CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING

1. CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND LEARNING Muchlas Yusak

2. CTL ASSUMPTIONS: • Teaching and learning are interactional processes. • Individual learners must decide to learn and to engage in the attentional, intellectual, and emotional processes needed to do so. • Teaching isn’t happening if learning is not occurring. • Learning is a developmental process that takes place throughout life.

3. SIX INTERRELATED STRATEGIES (Who are the learners?) • Help students become self-regulated learners capable of high achievement. • Address the diversity of students’ unique skills, interests, and cultural backgrounds so that they feel valued and learn respect for others.

4. SIX INTERRELATED STRATEGIES (Where does learning take place?) • Make learning take place in many sites – multiple contexts – not just in the classroom. Museums, parks, government offices, and health-care facilities are just a few of the places where learning can occur in the community.

5. SIX INTERRELATED STRATEGIES (How does learning take place?) • Make the students learn from real world problems. • Encourage the students to work in interdependent learning groups. • Give authentic assessment.

6. 1. SELF-REGULATED LEARNING • Teach students to take responsibility for their own learning. As adults, they will be expected to acquire knowledge and skills on their own. • Self-regulated learners have both academic learning skills and skills in self-control that help them to learn more easily. • Self-regulated learners have the skill and the will to know.

7. KNOWLEDGE SELF-DISCIPLINE MOTIVATION SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: THE SKILL & THE WILL TO KNOW

8. SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: KNOWLEDGE Knowledge about • themselves • the subject • the task at hand • learning strategies • the contexts in which the students will apply their learning

9. SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: KNOWLEDGE • The students shall become “expert” learners who know how they learn best: • their preferred learning styles • what is hard or easy for them to learn • how to use their strength to learn. • They approach different learning tasks in different ways.

10. SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: KNOWLEDGE • They know a range of specific learning tactics: networking, mapping, self-questioning, taking notes, using imagery, hypothesizing, etc. • They understand how to match the most effective learning tactic to the task . • They think about the contexts in which they will apply their knowledge and when and where they might use it again in the future.

11. SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: MOTIVATION • Self-regulated learners are motivated to learn. • School assignments are interesting to them because they value learning. • They know why they are studying and see themselves as being in control of their actions and choices. • Even if they are not intrinsically motivated by their school activities, they still attempt to derive a benefit from what they are learning.

12. SELF-REGULATED LEARNERS: SELF-DISCIPLINE • Self-regulated learners are disciplined. • They know how to avoid or deal with distractions so that they are not distracted. • They know what to do if they feel unmotivated or sleepy. In other words, they persist and keep themselves on task.

13. Encouraging the Students to Become Self-Regulated Learners • Teach the students specific learning tactics: + taking notes + networking + mapping + self-questioning + using imagery + hypothesizing + identifying reasons for actions + analyzing similarities and differences • Teach the students how to compare their own performance to expert models.

14. Improving students’ level of motivation & their self-discipline by: • Tying instruction to students’ backgrounds and experiences. • Encouraging students to set goals. • Providing opportunities for problem-solving, decision-making, and cooperative learning. • Giving options in assignments. • Teaching study skills.

15. Improving students’ level of motivation & their self-discipline by: • Grading students progress. • Allowing students to progress at their own rate. • Developing leadership opportunities for all students. • Teaching students to monitor and evaluate their own progress and to correct their learning strategies as needed.

16. Helping students become self-regulated learners involves coordinating • knowledge about child development in general • knowledge of the particular child’s development and progress, and • knowledge of strategies to help children

17. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • All students can learn, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, family background, or initial level of (dis)ability and knowledge. • Children usually learn best in classroom communities that reflect diversity. • Students often learn because of diversity, rather than in spite of diversity.

18. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Plan instruction in relation to the diverse beliefs, values, skills, and experiences that students bring to class. • These prior experiences, and the values and knowledge each student has constructed from them are the very foundation and mental context for future learning.

19. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Encourage each of the students to build on prior knowledge and to make meaningful connection between their own knowledge and values and the material to be learned. • Offer the students a variety of ways to learn and to demonstrate their learning. • Diversity is a valuable resource for the learning of all participants in the classroom community, including the teacher.

20. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Bring diverse elements and members of the outside community into the classroom and to take students out of the classroom into a variety of community settings for many of their learning activities. • Value and accommodate students’ individual qualities and backgrounds • Let students develop at a rate and along paths that are right for them.

21. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Because students work together to achieve real goals with others who are quite different from themselves, they learn to understand and value different viewpoints and abilities and to collaborate effectively with people who have ideas and talents different from their own.

22. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Students have a greater chance of retaining what they have learned because • the teacher connect learning to students’ lives in the community • the students are encouraged to set and pursue personal goals in their learning

23. 2. Teaching and Learning in Diverse Contexts • Employ an array of strategies for individualizing students’ work. • Have very good interviewing techniques. • Get students to talk with you about their background and their interests. • Invite students to incorporate these interests in the projects they choose. • Consider the students’ past participation in projects. • Confer with past teachers to find out if there were problems with maturity.

24. 3. Teaching and Learning in Multiple Contexts • Students retain higher-level knowledge and skills longer when their learning experiences are framed by contexts that are as close to real life as possible. • Learning is situated in particular physical and social contexts. • Knowledge is inseparable from the contexts and activities within which it develops.

25. 3. Teaching and Learning in Multiple Contexts • How and where the person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills are fundamental to what the student learns. • Students make sense of new information, given their internal mindsets, by relating it to their past social, cultural, and physical experiences.

26. 3. Teaching and Learning in Multiple Contexts • Learning occurs naturally in a variety of contexts, both inside and outside the school. • Before, during, and after the school day, as well as before and after the school year, students are continually learning. • The contexts may be home, community, or workplace. • Some contexts may be less tangible, such as cyberspace and the imagination.

27. 3. Teaching and Learning in Multiple Contexts • Use as many different contexts as possible because they offer meaningful learning sites where students can engage in “authentic” tasks. • Authentic tasks are those that resemble real-life activities. • Involve the students in a variety of learning experiences outside of the classroom.

28. 4. Problem-Based Learning • Specific “touchstone” teaching and learning events need to be present in problem-based learning. Touchstone events include: • Engagement. Learners prepare to be self-directed, collaborative problem-solvers and encounter a situation that invites them to define one or more problems and to propose hunches, actions, and so forth.

29. 4. Problem-Based Learning • Inquiry and Investigation.Learners explore a variety of ways of explaining events and their implications: they gather and share information. • Performance. Learners present their findings. • Debriefing. Learners examine costs and benefits of the solutions generated and reflect on the effectiveness of their problem-solving approach.

30. 4. Problem-Based Learning • Employ instructional techniques that raise questions, issues, and challenges or present difficulties that are in need of a solution. • Activities are organized around solving problems in context in order to increase students’ learning of subject matter.

31. 4. Problem-Based Learning Generating solutions to problems is complex, requiring students to: • Use critical thinking skills and a systematic approach to inquiry. • Draw on multiple content areas. • Address a series of questions of different types. • Acquire new skills and knowledge. • Apply, analyze, synthesize, transfer, and evaluate old skills and knowledge in new ways.

32. 4. Problem-Based Learning • Meaningful solutions requires a significant amount of time and should not be relegated to a brief encounter with the issue or problem. • Focus on worthwhile problems that are relevant to students’ families, school experiences, workplace activities, and community issues.

33. 4. Problem-Based Learning • These types of problems hold greater intrinsic motivation for students and serve as the catalyst for engaging in inquiry that promotes the learning of new knowledge and skills, while generating heightened understanding of specific content. • Support student-centered instructional activities to set expectations for students that encourage them to define and research their own problems collaboratively with a teacher or other practicing professional.

34. 4. Problem-Based Learning • Thus students experience the “messiness” of ill-structured situations that are typical in real world environments. • Design authentic assessments to allow students to demonstrate their ability to apply and transfer these new or enhanced skills, knowledge, and understandings to multiple situations.

