ERO

=ERO - Education Revolution Open= "Let's not reform education. Let's revolutionise education. Let's set aside the decaying and decrepit schools, and education paradigms of past eras and commit ourselves to a new understanding of education that recognizes humans as natural learners and extends basic human rights to children in their learning endeavors." AERO

Goals:

 * 1) To remix the revolutionary strands that will shape;
 * 2) *the schooling that educationalists are calling for
 * 3) *what our children deserve,
 * 4) *and our planet needs
 * 5) To create a hub for revolutionary educational ideas using OPEN - Creative Commons licensing
 * 6) To make connections, share links and show examples

Rationale:

 * An over standardisation has lead to a narrowing of curriculum,
 * failing and labelling students who don't fit the predetermined learning bands
 * Regulations abound, stifling creativity,
 * sabotaging spontaneity and natural learning
 * Revolutionary educational ideas sit beyond the realm of governments, corporates, schools or idealists,
 * Creative Commons licensing provides a greater opportunity to share these ideas
 * Sir Ken Robinson says that the current education system squanders creativity

Open Education

 * Open for scrutiny from every possible angle - child, parent, staff, community
 * Accessible to all
 * The umbrella that all other ideas sit beneath - freedom

Democratic Schools

 * “Education in which young people have the freedom to organise their daily activities, and in which there is equality and democratic decision-making among young people and adults”.
 * as quoted from AERO’s Directory of Democratic Education.

Social literacy

 * An active citizen believes in the concept of a democratic society and is willing and able to translate that belief into action
 * Social literacy develops social skills, knowledge and values that assist in acting positively and responsibly in a range of complex social settings to become a good citizen
 * Active citizenship implies and even requires action on the part of the citizen student
 * The ability to think and act on societal concerns underpins effective citizenship education
 * Students develop active, collaborative and co-operative working patterns
 * Focused on real problems in a real community - local or global

Service Learning - Community-Based Learning - Community Participation - Community Education - Experiential Learning

Envirethical Education

 * Caring for the earth and its inhabitants
 * For a global and local perspective in education - care and consideration for the earth and humanity
 * To assist in changing the emphasis in education to think beyond our present geological boundaries
 * To challenge educators to think about what the terminology might mean - and what our future practice could and should begin to look like
 * Envirethical Curriculum at Warrington School

Education for a green society
Aims for:
 * Experiential Learning - emergent, organic, cooperative and more personal than in standardized school settings
 * Tests, grades, ranking and other trappings of competitive learning are greatly reduced or completely absent
 * Community Development - is a genuine sense of community among students, teachers, and the parents involved in the school
 * People care about each other and take care of each other
 * Concern for the inner life - a respect for interior life of participants and for ultimate questions
 * Offering periods of time or physical spaces of respite from the competitive materialism, constant noise, distraction, and titillation of modern civilization.
 * Practices such as yoga, meditation, journaling, expressive arts, or simply times of quiet
 * Ecological literacy - a holistic learning environment has meaningful connections to the world of nature
 * The principles of ecology and sustainability are implicit in its structure
 * Brings nature indoors, or invites students into the surrounding ecosystem

Progressive Education

 * Attending to the whole child - helping children become good learners and people
 * Holistic schooling
 * Community - children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning
 * Interdependence and independence
 * Collaboration - progressive schools are characterized by a “working with” model
 * An emphasis on collaborative problem-solving and on underlying motives, values, and reasons
 * Social justice - a sense of community and responsibility for others
 * Students are helped to locate themselves in widening circles of care that extend beyond self, beyond friends, beyond their own ethnic group, and beyond their own country
 * Opportunities are offered to learn about, to put into action, a commitment to diversity and to improving the lives of others
 * Intrinsic motivation - the effect on students’ interest in learning, their desire to continue reading, thinking, and questioning is considered when setting educational policies and practices
 * Conventional practices, including homework, grades, and tests, prove difficult to justify when serious about promoting long-term dispositions
 * Deep understanding - facts and skills do matter, but only in a context and for a purpose
 * Progressive education tends to be organized around problems, projects, and questions
 * Typically interdisciplinary and any assessment rarely focuses on rote memorization
 * The point is to invite pupils to think deeply about issues that matter and help them understand ideas from the inside out
 * Active learning - in progressive schools, students play a vital role in helping to design the curriculum 
 * They formulate the questions, seek out (and create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful they and their teachers have been
 * Student's participation in the process is consistent with learning being a matter of constructing ideas
 * Taking kids seriously - taking a cue from the students and being attentive to differences among them
 * Each student is unique, so a single set of policies, expectations, or assignments would be counterproductive
 * Teachers will have broadly conceived themes and objectives, design the curriculum with the pupils and welcome unexpected detours
 * One teacher’s curriculum, won’t be the same as that of the teacher next door, nor will her curriculum be the same this year as it was for the children she taught last year
 * Progressive education students help to formulate not only the course of study but also the outcomes or standards that inform those lessons


 * Alfie Kohn

Tuakana–teina
The concept of a tuakana–teina relationship
 * The tuakana–teina relationship, an integral part of traditional Māori society, provides a model for buddy systems
 * An older or more expert tuakana (brother, sister or cousin) helps and guides a younger or less expert teina (originally a younger sibling or cousin of the same gender)
 * In a learning environment that recognises the value of ako, the tuakana–teina roles may be reversed at any time.
 * The student who yesterday was the expert and explained the lunar calendar may need to learn from her classmate today about how (hospitality) is practised by the local community

Reggio Emilia Movement

 * Creation of a program based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community
 * Exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children
 * A child centred self-guided curriculum

How to share these concepts with students

 * Making the change
 * Class Charter
 * Class Programme

ERO is also an acronym for the Education Review Office. A NZ government organisation that reviews schools OER is an acronym for Open Education Resource A resource that belongs to humanity


 * First Term Review

Links
Lets start a learning revolution