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How often have we heard learners say, “But when will I ever use this in real life?” And how right they often are! We cannot be cramming our learners’ heads full of content that will mostly be used only to ‘cram, pass and forget’. To make a lasting impact our education must focus on transferable skills that can be applied in any context. Here are explanations and justifications of the methodology of putting transferable skills first, as well as concrete examples of how the focus can be shifted from content to transferable skills.
We bear enormous responsibility for how we use the past to shape the future … in order to become worthy ancestors to the as yet unborn collective children. The stakes are high: the archive at once produces and destabilises the nation, and the challenge to the worthy ancestor is to…
Continue readingImagine 150 Grade 8 & 9 learners in a hall playing a game they don’t know the rules to. They have to work together in teams to figure out the hidden rules of the game and then try to win it. There is minimal instruction. Learners have to do something,…
Continue readingIt turns out that a country does not have to be wealthy to make significant progress in preparing its children for the future. What it does need to do, according to the Worldwide Educating For the Future Index (WEFFI) report, is shift its focus beyond measuring the memorisation of specific…
Continue readingThis lesson was inspired by something the motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins, said: Questions are the control to your own experience of life … What makes the biggest difference in life? It’s not the events that shape your life. It’s how you evaluate them. If you change your questions, you…
Continue readingWe invite you to go on a deep dive with us into the process of designing and facilitating project-based learning, by exploring one project in some detail. In 2017, in collaboration with Lorraine Srage, Dino Angelou and Caryn Horowitz we facilitated the #iexist exhibition with Grade 8 and 9 learners…
Continue readingThe speed at which technology is now changing, and as a result the speed at which our knowledge of reality is changing, has never been this fast. It is impossible to know exactly how machine learning will impact on the way we live, learn, work and play. Will it erode…
Continue readingWhy are schools still focusing on memorising limited, out-of-date content, when what our children need to thrive are the skills to explore any content in any context? We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that completing the curriculum successfully and equipping learners with the skills they need to…
Continue readingRote memory is a skill in which computers far outperform any human. In the 21st century we cannot treat our learners as passive receptacles of knowledge, but we must treat them as independent knowledge producers, willing to try, fail and learn.
Continue readingProject-based learning is a buzzword we hear often and too often it is thought of as a free-for-all in which learners are left unguided in an undirected project. However, practising project-based learning properly requires rigour. It requires us to be explicit about the skills we want for our learners and…
Continue readingIn 2016 MindBurst worked together with teachers from Sacred Heart College to create 5 posters that captured key insights from the critical thinking skills training we had been doing with Grade 10s. The intent was to signal how critical thinking skills enable a learner to challenge and resist the status…
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