A 'community apprenticship' model

From The Schommunity Wiki

Mission statement (draft)

Schome will be at the heart of the community, working in partnership with parents, children, other ‘caring professions’ (eg health visitors) and members of society. Children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn will be fostered and learners will be supported in developing an evolving vision of their place within our global community. Every learner will succeed and will develop confidence in their ability to meet the changing challenges that life will present them.

Key elements in schome

Encapsulated within this mission statement are some key elements that I believe are essential to any vision of schome. These include:

• Community - education should help develop and sustain society at a range of different levels which should include:
  • the physically local community (ie the geographical area within which the learner lives)
  • the global community (I believe that ICT is reducing previous limitations that were created by lack of interaction between geographically seperated communities)
• Partnership - everyone has a shared responsibility for supporting learners
• Change is an inevitable element of life and learning to embrace change and tackle problems is therefore an essential skills
• Lifelong learning - everyone is (needs to be) a learner from birth to death
• Schome is about the whole person - it includes concern learners physical and mental well being
• If you don't know where you are going you are unlikely to get there - it is therefore important to support learners in understanding the posibilities that life offers and in helping them to develop a vision of what they want to achive in their lives and thus what it is important for them to learn
• Humans are 'natural' learners - schome should build upon and extend that predisposition
• Success - everyone can succeed given appropriate goals - and believing in your own ability to succeed is essential both to your happiness and to your capability to learn
• The theoretical position adopted is a social constructivist one in which:
  • meaning (knowledge) is socially defined and 'situated'
  • learning is therefore a social/collaborative process
• The pedagogic model within schome is one of facilitation rather than 'traditional teaching' - what is often described as 'the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage' in literature from the USA - in which:
  • learners should have control (agency)
  • learning should be authentic (to the learner)