- Which parts of your education have involved mimetic, synthetic or reflexive pedagogy? Give examples. Explain the differences. Could you have learnt differently in each instance? What would have been best?
- What are your preferred ways of learning – what you find easiest or most effective?
On different approaches to education
- How does one acquire knowledge in what Confucius calls the ‘Great Learning’? In what respects does he sound like a philosopher, and in what respects is he like a religious figure? What are the connections between Confucius’ view of knowledge and learning, and social hierarchy? How might Confucius’ nine aspects of knowledge-ability translate into everyday life or classroom practice today?
- Research a school in an unfamiliar setting which prides itself on mimetic pedagogy and curriculum. Describe its pedagogy and curriculum. Analyse the key features of its approach to education.
- Interview learners on their first day at a new school, or level of education. (Or interview yourself.) What felt strange and unfamiliar? What does this say about ways of knowing and learning that you had not experienced before?
Translating professional education-talk
- Develop a glossary or wiki of technical educational terms, such as pedagogy and curriculum, for possible use by parents and other members of an education community.
- … Then, illustrate the glossary or wiki with a diagram that ties the key concepts together visually.
- … Then, illustrate the glossary or wiki with a diagram that ties the key concepts together visually.
Analysing different types of pedagogy
- Consider Aristotle’s view of art. Is there more to art than copying?
- Compare cultures which promote mimesis as a way of learning fundamental truths – for instance, several different fundamentalist religions. What are the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to teaching?
- Find an instance of mimetic pedagogy today: such as phonics, or direct instruction, or teaching to fact-oriented tests. Then find examples of pedagogies that tend to be synthetic or reflexive (in a textbook, or a lesson plan, for instance). What are the differences? When each of these approaches works, how does it work? And when it fails, how does it fail?
- Take each approach to pedagogy. Create a hammed-up drama to illustrate the approach at work in the classroom, archetypically or even stereotypically.
Pedagogy and curriculum in practice
- Take one area within the curriculum or standards framework in the area where you live, or teach, or might teach. What kind of pedagogical orientation do you think is assumed? How might you achieve the curriculum or standards objective if you tend in one pedagogical direction, then another?
- Provide examples of how learners might engage in each of the modes of meaning that are part of the multiliteracies theory. How might they weave between one mode and another (synaesthesia) and combine modes (multimodality)?
- Write a Learning Element, or a coherent bundle of learning activities and tasks, such as a lesson or a short string of lessons. A Learning Element can be documented as a teacher resource, a learner resource, or both in parallel. It is the equivalent of a textbook chapter or lesson plan. For examples of Learning Elements, visit www.L-by-D.com
