Each year, thousands of enthusiastic and hope-filled candidates enter various Teacher Education and Professional Development Programs across the country. If they are anything like my own younger and admittedly saltier self, they arrive with idealistic and sometimes even radical notions about becoming a more engaging, caring and generally ‘better’ kind of teacher than they perceive […]
Category: Concept-Centric Teaching (Philosophic/Ironic engagement)
Engaging and developing Philosophic and Ironic kinds of understanding.
Understanding Inquiry as the Practice of Freedom
In an attempt to more adequately understand the nature of inquiry, one eventually – and quite necessarily – runs into questions of philosophic purpose. Fortunately enough for us, educational theory isn’t terribly shy in this regard. Economic utility, building a peaceful and pluralistic society, and honouring students’ nascent potential all have staked their claim to […]
Path Dependence: Explaining Our Collective Resistance to Curricular Innovation
By Tim Waddington and Riley Hill In case you missed it, there’s a bright and shiny new path being forged in curriculum studies both here in British Columbia and in several jurisdictions across the developed world. Premised in student-centric, postmodern and constructivist thought, the notion of Concept-Centered curriculum and instruction has gained traction in response […]
One Theme For The Entire Year?
Engaging The Philosophic Imagination: Concept-Centered Teaching By Marlene Roseboom Since completing my studies in Imaginative Education (IE) some years back, I keep refining my curriculum to try to more effectively engage my students’ imaginations. This includes English 10, a course I have taught for several years. While I have already incorporated several separate IE units […]
Aristotle And A Leather Jacket: An Example of Concept-Centered Teaching
The new BC Curriculum calls for the organization of learning around strong Concept Centres. Here’s an example of what that can look like in practice. By Dr. Tim Waddington S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is a genuinely engaging novel for young readers. For those of you somehow unfamiliar – spoiler alert – the novel follows two groups of teens in […]
