Using student's Out of Classroom experiences for learning

Teo, P. (2008). Outside in/inside out: Bridging the gap in literacy education in Singapore classrooms. Language and Education, 22(6), 411-431.

Background

Weak students were unmotivated and not engaged in learning because teachers did not connect students’ outside-of-classroom experiences to the learning that took place in the classroom.

Aims

The purpose of this study was to show how teachers could make use of students’ prior knowledge and out-of-classroom experiences for learning in the classroom, and how students could apply what they learnt in the world outside the classroom, so that learning could be made more meaningful and purposeful.

Sample

The participants were 17 teachers (Ten teaching English Language, four teaching Social Studies, and three Science) from three neighbourhood secondary schools in Singapore.

Method

The teachers were observed and audio-recorded over the span of four months teaching one unit of English, Science, or Social Studies. Data sources included classroom observations, teaching materials, student artefacts, the school syllabus, educational policy documents, and focus group interviews with both teachers and students.

Findings

Excerpts from transcripts derived from recorded lessons showed how teachers could make their lessons more meaningful to students by making connections to students’ background knowledge and experiences as they are being introduced to new knowledge and by making connections from the lesson task or activity to competencies and concerns beyond the classroom. One English Language teacher used ‘outside’ knowledge that was common and familiar to students such as the local delicacy kueh lapis as an analogy for the layers needed for the construction of a news report to activate the students’ schema. Another English Language teacher activated the familiar idea of a carnival in her students’ schema and the food associated with it before asking students to suggest more healthy versions of food normally found in carnivals. One other English teacher used the increasing rate of the heartbeat to illustrate the effect the climax of a narrative would have on the reader.

Implications

To keep students motivated and engaged in learning, the author proposed that teachers could use texts as a tool to contemplate and reflect on the world by bridging the abstract, technical, and remote with the concrete, familiar, and current, and to use this knowledge by taking concrete actions.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis Online.