Innovations in Teaching and Learning Rosalyn McKeown, Ph.D.

I hesitate to talk about innovations, because what I might find innovative you may have already been doing for years.

North American Challenge North America becomes more multicultural with immigration. American and Canadian teachers are faced with teaching more students who come from oral traditions. North American primary and secondary schools are text-based. We need to learn more teaching techniques for auditory students.

Because many of you have much more experience teaching students of oral traditions, you may find my experiments to be less than innovative.

Here are two innovations from different countries to deal with sustainability in their college and university course work.

Dr. Lorna Down - Jamaica Sustainability and literature. Violence is a social sustainability issue in Jamaica. Examined: –Roots of violence in Caribbean society –Impact of violence –Alternatives to violence Caribbean writers understand that unless people only recognize and acknowledge the latent violence it their society, it will erupt in many ways.

Dr. Lorna Down - Jamaica cont. Denis Scotts play Echo in the Bones. Emotion in the bone as a consequence of racism, exploitation, and injustice surface in the drama. Students read play and analyzed literary elements. Journaled and discussed violence in society and lives. Used UNESCO Culture of Peace materials. Make mosaics--artistic expressions of violence. Speaker on domestic violence from police department. Lorna Goodisons poem The Woman Speaks to the Man Who Has Employed her Son.

University of Tennessee Pre-service elementary and secondary teachers learn to do participatory action research. The interns identify a problem or something that puzzles them in their classroom. They design a participatory action research project to approach the problem.

Action Research Intern is a researcher and a participant, not a remote objective observer. Action research is a way of approaching questions of teaching often utilizing observational, reflective, narrative, interview, and other research methodologies. Focus on change to improve classroom instruction, classroom management, cognitive behavior, student achievement, etc. Action research bridges different ways of knowing: scholarship and praxis.

Examples of Research Topics How can poor readers still learn the material in the textbook? How can I teach auditory students the visual discipline of geography? How can I adapt activities for a handicapped student? How can I teach all the students in my classroom, not just the best ones?

Many of the research projects address two important issues of ESD--equity in the classroom and quality basic education.

UT Action Research cont. Interns design their research projects during fall semester. Interns implement research projects during spring semester. University holds a full-day seminar for the 300 students who have done action research projects in May.

These two examples of literature and sustainability and action research are two less traditional methodologies that are relevant to todays societies and help new new teachers think about transforming the society in which they live and work.

Innovations in Teacher Education Guideline and Recommendations for Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability esco.org/images/ 0014/001433/ E.pdf