35. 5. Interdependent Learning Groups • Divide students into work groups on a regular basis. • Learning is a social process. • Learning can be enhanced when the learner has opportunities to interact with others about instructional activities. • Structure schools as democratic learning communities. • Use different kinds of learning groups.

36. Cooperative Learning – a particular type of interdependent learning groups • Five elements define true collaborative-learning groups: • Face-to-face interaction • Positive interdependence • Individual accountability • Collaborative skills • Group processing

37. Cooperative Learning – a particular type of interdependent learning groups • Students interact face-to-face rather than across the classroom. • Group members need each other for support, explanations, and guidance. • Even though group members work together, hold them individually accountable for learning.

38. Cooperative Learning – a particular type of interdependent learning groups • Teach the students collaborative skills: • giving and receiving feedback, • reaching consensus, • involving others. • Students practice collaboration before starting a new learning task. • Teach the students how to monitor group processes and relationship to make sure the group is working effectively.

39. Cooperative Learning – a particular type of interdependent learning groups • Learning environments that encourage social interactions and respect diverse ideas encourage flexible thinking and social competence. • In interactive and collaborative learning contexts, students have opportunities to adopt various perspectives and think reflectively in ways that foster social and moral development and self-esteem. • Learning groups can help students feel safe about sharing their ideas an actively participating in the learning process.

40. Cooperative Learning – a particular type of interdependent learning groups • Help each student to develop his or her own approach to the project, so that each person’s contribution is clearly identifiable. • Make sure that students get credit for the work that they do. • It helps to identify the less mature students as well as the students who give far more than a teacher might reasonably expect.

41. How the Groups Get Chosen • Who is interested in a particular topic • Get the students working with new people. • Don’t let them become too social. • Keep social cliques from getting in the way of the learning we share.

42. 6. Authentic Assessment • Authenticity in learning is based on the premise that its demonstration must be through experiences with and performance in the real world. • For learning to have personal value, to generate interest, and to produce functional knowledge and skills, the act of learning must be in the context of and directly relevant to the knowledge, skills, and performances expected in the real world.

43. 6. Authentic Assessment • To gauge one’s performance authentically is to have both oneself and the group examine the process of learning through reflection, feedback, and redirection of performance. • Authentic assessment can best be distinguished from traditional modes of education assessment by qualities that foster formative development of teaching and learning processes.

44. 6. Authentic Assessment • Qualities that foster formative development of teaching and learning processes (authentic assessment) include: • Using assessment tasks that are “real instances” of extended criterion performances of actual learning goals. • Involving students in in-depth situations in which they develop and habitually solve problems and employ higher-order thinking.

45. 6. Authentic Assessment • Featuring collaboration between students and teachers to determine meaning and to produce knowledge. • Including multiple opportunities for students to learn and practice the desired outcomes, along with multiple opportunities for feedback and reflection. • Directing students toward producing discourse, products, and performances that they value beyond school success

46. 6. Authentic Assessment • Using rubrics and other criteria checklists at the core of authentic assessment as standards to improve learning and teaching. • Drawing on multiple sources of information over time and in multiple contexts, employing reflective use of journals, reflective essay writing, portfolios, applied performance exhibits, work samples, peer mirroring, action research, case studies, checklists, and the like.

47. 6. Authentic Assessment • Sampling the actual integration of knowledge, skills, and dispositions desired of teachers as they are used in multiple kinds of pedagogical practice contexts.

48. “Report Card” • The “report card” for every student is really a qualitative assessment. • Each student fills out parts of his/her own report card, listing goals and accumulated evidence of achievement. • Add comments about this evidence. • Fill out a rubric on the achievement of the goals, as well as your perspective on the appropriateness of the goals each student chooses.

49. “Report Card” • The report card is cumulative in that, each term, the teacher and students add new goals and comments. This helps parents see their children’s progress throughout the year. • Assess on many levels: • Think about each of the subject areas and tease them out from cross-curricular approach in order to make sure students are developing competencies.