Making Learning Real

• #UKEdChat session 565
• There are advantage and disadvantages to creating a pseudo-realistic learning environment.
• Visitors and artefacts from careers in the realm of your subject can provide interest and insight.
• Click here to view the tweet archive.

One of the major criticism of classroom-based learning is that it does not adequately prepare pupils for the world beyond. Putting aside the debate about what education is for and for whom, most teachers would concede that learning in the classroom has a particular set of traits that are unlike the world outside.

While I believe that contextualising learning has come a long way over the last generation, there is still a way to go, which the curriculum often feeling abstract, disjointed, and unrelatable to many learners. I have yet to see an oxbow lake in the wild, but to be honest, I haven’t really been looking.

While some subjects provide better opportunities to create a pseudo-realistic environment, for others a little more creativity may be needed. Science lessons are permeated by experiments, and computing classrooms filled with some coding keyboards, it is less frequent to see newsroom simulations and writing teams for the next big sitcom in English classes. Like many things in education, the early years is ahead of the rest of us, and the dressing-up box, where learners can explore the virtues of various societal roles, has been a fixture of most early years classrooms for generations.

And what of bringing the outside in?

In this #UKEdChat session, which took place on Thursday 12th August 2021 at 8pm(UK), we discussed how to bring realism into learning, what are the advantages and disadvantages, and how to bring the real world into the classroom can pay dividends.

Questions

1. How ‘real’ is the learning in your classroom?
2. What are the advantages of creating a realistic environment into the classroom?
3. What are the disadvantages of creating pseudo-realistic environment in the classroom?
4. How could you deploy realistic work environments into your subject area or age range?
5. What support from senior leaders would be useful to assist you in creating realistic learning environments?
6. What are the main hurdles to creating a realistic learning environment in your classroom?
7. What role can technology play in creating a realistic work environment?
8. How can visitors and artefacts from professions inline with of your subject area be used to create realistic work environments?

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