Maieutic strategies convey\u00a0 widwifery roles\u00a0to teachers and\u00a0the\u00a0strategies towards\u00a0the right-hand end of the continuum imply that a child’s natural desire to learn is\u00a0helped to manifest itself as the child develops. Learnacy is part of a child’s psyche from birth and its development is the real business of a midwife-teacher. The pupilling processes\u00a0accelerate the development.\u00a0As one moves to the right along the continuum, towards\u00a0 ultimate Emile-type activities,\u00a0the methods become more inter-active, more pupil centred.\u00a0 The pupil starts to take centre-stage.\u00a0 Since there has to be close one-to-one contact as much as possible, this style of interaction requires intense effort.\u00a0 It is a physically demanding and mentally challenging .\u00a0 The smaller the class, the greater the interaction and more purposeful the learning and sharing of effort.\u00a0 Smaller does not mean easier. The closer one gets to one-on-one pupilling the greater the learning outcomes. Q.E.D.<\/p>\n
While pupils seldom select topics that they want to learn about during the course of the day, there are schools that try to operate on this premise.\u00a0It’s a version of confidence trickery. \u00a0When pupils feel that they are learning what they want to learn, the world is their oyster, so the classroom\u00a0becomes learning-attractive in every sense.\u00a0 I only ever visited one school that verged on the\u00a0extreme right-hand maieutic strategy.\u00a0 It was a splendid infant school in a suburb of Bristol, England where quality teachers performed extraordinary confidence tricks.\u00a0 The children really believed that they were doing what they wanted to do. The learning atmosphere was thick and it felt good.<\/p>\n
Some people used to think\u00a0that the term \u2018open education’ referred to these child-centred activities to the right and, because some classrooms appeared as if there was chaos and too much freedom, they did not like it.\u00a0 The term \u2018open’ however applied only to school architecture , in places where teachers shared large spaces.\u00a0 The use of \u2018open’ as an\u00a0learning description was a monumental blunder of the time, and its connection with \u00a0\u2018traditional’ and \u2018progressive’ teaching styles became a sterile discussion.\u00a0 Critics meant ‘didactic’ versus ‘maieutic’ and did not appreciate the distinction nor the use of the terms nor what was happening in the schools that they seldom visited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maieutic strategies convey\u00a0 widwifery roles\u00a0to teachers and\u00a0the\u00a0strategies towards\u00a0the right-hand end of the continuum imply that a child’s natural desire to learn is\u00a0helped to manifest itself as the child develops. Learnacy is part of a child’s psyche from birth and its development is the real business of a midwife-teacher. The pupilling processes\u00a0accelerate the development.\u00a0As one moves … Continue reading Maieutic Strategies<\/span>