Jeff came to speak with our class about why he decided to quit his teaching career in order to co-found a new school (PSII) in Victoria centered around the philosophy of inquiry. In his presentation on successful learning strategies, Jeff focused in on the zone of proximal development of each individual student, as well as contextualized learning in a collaborative setting. In practice, this involves student-centered learning where they each students follows their own intellectual passions. Although this is definitely not standard practice in teaching because at a large scale it is very difficult to manage each student’s individual inquiry process, it has been incredibly effective at PSII.
PSII focuses on developing a greater depth of knowledge over quantity of knowledge because as Jeff put it, they want to encourage “knowing” vs. “knowing about” a topic. The main thing that guides their inquiry process is the intrinsic motivation associated with self-guided learning.
In this context, the role of the teacher is to be a professional facilitator rather than micromanaging students which promotes learned helplessness.