What is Passion-Based Learning?
The most important voice in a learning environment should be that of the student. No student should be left behind. When we are caught up in teaching the prescribed curriculum using traditional methods of instructing, many students are not engaged in the learning process. When teaching caters to the students’ passions, the students and the classroom come to life, the students become more engaged in school and learning, the students become unstoppable. This is what we as teachers need to embrace.
What is Passion?Passion is...
How did Passion-Based Learning Begin?Passion-based learning was based upon Google’s business model of 20 Percent Time for their employees, introduced in late 2007 (Strickland, 2011). Google began providing their employees with the opportunity to dedicate 20 percent of their work week to a project that that special and meaningful to them. To a project the employee was passionate about. When there is a lack of passion for the work being done by employees, or by students, there is less productivity and the environment can quickly become negative. Not all employees are passionate about their jobs; ot all students are passionate about the educational curriculum content.
Passion-Based Learning in Education |
Are you on Twitter? Be sure to check out the #20Time and #GeniusHour hashtags to connect with other educators who are passionate about bringing passion-based projects to their students!
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Classroom passion-based learning projects can also translate in alternate ways with less constrictive timeframes such as those provided by the Innovation Day project. This project typically involves a 2-week long process in which students design a project that should take them approximately one school day to complete. The instructional time on the final day is then opened up for the student to undergo their plans and work through as much of the project as possible. At the day’s end, they should have a tangible product from what they created, made, practiced, or studied, as well as a plan to formally share what they have accomplished.
With passion-based learning projects, students will naturally build on their own previous experiences, while engaging in materials that will further their knowledge and learning on that topic. The process will enable students in not just what to learn (consumption of content), but also, in turn, how to learn, plan, and design a project by undergoing various research methods to gather and curate their information (creation of content).
With passion-based learning projects, students will naturally build on their own previous experiences, while engaging in materials that will further their knowledge and learning on that topic. The process will enable students in not just what to learn (consumption of content), but also, in turn, how to learn, plan, and design a project by undergoing various research methods to gather and curate their information (creation of content).
Grounding Passion-Based Learning in Educational Theories
Passion-based learning projects are based upon the constructivist theory at its finest. Because students are beginning with topics that are engaging to them, the learning itself is integrated within the process of researching, designing, curating, implementing, and sharing information on their individual topic. Vygotsky’s “proximal development, which he defined as ‘the distance between actual developmental level as determined through independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’” (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996, p. 198).
Access to different learning tools can be provided by the instructor, who will act as a facilitator, and will be able aid in the learning process. A positive offshoot of the teacher acting as the “guide on the side” to the student is that they may build knowledge together through inquiry, research, discovery, and knowledge co-construction. Children often curate their own pieces of knowledge from their surroundings, as result of watching modeled behaviors from others in their environments (Papert, 1980). This overt modelling is beneficial to students as the teacher also acts as an inquisitive, open-minded learner. Hence, allowing the students to become the teachers and the teachers to become the students as reciprocal teaching and learning transpires in a sociocultural environment. This type of environment encourages the co-construction of knowledge where all participants are able to contribute to the classroom learning.
Access to different learning tools can be provided by the instructor, who will act as a facilitator, and will be able aid in the learning process. A positive offshoot of the teacher acting as the “guide on the side” to the student is that they may build knowledge together through inquiry, research, discovery, and knowledge co-construction. Children often curate their own pieces of knowledge from their surroundings, as result of watching modeled behaviors from others in their environments (Papert, 1980). This overt modelling is beneficial to students as the teacher also acts as an inquisitive, open-minded learner. Hence, allowing the students to become the teachers and the teachers to become the students as reciprocal teaching and learning transpires in a sociocultural environment. This type of environment encourages the co-construction of knowledge where all participants are able to contribute to the classroom learning.