Circle of Learning A Review of Ecological Thinking: A New Approach to Educational Change

摘要

Primary and secondary school education seems to have been in crisis for as long as most of us can remember. Shoshana Keiny explains why: "The massive social changes that have taken place over the last fifty years and which have affected almost every aspect of our lives (such as, work patterns, residential stability, sexual habits, dress, language, music, etc.) have not been matched by new thinking in education" (p. 25). Ecological Thinking is her remedy for this situation. It is an approach to thinking within an educational system, a way of thinking that focuses on an understanding of the dynamics of context rather than from a curriculum-generating hierarchy. Ecological thinking focuses on learners rather than on data. It regards the source of learning as through cooperative interaction within a community of learners, rather than from a teacher who stands outside of a collection of isolated students.