Glcc Guiding Principles

GLCC Guiding Principles The Great Lakes Constructivist Consortium advocates for learner centered environments that are experiential, equitable, and ecological. The GLCC focuses its research, action, and dissemination on the following 4 goal areas: Democratic Learning Environments: Staff and students participate in creating and maintaining democratic learning structures that encourage the inclusion of all voices and provide opportunities for shared leadership and collaborative inquiry. Constructivist learning organizations build communities grounded in trust and equity since the constructivist learning approach encourages learners (staff and students) to take learning risks and tolerate ambiguity. Constructivist community members are proficient with socio-cultural influences that can have an impact on educationally relevant variables, such as motivation, orientation towards learning, and ways of thinking. Assessment Practices: As meaning makers, humans seek to organize and generalize across experiences in a representational form. Therefore, constructivist-learning environments engage in sharing reflections and active listening as the driving force of learning. The school’s goals apply to each and every student, while the means to these goals will vary as students themselves vary. Educational staffs within constructivist learning contexts act in multiple functions (teacher-counselormanager) and maintain a sense of commitment to the entire interdependent learning community not just his/her class(es) or subject area Orientation Procedures: New knowledge is linked to and integrated with the learner's prior experiences, knowledge and understanding. The learners, rather than the teacher, are responsible for defending, proving, justifying, and communicating their ideas to the classroom community and the community at large. The adults in constructivist learning communities are knowledgeable about child/adolescent development and learning theories because all people learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level and is accessible in an enjoyable and interesting way. Constructivist community members know that curiosity; creativity, flexibility and insightful thinking are major indicators of the learners' level of engagement. A constructivist environment intentionally seeks to measure learner engagement in these areas. Community Partnerships: Students and staff are aware of and utilize to the fullest extent the available learning resources of the internal and external (local and global) communities. Service-learning opportunities are made available to all learners because service to one’s community is essential to the development of the whole person. School community members are able to effectively analyze the needs and opportunities in the community and make contributions to solving problems, creating possibilities, and celebrating accomplishments.