In last Saturday’s workshop on early childhood education, the core content present by Bev Bos involved twelve conditions for growing wiser: Belonging, Risk, Passion, Power, Productivity, Presence, Support, Solitude, Humor, Gratification Deference, Mentors and Models, and Re-Seeding. Bos originally had just four conditions, but over the years she expanded the description of the learning environment.
The overarching insight in Bos’ perspective on education deals with play (), but in order to play effectively and constructively—from a pedagogical point of view—an environment must exist that allows a person to learn. Bos’ twelve conditions are largely focusing on the barriers a school, teacher or student constructs that make learning more difficult, or encourages education about the least important things.
This is also a good scaffolding for design. The user is the learner, in this case, and the interface is both school and teacher. Over the next couple weeks, I want to explore how each of these conditions for growing wiser translates into an insight about effective design.
- Belonging—a sense of belonging emerges from the inside out
- Risk—the perception of overcoming danger builds confidence and intuition
- Passion—when something matters deeply to a person, she is more tolerant and engaged
- Power—students get power when the teacher allows them to make decisions
- Productivity
- Presence
- Support
- Solitude
- Humor
- Gratification Deference
- Mentors and Models
- Re-Seeding
The concepts will be explored individually over the course of the next two weeks. The conditions with links have been published. /KM
