CPE-PEN messages filtering into mainstream?

The Guardian.Tuesday 9th March 2010. Virtually perfect. Teaching is on a course for an idyll in which people learn at their own pace, in their own time, and wherever they choose. … Kim Thomas.

Kim’s article gave us some encouragement that our messages are getting through into mainstream. In the space of a full page article:

‘ …people learn at their own pace, in their own time, and wherever they choose…’

‘…anytime, anyplace learning…’

‘…Choice will be the biggest thing in the next 10 years’

The article finished with some quotes from a group of key educationalists and thinkers. Inputs from our friend Dr Tim Rudd from Futurelab….

‘It is now easier to gather store, share edit and publish information than it has ever been. The inreasingly ubiquitous nature of technologies and connectivity will challenge our notions of what a learning space is, with learning less tied down to specific locations. Society is moving away from notions of a single organisation holding all the relevant knowledge to one with far more interaction between different formal and informal settings.’

 Professor Stephen Heppell….

‘The ability for students to work together all around the world will be significant.’

 stood alongside the Futurist Peter Cochrane …

‘We can expect to see a wholesale move away from the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side” future’

We’re really glad everyone has been dusting off the CPE-PEN vision and re reading the Educational Hertics Press catalogue!!

Our headline message actually reads…

Personalised Education Now seeks to develop a rich, diverse, funded Personalised Educational Landscape to meet the learning needs, lifestyles and life choices made by individuals, families and communities. It promotes education based on learner-managed learning, using a flexible catalogue curriculum, located in a variety of settings, and operating within a framework of democratic values and practices. An educator becomes, pre-dominantly, ‘the guide on the side’ rather than ’the sage on the stage’.

We expand this…

What is meant by ‘Personalised Education’?

 Personalised education as promoted by Personalised Education Now is derived from the philosophy of autonomous education. This centres on learner-managed learning, invitational learning institutions, the catalogue/natural versions of curriculum, invited rather than uninvited teaching, and assessment at the learner’s request.  Its slogan is, ‘I did it my way – though often in co-operation with others’ and operates within a general democratically-based learning landscape that has the slogan, ‘alternatives for everybody, all the time’.

We already have institutions that work to the autonomous philosophy within a democratic value system. A prime example is the public library. Others are nursery centres, some schools and colleges, museums, community arts projects, and home-based education networks. They work to the principle of, ‘anybody, any age; any time, any place; any pathway, any pace’.

Such institutions are learner-friendly, non-ageist, convivial not coercive, and capable of operating as community learning centres which can provide courses, classes, workshops and experiences as requested by local learners. These are part of a rich and successful, but undervalued personalised learning heritage, from which we draw strength, and which we celebrate.

Personalised Education is legitimated by our latest understanding about the brain, and how we develop as learners and human beings throughout our lives. It operates within a framework of principles and values resulting in learners whose outcomes are expressed in their character, personality, in the quality of life they lead, in the development and sustainability of our communities and planet, and in peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution. Performance indicators are measured as much in their physical and mental health, in peaceful existence, freedom from crime, usefulness of their contributions and work, levels of active citizenship, more than they are in the existing limitations of the assessment scores and paper accreditations.

 Re-integration of Learning, Life and Community

Under the current mainstream education system most learning, living and sense of community is fragmented, defeating learning, fracturing social cohesion and our quality of life and community.  It is structured around the needs of institutions and not learners, and fails to understand the brain and human development. These issues must be addressed and learning, life and community re integrated.

So there’s plenty of room for mainstream to deepen and develop their ideas. They don’t have to look far!