Hi to everyone! I'm Andrea and I'm the facilitator this week, so it's my responsability to post our marvelous and (sadly) last task... It's been a pleasure, guys! :)
Here you have our stars' speech:
Bea : Hi everyone, we are Bea and Ana from Teacher’s Formation and today we are going to show you the relationships that we have found among the complexity theory, relationships, coordination structures and schools as learning communities
Ana: As you can see we have created a metaphor using the Solar System to explain the connections and the complexities of the following concepts.
Our project has been made with a great vary of elements that are part of that system, being the sun the most important part. Every planet goes around it, and each planet has some satellite that spin (gira) around them. That means that everything is interconnected and every single part of the system needs each other to work despite of being the sun the predominant thing.
Everything starts with the complexity theory, but do you really know what does it mean? I’ll explain .It is based on the relationships that exist in a school (teacher-teacher,teacher-student, student-student, beyond the classroom and within the learning). In a complex institution as a school is, we can find different levels that are interconnected between each other.
Bea: As we have already said, complexity theory is related with theconnections within school, but also with the coordination structures.
The coordination structures make some decisions, measures and changes through which teaching, learning and an appropriate knowledge transmission is influenced. They are usually distributed at different levels such as the school board or the tutor.
Moreover, diversity and redundancy are related with the coordination structures because these are the ones that determine if a certain innovation is made or if the center maintains what was previously established. Now, if you have a look, you’ll find out that there exists five kinds of connections within the school context.
Ana: The connections that exist within the learning, could be found in two different ways:
One of them emerges individually, in which you link new experiences with existing understanding to construct personal understanding. This type of learning can be identified as incidental learning, what is a by product of some other activity and people are not always conscious of that they are learning. The other way emerges by groups, that consist on the knowledge that is exchanged between individual group members creating a shared understanding. this type of learning can be identified as informal learning, what is a particular way of learning which arises from the activities and interests of individuals and groups.
Bea: Then, the connections beyond the classroom and the teacher-teacher also affect to the children acquisition of knowledge. At the same time, these connections produce the BALANCING RANDOMNESS AND DETERMINISTIC ORDER, what is the equilibrium that exist between the new forces that innovate and the forces that tend to maintain the educational organization with a traditional structure. These changing forces can appear for the teacher-teacher connection and beyond the classroom connection.
Ana: The way students interact with other students build their conceptions about life, so they also learn this way. And the last, but not least, the interaction between the teacher and the student is the most famous connection through which students learn.
Bea: All that we have said until now, depends on the learning context, because everything will depend on the school characteristics , the circumstances, the culture, the beliefs or the religion. Every member of the school help to form the learning context since the education and the learning that is received in the school will be influenced by everything mentioned previously. Therefore, there are no members more important than others because we all are a key piece for the good functioning of the center and the success of the learning.
Ana: Once we have said this and from our point of view, we consider that it’s not possible to compare a school with an enterprise because we, as a future teachers, don’t pretend to create a product, what we want is to achieve that our pupils as well as all the members of the school develop themselves, that they learn and cultivate their own capacities.
Bea: We hope to have helped you a bit to understanding that in education everything is related and that we all must be an active part of it. Thanks you for your attention.
