Today, everyone needs robust, rigorous thinking abilities and skills. Learning is a
key feature of knowledge societies. Knowing how to learn, being inspired to continue
learning and learning together are essential in today’s world, as are the ability to build
on other’s ideas, collaborate to solve problems, address issues, and pose new
problems or questions.
Such activities, embedded in a living field of knowledge,
fundamentally change what teachers are currently required to spend their time doing
under the assembly line model—content delivery. And it fundamentally changes what
students are currently required to spend their time doing under that worn-out model—
receiving and regurgitating content. Kurt Fischer (2008) of Harvard University’s Mind,
Brain and Education Institute reminds us that “We are not brains disembodied in the
bucket sitting in the corner. And likewise, we don't learn by having information stuck into
our brains. It doesn't work that way. We have to learn more actively than that. So it is
not true that you can plug the world into the brain and thereby know everything. Instead,
knowledge has to built” (para. 12). We would like to build on Fischer’s idea because it
is, once again, too easy to read it without interrupting the assembly-line legacy— more
active learning needs to be coupled with and understanding of what is being learned as
a living field that will limit and teach that activity to be thoughtful, disciplined and careful
of what that field demands of it.