WEIRD - learning by design

WEIRD - designing for learning

Will Richardson from Modern Learners discusses design for learning in this article  https://modernlearners.com/designing-for-learning/

In this he first discusses the acronym WEIRD - which means western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Then Richardson shares Carol Black ideas about western Society and how it is weird. Black states there is "appalling personal lack of freedom" in a democracy and Western education is an outlier. Here's a video of her presentation: Carol Black: "Alternatives to schooling"

Richardson discusses how educators make broad generalisations about kids and seem to ignore the nature of learning. Students are being trained to succeed in artificial environments which aren't connected to the world around them and they might not be able to succeed in the real world. Things that connect people to learning is passion, interest, making and fun. Real learning is learning by doing and emulating others.

Design thinking 

We need to start with the 1st element of design - empathy

To flourish in democracy students should be learning in ways activities that interest them and teachers should design learning around this. Adults are learning from the process of teaching as well.

There shouldn't be a disconnect, we have to think about what's is best for our students.

Ira Socol asks the question, "what do you want our children to be?"  greatest aspirations Ira Socol  it defines everything about what a school is.

We should be designing learning with our greatest aspirations in mind not what's an efficient way to teach and deliver knowledge to students.

We want our students to be creative, collaborative, communicators, make choices, to build their own work or learning environments, curious, kind, learn from the great wide world throughout their lives, have healthy relationships, engage with technology well and live healthy lives etc.

This should be the focus of our designs moving forward.