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How Children Learn At Home |
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Written by Harriet Pattison
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 07:48 |
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This web site is about our research into how children learn. Our interest in how children learn is different to most research about learning because it is concerned with how children learn at home rather than how children learn in school or in other situations which adults have set up for child learning. How children learn at home is different to how children learn in school because at home they are free to learn in ways which are not possible or permitted in school. Our research explores these ways and seeks to understand what it is that children do that enables them to learn rather than what it is that adults can do to help children learn. Those of us who are parents or who have had close contact with children know that children are very good learners. How children learn includes techniques such as watching and imitating other people as well as working things out for themselves by wondering and experimenting. Consolidating and exploring ideas through play is another example of how children learn. At home, before entering formal education this is how children learn. Our work is concerned with how children learn in this way after the age of five and how children learn the school subjects (such as reading and writing) in this manner and without formal teaching. Click the following link to find out more about how children learn at home. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 13 February 2009 23:22 )
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Why are we interested and why is this important? |
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Written by Harriet Pattison
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 16:40 |
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Our aim is not to criticise schools or to advocate home education to families. Our interest lies purely in how children learn for themselves: what things they are interested in and why, and how they then go about exploring them. Thinking about how children learn is obviously interesting to parents, whether their children are in or out of school. It can also be surprisingly difficult in the flow of everyday life to pinpoint just how children learn, even when it is clear that they are learning. For those families who do undertake the responsibility of educating their children at home it can be enlightening and reassuring to hear about how children learn in other families. Theoretically this research is also important. Whilst vast amounts of research into education are undertaken the overwhelming mass of this research is concentrated on how children learn in schools or in other specifically designed learning situations. Very little is concerned with how children learn from day to day life, nor how they go about this type of learning. Our research reveals an area of learning that is often overlooked and which can provide a startling contrast to school based pedagogoy. Considering how children learn at home can act as a control to some of the conventional wisdom of schooling by making us critical of the assumptions that underpin the now taken for granted models of learning on which most theory is based. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 27 April 2009 15:11 )
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