for future consideration in
establishing an ongoing process of documentation. Flowcharts show acts across time.
Therefore, as Forman (May 1995) mentioned in a conversation to the researcher, flowcharts
are more of a sequential representation than webbing, which is more of a semantic net with no
real flow to it. These are illustrated in the video An Amusement Park for Birds (Gandini and
Forman, 1994).

The infrastructure, which has been in place for over 30 years and has low turnover, is also
unique to the Reggio Emilia Approach. The infrastructure includes atelieristas. In The Hundred
Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education (Edwards,
Gandini, Forman, 1993), Vea Vecchi (one of the atelieristas) described her role to Lella
Gandini as someone who guides children and teachers. Vecchi stated that this is a role that
takes on different styles and attitudes in the 20 preprimary schools in Reggio Emilia. In this
conversation with Lella Gandini, Vea Vecchi described the reciprocity of the roles of the
teachers, children, and the atelierista: Working together, guiding the children in their projects,
teachers and I have repeatedly found ourselves face-to-face as if looking in a mirror
learning from one another, and together learning from the children. This way we were trying to
create paths to a new educational approach, one certainly not tried before, where the visual
language was interpreted and connected to other languages, all thereby gaining in meaning.
(p. 121)

Pedagogistas are also an important piece of the infrastructure. The pedagogistas have
ongoing collaboration with the people involved with the schools in Reggio Emilia. Most of
these pedagogistas are general child development experts, one is a special needs (in the
Reggio Emilia schools respectfully called special rights) expert, and one is a puppeteer.
They are built in as part of the carefully planned support system of the Reggio Emilia schools.

Co-construction is strongly emphasized in the approach. For example, a child can learn to
construct knowledge with peers and adults. Co-construction emphasizes the social nature of
such activities in which cognitive conflict is emphasized. Perhaps Loris Malaguzzi (Edwards,
Gandini, Forman, 1993), the founder of the Reggio Emilia experience, referred to the force of
co-construction when he advocated the following: We seek to support those social exchanges
that better insure the flow of expectations, conflicts, cooperation, choices, and the explicit
unfolding of problems tied to the cognitive, affective, and expressive realms (p. 62).

How Can One Tell If a School Is Truly Following the Reggio Emilia
Approach?
Any school that claims to have a Reggio Emilia approach should be careful to remember that we live
in a different culture. Simply copying how the schools in Reggio Emilia operate may miss the point.
When someone visits a program that labels itself as a Reggio Emilia school, it is important to hear that
the school is an adaptation of the Reggio Emilia approach and not just an attempt to copy it. This
adaptation should show that careful, purposeful discussion and collaboration is happening among the
adults in adapting the ideas from Reggio Emilia. This approach was never meant to provide a quick fix
to schools. Furthermore, it is helpful to understand why Reggio Emilia experts refer to this as an
approach and not a model. They call it an approach because it develops over time with a careful
reflection upon the population that is being served. Thus the idea that a school can become a Reggio
Emilia school overnight is unrealistic and could be problematic. For example, teachers could
misinterpret the approach and turn their classes into a free-for-all or eclectic approach that does not
help children make strong, purposeful connections. To see if a school is a good adaptation of the
Reggio Approach, look for the following indicators:
1. teachers reflect on their teaching practices
2. children are celebrated and seen as competent and capable
3. teachers realize its an ongoing quest to capture what children are actually doing
4. the use of documentation is evident, and it truly illustrates the childrens explorations (e.g.,
capturing the process children go through to come up with ideas and examining childrens
thought)
5. the teachers seek to learn, not copy, Reggio educators and adapt their knowledge in the
school
6. relationships are important (for example teachers with families, children with teachers,
teachers with each other, etc.)
References
Chattin-McNichols, J. (1992). The Montessori controversy.New York: Delmar. D
ana, N. T. & Westcott, L. (1995). Training opportunities for prospective elementary and early childhood
teacher reflection, stimulations, teaching cases, portfolios, and more.Paper presented at the annual
meeting at the association of teacher education. St. Louis, MO.
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (1993). The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio
Emilia approach to Early Childhood Education. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (1998). The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio
Emilia approachadvanced reflections. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Evans, E. (1971). Contemporary influences in early childhood education. New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, Inc.

Forman, G. (November, 1993). How are childrens cognitive development affected by the Reggio
Emilia approach? Speech presented at the annual meeting at the National Association for the
Education of Young Children. Anaheim, CA.
Gandini, L (Winter 1992). Conversation about documentation.
Goffin, S., & Wilson, C. (2001). Curriculum models and early childhood education appraising the
relationships. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Kostelnik, M. Soderman, A., & Whiren, A. (1999). Developmentally appropriate curriculum best
practices in early childhood education. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Newsweek (1991, Dec. 2). The 10 Best Schools in the World, and what we can learn from them. 51-
64.
Roopnarine, J. & Johnson, J. (1993). Approaches to early childhood education.NY: Macmillan
Publishing Company.
Sussna, A.G. (Winter 1991). Delegation to Reggio Emilia. Sussna, A.G. (1995). The educational
impact on preschool teachers of adaptation of the Reggio Emilia documentation process. (UMI No.
9606570).
Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language.Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.

Video Resources
Forman, G.E. & Gandini, L. (1991). The Long Jump: A video Analyses of small group projects in early
education practice in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Performanetic Press, 19, The Hollow, Amherst, MA.
Forman, G.E. & Gandini, L. (1994). An Amusement Park for Birds.Performanetic Press, 19, The
Hollow, Amherst, MA.
Website Resources
info@montessori-ami.org
www.americanmontessorisociety.org
www.highscope.org/

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