#talular

[schmemilyclairee]

The latest in fashion from the mean streets of Mpemba🎩#leafhat #talular #littlehumansofmalawi #kunokumalawi #PeaceCorpsMalawi #pcmalawi #HowISeePC #malawi

[doldriest]

Photo Challenge: Repurpose

My entry for the #photo challenge is all about #TALULAR #recycling, #education #repurpose

Show us something that you’ve recycled or repurposed, or an object for which you’ve discovered a clever new use, Krista Stevens asked us yesterday. So I strutted through my  house, in search of a photo-worthy object. I could have chosen the big gray kettle that I’m using to collect old paper. Or the milk jug that I repurposed into a toilet brush holder. Then I thought of Mr. Maganga, a passionate…

[edu403]

GLOBAL TO LOCAL CURRICULUM

Place-based education approach and TALULAR

Place-based education approach, the idea that education should be tailored to the location where the learning is taking place, originates from the Montessori (Italy) and McMillan (United Kingdom) concept of “welfare nursery schools” (Cleghorn, n.d.).  In other words, a curriculum that follows a place-based approach aims at teaching students what they need to thrive in their current environment, focusing on aspects such as health, skill development and individual readiness for learning.   A place-based education approach ties in with a holistic curriculum as it supports the needs of the individual, doing so within their specific environment.

Place-based education divides itself into two branches: paediatric and pedagogic, which ensures that the whole person is being taught.  For more effectiveness, place-based education should also be combined with a TALULAR approach to learning; meaning “Teaching And Learning Using Locally Available Resources”, this promotes a way of teaching and learning that creates meaningful experiences within the student's’ social reality.   These two concepts are crucial for educators as their mandate is to educate their students to become critical thinkers and contributors to our society.  Therefore, a place-based education approach, paired with TALULAR, is essential to become efficient educators as it gears towards a holistic education curriculum.  

[campskymw-blog]

Classroom Check-in: Jake's Biology lesson Jake's lesson was about photosynthesis and the functions of a plant cell. In the pictures, Jake and his students are examining leaves from a nearby tree. Teaching using locally available resources! Woohoo! Chlorophyll, more like not-boreophyll!

[golderne]

MY FAVES PAGE IS UP

Go see if you are on it hehe

And follow all of them!

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love your blog! check out mine? x

already following aswell heheh x

[edu403]

Impact on local community

After reviewing the Quebec Education Program, two factors stand out the most: first, education is geared mainly towards increasing social and cultural capital and second, the well-being of the individual is addressed in scarce and broad terms.  The Broad Areas of Learning attempts to tackle the issue of positive well-being by stating that the curriculum will increase students’ awareness of their basic needs, lifestyles and choices, however, very few educators actually teach in ways that addresses these basic needs.  For instance, when is a child taught how to properly wash their hands?  It is only done after scolding them for not doing it right the first time.  On the opposite end, Cleghorn (n.d) discusses how hand washing is taught systematically to all students in some areas of India as part of a place-based curriculum, as it is not assumed that all children know how to do so properly.  Quebec’s current pedagogic curriculum assumes that each child has the same paediatric background learned at home and therefore neglects to consider the various realities that some students are faced with.  Take a low socioeconomic area and compare it with a high socioeconomic area; which area would benefit most from a placed-based TALULAR approach?  The answer is both.  Just like a developed country, the high socioeconomic group will seek intellectual stimulation to grow socially, while the low socioeconomic group resembles a developing country who wishes to attend to their basic survival needs in order to grow personally.  The place-based TALULAR approach would assist both these groups in achieving exactly what they need to become contributors to their society.  Place-based education now becomes not only a global curriculum to aspire to, but also a beneficial local curriculum that could tackle an array of other social issues faced on a daily basis.

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THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

With a population that will continue to diversify itself following new diagnoses of exceptionalities, immigration movements and growth adapting to global changes, it is paramount that Quebec’s education curriculum design does the same.  Recognizing the different needs of all members of society is one way to ensure a healthy Quebec will continue to grow intellectually and economically.  Keeping a curriculum that marginalizes a number of students does a disservice to society; instead of promoting class distinction and social inequalities, a curriculum should seek to provide an education that is equal and equitable for all students.  In other words, a curriculum should, abiding by section 15.1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom (Government of Canada, 2017), integrate all students regardless of their differences as every Canadian citizen benefits from protection from discrimination based on mental or physical disability under the law.  A curriculum should seek to offer diverse experiences in order to facilitate the integration of students into society, and it should seek to battle sameness by celebrating differences as a way to enrich our society.  Finally, a curriculum should seek to teach values and skills that are not only necessary to thrive in society, but also ensure basic survival.  

Our current curriculum design perpetuates a cycle of success and failure based on a set of dispositions attributed to members of society in a way that is out of these member’s control.  One does not choose to be born with a learning or physical disability, nor does one choose to be born rich or poor.  These dispositions are imposed on individuals upon birth and the current curriculum continues to reinforce unrealistic standards for some of these groups of people.  Which is why a change in curriculums could possibly benefit society; by designing or adopting a curriculum that is more inclusive and accepting of the whole person, society may look at future generations of adults that have grown to embrace their differences and have found a way to put them to good use to benefit society.  As suggested above, a holistic education curriculum, incorporating aspects of place-based education approach and TALULAR, could potentially make way for a smooth and positive integration of students into the school system, and then the workforce.   By taking into consideration students’ interests and needs, by teaching them survival and work skills, by raising their awareness of their environment and social realities, students who would go through such a curriculum may well come out ready to tackle social and global issues with new, novel ideas. Furthermore, although separate issues in themselves which would require more changes and adaptations than only an education curriculum, teaching the whole person using a place-based and TALULAR approach makes a move towards sustainability and a move towards improving mental health.  The suggested curriculum is by no means the perfect solution to the issues of the current curriculum design, but education is a place to start and open the floor to these types of discussions.

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References

Bourdieu, P. (n.d.).  Exclusion and selection. (p. 141-177).

Byers, A., Zembeni. (2003). TALULAR: Teaching and Learning Using Locally Available Resources, a User’s Guide.

Copy from the Malawi Education Support Activity can be accessed from: http://www.equip123.net/equip1/mesa/docs/TALULAR-UsersGuide.pdf

Case-Smith, J., Shupe Sines, J., Klatt, M. (2010). Perceptions of children who participated in a school-based yoga program. Journal of occupational therapy, schools, & early intervention, (3), 226-238.

Cleghorn, A., Prochner, L. (n.d.). Shades of Globalization in Three Early childhood Settings, Views from India, South Africa, and Canada: Chapter 6, Paediatric and Pedagogical Dimensions.

Eisner, E. W. (2001). The Educational Imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs, 3rd edition. (p. 87-107). New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de l’Éducation. (2017). Québec Education Program, approved version. Retrieved from:http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/en/contenus-communs/teachers/quebec-education-progam/preschool-and-elementary/

Government of Canada. (2017). Constitution Act, 1982.  Retrieved from: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html