Managing complex change in today’s schools requires a learner’s mind-set
In recent years, the most challenging and important role in all of education is the role of a principal. Among their endless responsibilities, it is now been expected from principals to lead their schools through an evolution to personalized and digital learning. A leader must create a vision, maintain expectations, should plan for ongoing teacher training and allocate resources to support the transition – in order to lead and manage change in schools.
The connection between moving and learning continues well beyond the child’s first step. It would be easier and far more cost-effective if we could just bus the children’s heads to school … but, inconveniently, they do happen to be comprised of other body parts, as well. Young children, for whom, as experiential learners, movement is the preferred mode of acquiring knowledge. More and more research is discovering that the brain is much more activated by movement than by seatwork, which increases fatigue and reduces concentration.
Additionally, young children find active learning to be more fun and engaging, which means they’re more inclined to learn. And what better way to promote lifelong learning than by making it fun? Perhaps the most important point for early childhood educators is that young children learn best by doing – and are thus more likely to meet standards when they have the opportunity to experience concepts in physical ways. “Explicit” learning, like memorizing facts, may get the information across more quickly, but it doesn’t reach most children at the level of living and doing. It is far less relevant to them and is much more easily forgotten.
An educational axiom that in teaching you will come to grief as soon as you forget that your pupils have bodies.”
Especially when it comes to early childhood education, we must not forget that children have bodies as well as brains – and that the two are intricately connected.