Outreach Education is comprised of 10 Education officers based in cultural organisations in Adelaide. It is an organisation funded by the state Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS). Check out the Outreach Education website.
Because we are a team integrated across a number of institutions, the entire collection of learning programs is substantial, and from this we have extracted some principles for program development. A planning tool was developed as a guide for use in writing and developing teaching and learning resources associated with exhibitions, events, web sites, mobile learning technologies, travelling exhibitions teacher professional development and special events.
For example, identifying and making explicit the key concepts or big ideas that students will take away with them is fundamental. They will approach it in different ways and it is important to acknowledge their prior knowledge and experience. They will form their own interpretations and have different experiences but it is engagement with the key concept that allows them to enter into deeper levels of thinking and consideration of issues.
Discussion and refinement is also fundamental in this process. Conversation and collaboration with people who have similar content knowledge, different thinking preferences, or who are unfamiliar with your expertise, is useful in providing different ways of looking at and evaluating the concept. Trial and evaluation with teachers, students and exhibition staff is implicit throughout this process. The Outreach Education guide is based upon Julia Atkin’s Integral Learning/thinking model which was adapted from work done by Ned Hermann.
The theory
The focus of Dr Julia Atkin’s work has been on researching how people learn. Atkin has developed and continues to refine her own model of Integral Learning. This model explores how learning can be deepened by integrating our multiple ways of knowing. Atkin’s builds on Ned Herman’s Whole Brain Model of learning, thinking and doing which highlights ways of processing: (Hermann, 1996)
- abstract, rational, conceptual (cerebral)
- sensory, kinaesthetic, emotional (limbic)
She describes these multiple ways of knowing as our ‘four thinking selves’:
- our rational, theoretical self
- our ordered, safe keeping self
- our emotional, interpersonal self
- our imaginative, experiential self
We use all ways of knowing and processing and we differ in the extent to which we use or rely upon each way of knowing – we have different thinking preferences. Powerful learning can occur when educators stimulate learners by providing a range of processes that develop these different ways of knowing. [i] (Atkins, 2000)
Chris Nobbs (and Outreach Education colleagues)
Education Officer
South Australian Museum
[i] See a more detailed outline of Dr Julia Atkin’s Integral Learning model (pdf)
