“Learning isn’t something that happens to individual children — separate selves at separate desks. Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning.” (Kohn, 2008) This quote caught my attention as I am a current elementary teacher at a private school in Chicago. Now more than ever before students are rediscovering how to work together as a classroom community to be successful in their learning. After the global pandemic that altogether removed students from collaborative learning in person. The students that I am working with now were in Kindergarten when the shutdown occurred. These students missed a critical developmental stage of learning how to interact with one another in the classroom. Although they continued their education remotely, it was mainly through didactic practices. Now that the students are back in the classroom without COVID-19 restrictions they are experiencing Authentic Pedagogical practices for what may be the first time. According to Kohn, “In progressive schools, students play a vital role in helping to design the curriculum, formulate the questions, seek out (and create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful they — and their teachers — have been. Their active participation in every stage of the process is consistent with the overwhelming consensus of experts that learning is a matter of constructing ideas rather than passively absorbing information or practicing skills.” An example of this in the classroom could be incorporating a choice board as a bonus activity for students. A choice board is a series of options that students can choose from based on their interests and apply what they have learned to a certain activity. Giving a student the opportunity to choose and control what they are doing with their academic time is one method of allowing the student to construct their learning process.

Another example would be project based learning. In the graph below you can see a breakdown of the main components that create a successful project based learning tactic. This learning style is an example of Authentic Pedagogy because it infuses collaboration, student centered learning, and allows for students to contribute to their understanding of the curriculum. These are two examples of utilizing Authentic Pedagogy in the classroom that can lead to building a collaborative community of learners.

Project Based Learning

Source: 

Kohn, Alfie. 2008. “Progressive Education: Why It’s Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find.” Independent School. ||

Image: 

Grossman, P. (2019, March 25). Preparing teachers for project-based teaching . kappanonline.org. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://kappanonline.org/preparing-teachers-project-based-teaching-grossman-pupik-dean-kavanagh-herrmann/