What is Sustainable and Integrative Active Learning?
Posted on: August 2, 2022
In Transformative Education: A Showcase of Sustainable and Integrative Active Learning, we argue extensively that some of the most memorable, i.e. long-lasting, kind of learning occurs when using a transdisciplinary approach integrating as many school subjects as possible, adding an active element at every opportunity as most learners will more readily remember things they have learned in an active rather than a passive manner. We have, through experience, become increasingly convinced that the world of education would benefit greatly from trying to fully and comprehensively intertwine different school subjects in order to improve the knowledge acquisition skills of the youth as we develop an increasingly holistic teaching methodology.
Supported by extensive research, this book also offers a very positive possible outlook on the future of the teaching profession, especially for teachers who learn to collaborate with one another, and who enjoy a supportive and uplifting school leadership, as a team of specialist subject teachers will quickly realise that in combining their efforts and fusing their knowledge areas, and their separate enthusiasms, the whole of their efforts will, in Aristotelian terms, become infinitely greater than the sum of its parts in the learning outcomes for their students.
A reader of Transformative Education could choose to satiate the entire volume continually, or pick out the most relevant or interesting parts one at the time. An active teacher will find an abundance of lesson ideas on how to best start integrating different school subjects, as well as an extensive section with hands-on advice on teaching teenagers the increasingly crucial area of critical thinking. A school leader will find sections on uplifting leadership, with advice on supporting staff that wants to find new ways to collaborate with their colleagues and increase the sustainable learning of their students, as well as how to recognise and promote teaching excellence in all organizations. An academic will discover a treasure trove of invaluable research topics whose findings, with the questions coming from the floor so to speak, will lead to very real-world benefits for the teaching profession and their students. We have also included bountiful petitions to politicians and policymakers who, in many cases, assign curriculums and mission statements to be adhered to by us that are active in schools, not least an appeal for the creation of expert groups to be assembled in order to predict what those we teach today will actually need for their future, and how curriculums should be overhauled and adapted to better suit those future needs. Once other experts have determined their predictions on what knowledge and skills humanity of the future are in need of, the issues of HOW to teach this can be safely left in the expert hands of the global teaching profession.
What makes this publication groundbreaking?
In addition to the unique experiential content catalogued above, Transformative Education also brings Routledge’s remarkable eResources to a brand-new level. It redefines the way online literary bonus material can be made accessible and presented. Throughout the book, readers will find different QR-codes giving exclusive access to premium additional content on interactive web pages full of digital resources including exhilarating videos, colourful graphics and even an exciting video game created by students. The online material found within the various eResources will support teachers in taking charge and carrying out the processes of integrated planning and adaptation, induced by participatory and collaborative action where new ideas can flourish. But, the added value endowed to this all-encompassing book on education is not limited to the material found in the eResources. Its content has continuously been debated in panels, been the subject of lectures, discussed in conferences and applied in hands-on workshops. It also gave birth to the #keepitreal initiative at the Nobel Prize Teacher Summit in 2021 which endeavored to launch a collective global effort for a democratic wave of online fact-checking in schools and initiated a campaign for the expeditious improvement of teacher training within the sphere of competence of critical thinking worldwide. Finally, it also contributed to the entrepreneurial spawning of the educational consulting firm Integreateach.