Father of modern education- Jan Amos Komenský: Wikepedia
“If, in each hour, a man could learn a single fragment of some branch of knowledge, a single rule of some mechanical art, a single pleasing story or proverb (the acquisition of which would require no effort), what a vast stock of learning he might lay by. Seneca is therefore right when he says: “Life is long, if we know how to use it.” It is consequently of importance that we understand the art of making the very best use of our lives.”
John Amos Comenius (Czech: Jan Amos Komenský) (March 28, 1592 – November 15, 1670) was a Czech teacher, scientist, educator, and writer. He was one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica Magna. Comenius became known as the teacher of nations. He is often considered the father of modern education. Modern education is basically known as today’s term public education. Public education is offered for children of the general public and supported by the government.
Comenius was very much involved into children education.
“Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all alike, boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities and towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school.”
He was actually the first one to publish a children encyclopedia with pictures in it which is called Orbis Pictus The World Illustrated. As a result the current form of education where students are tutored with a combination of words and pictures started.
Comenius most important work was finished in 1632 and is usually called in English, The Great Ditactic. It explains how people learn and how they should be taught through the university.
“The proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree.” http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/comenius.html
Innovative potential of Comenius’ educational Principles
1. To teach the same things in a different manner (using all senses) From action to simple representation and thence to reflection
2. Idea of spontaneous development instead of suggested by adult authority
3. Activity when the pupil rediscovers or reconstructs truth by means of external, or internal mental, action consisting in experiment or independent reasoning
Comenius ideas are still UP TO DATE!!
“UNESCO and the heritage of Comenius”by Mr Federico Mayor,Director-General of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)
“Today more than ever we need the imaginative and visionary capacity of a Comenius. Of course, it is scarcely possible from our present vantage point – which has seen among other things the virtual eclipse of totalitarian ideology in Europe – to found a Utopia on a metaphysician’s dream of total knowledge anymore than it is to base it on the certainties of the technocrat. Today’s Utopia or Utopias must reflect a world we know to be one of variety and indeterminacy; it must reflect a society of movement and change – one too often unaware of the intolerable conditions in which a large part of humanity lives and one where a personal commitment to redress such social asymmetries is too often lacking (particularly among the most affluent); it must reflect the instability inherent in creative free will that daily reshapes our perceptions and modifies our convictions. This, and not the controlled dialectics of the philosopher, is the reality with which we must attune ourselves intellectually, morally and aesthetically if we are to reconcile ourselves with the Foundations of our own being in nature and the universe. Yet the spirit of Comenius, his uncompromising idealism, are more than ever necessary in the complex world in which we live in order to further the principles of justice, democracy, tolerance, understanding and peace so essential to human survival and development.”
Constructivism
Constructivism is learning theory and explains that human beings construct their knowledge based on experiences.
Jean Piaget was the first one to disagree on the common idea that a children’s play is aimless. He believed that the play is important for a students later educational development.
Constructivism can be seen as building blocks of knowledge and everytime one gains more knowledge, it adds to the already excisting knowledge blocks. this is an ongoing process which lasts a whole lifetime as one never stops learning.
Constructivism theory according to Wikipedia
Formalization of the theory of constructivism is generally attributed to Jean Piaget, who articulated mechanisms by which knowledge is internalized by learners. He suggested that through processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences.
When individuals assimilate, they incorporate the new experience into an already existing framework without changing that framework. This may occur when individuals’ experiences are aligned with their internal representations of the world, but may also occur as a failure to change a faulty understanding; for example, they may not notice events, may misunderstand input from others, or may decide that an event is a fluke and is therefore unimportant as information about the world.
In contrast, when individuals’ experiences contradict their internal representations, they may change their perceptions of the experiences to fit their internal representations. According to the theory, accommodation is the process of reframing one’s mental representation of the external world to fit new experiences. Accommodation can be understood as the mechanism by which failure leads to learning: when we act on the expectation that the world operates in one way and it violates our expectations, we often fail, but by accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experience of failure, or others’ failure.
Does the theory of Jean Piaget mean that nobody’s knowledge is perfectly correct or objective because we might assimilate wrong information all the time or accommodate our knowledge into the wrong direction?
It is important to note that constructivism is not a particular pedagogy. In fact, constructivism is a theory describing how learning happens, regardless of whether learners are using their experiences to understand a lecture or following the instructions for building a model airplane. In both cases, the theory of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge out of their experiences. However, Constructivism is often associated with pedagogic approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing.
Unfortunately this is not a common teaching method at the majority of High Schools and Universities since teachers still have the perception of talking = teaching. Therefore a lot of graduates wait for someone who tells them what to do.
VKB and the theory of constructivism intertwine perfectly. Visual Knowledge Building is based on the theory to combine the traditional learning with multimedia elements to achieve a proactive learning environment which is does not just rest on plain text and words but also on visual, audio and sensible elements. Considering that the student does not simply deal with spoken text but also has to use visual elements his or her educational horizon is widened. Besides through the multimedia approach of teaching an instructor is not always necessary and can be replaced by the students own activism to construct knowledge. In the end the provision of blended learning and the will to adapt the constructivism method is a good basis for an educational development.
Another learning theory is called Connectivism and finds some similarities to Constructivism. I will explain this in the next post.
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