Christine and Kathleen - 'lurkers' or as I prefer to call them 'observers' are very welcome indeed - so welcome to you both. I strongly believe that everyone, no matter what their role in a discussion, influences the discussion and the overall outcomes and therefore has a significant part to play.
So we look forward to hearing from you if and when you want to comment, but it's equally fine to observe :-)
And Kathleen - I like 'WAITING' - even better than 'observing'!
Deidre - this is wonderful and thanks so much for sharing the photo of your lovely grand-daughter.
We are on exactly 'the same page' about this and very early on in our research considered a Montessori classroom as a prime example of where emergent learning might happen. We have written about this on our open wiki - http://footprints-of-emergence.wikispaces.com/Montessori+pre-school
Why do you think school beats this out of children - and in what forms do you think it is fundamentally there? How do adults draw on these early experiences? Or what do we do in our education systems that inhibits emergent learning?
Thank you Deirdre :-)
I believe as beings our ability to learn is hightened when traveling in places (or in situations) foriegn to us
Peter - what a wonderful expression. For me this relates directly to my experience in open learning environments. Roy, Simone and I have discussion over and over what might be the critical factors which influence possibilities for emergent learning and a key one is 'Risk'. I think this is exactly what you are describing. The environment should not be so safe that there is no opportunity for emergent learning. On the other hand it shouldn't be so chaotic that it frightens off the learner. We will be discussing our work on critical factors in the second webinar.
the space for emergent learning can be designed into the emergent "curriculum" I think we would agree with this, but I have to think further about whether emergent learning necessarily needs a plan.
Thanks for your thought provoking comments. I must go away and think !!
Welcome Don. We look forward to interacting with you asynchronously :-). I think Sylvia will be recording the webinars - so hopefully you will also have access to those recordings.
Jenny
Hi Scott - wonderful to see you here.
What an interesting question and one that raises the tension between emergent and prescriptive learning which we will be discussing in the webinar tomorrow.
I do think that certain conditions need to be in place for emergent learning to occur and that if we know waht these are, might be, then we can maybe design for emergent learning.
But being able to predict that it will happen seems a bit of a contradiction, which your question implies. Have I misunderstood?
What do others think?