OPEN PEDAGOGY
Open pedagogy is an educational approach that emphasizes creation, cooperation, and student agency. This approach is centred around students being able to choose and shape their own learning, and in this way, different students will learn and develop different outcomes. In this approach an example of an activity is where the teacher would provide students with random materials or resources, and students will have the opportunity to create whatever they want using the materials given. This can develop different areas of the brain, allowing students to build on their creativity through their creations and outcomes that they learn with their learning in their hands. Open pedagogy is where students are able to control and lead their own learning by following their own intrustions to understand and develop concepts through open resources and a structure.
The open pedagogy doesn’t align with our chosen topic as much as some of the other educational approaches do; this is because our topic is about identifying BC native trees, and this topic is targeted at elementary students. We are educating students by giving them information on how to identify trees, which is a part of the instruction, and then getting them to engage in experiential learning by looking to find these identifying features and identify trees within their environment. This allows students to identify BC native trees and understand the environment they see daily.
This approach could be incorporated into our interactive learning design because there is a nature walk within our activities. This nature walk could be very open-ended, and the students could, instead of finding trees we have discussed in class, be given an opportunity to go into the environment and create a journal of whatever trees they wanted. Then, they could collaborate with other students in the class by uploading pictures of the trees that they found and have access to other students’ discoveries. This is a way we could incorporate open pedagogy into our interactive learning design.
REFERENCES
Hi Ella!
I really enjoyed Your take on open pedagogy. It is really interesting, especially how it fosters creativity and student-driven learning. Encouraging them to explore, collaborate, and create their own coding challenges goes along with your idea of letting students document and share their own tree discoveries. I like the way nature journal activity brings in open pedagogy, making learning more engaging. It’s a great reminder that blending structure with exploration can create a richer, more meaningful learning experience.