A Year at Mission Hill – Chapter 8: The World of Work

This video has touched me a lot. Middle school students can participate in project research with their favorite topics in advance and have the opportunity to learn from scholars and experts in the field. This organization involves all areas of student growth to help them think about future life plans. When I saw students conceiving how to sign their career interest plan forms, they seriously considered this life issue because we barely considered this question in high school life: What kind of person do we want to be? This project to a certain extent allows students to participate in the society and realize that they will be an employee or expert in a certain industry.

When an opportunity can make students state their problems carefully, it forms a channel to build communication between students and the society. A student was curious about getting in touch with wild animals, so the organization introduced him to a wildlife expert to talk to him about how to get in touch with pythons and why he got close to wild animals. This kind of situational learning makes them no longer in a state of imagination and curiosity. This gives them a renewed understanding of themselves and their goals, and creates a learning motivation. We can see that these students seem to find a clear direction from the experience of these social members. Hickey & Zuiker (2005) believes that the social and cultural world can shape and influence the development of internal knowledge structure and belief. This view implies that individuals are involved in the definition of social standards and values that motivate learning and are at the same time adaptive to it.

Von Glasersfeld (2000) suggested to teachers that they should create opportunities for students to think and believe that they could think independently, and that teachers should set these opportunities in context to establish concepts. The purpose of this is to fully stimulate the enthusiasm of students and learning motivation.

References:

Hickey, D. & Zuiker, S. (2005). Engaged Participation: A Sociocultural Model of Motivation With Implications for Educational Assessment. Educational Assessment, 10(3), 277-305.

Von Glasersfeld, E. (2001). Radical constructivism and teaching. Prospects, 31(2), 161-173.