Article
published in “Dalton Inspirations” magazine: https://issuu.com/yeystudio/docs/inspiracje-daltonskie-nr-1
English
Language Education in Dalton Kindergartens:
Integral
education and ``blended learning`` in a foreign language education for children
While my lasts visits to the Chinese and Polish Dalton schools, I was focused mainly on how the process of differentiation is organized in teaching English, as a primary language. I was really impressed that students aged six understood the native speaker in Schenzhen International Dalton School. The process of English in that school is not only focused on preparing to the exams or working with the textbook. It was a diverse and a fantastic process of implementing Bloom's Taxonomy, Multiple Intelligences, different learning styles, everything in a digital way, communicating with the teacher only in English. While my audit in that school I was impressed, on how diversed and rich the teaching and learning of the foreign languages process can be.
English language education in the Dalton kindergartens is a complex
process involving didactic and educational interactions. Preschool children acquire the
basic principles of life in society, and start to learn to solving problems and
critical thinking. Therefore, teaching
English as a foreign language is a great opportunity to pursue educational
tasks in full correlation with the preschool curriculum. The correlated implementation of multiple
intelligence theories and the blended learning concept can be particularly
useful. Blended Learning, in other words a
science, with using modern multimedia . An undoubted advantage of the correlated implementation of
these approaches is to encourage the pupil to actively participate in
educational activities, including English. It is fair to say that motivation, commitment,
cognitive curiosity are highly significant in Dalton Education, and necessary
in the foreign language education of pre-school children.
In the following scheme, the
idea of "blended learning" is
illustrated, in other words "Mixed learning education" .
In the scheme there are
presented strategies combines traditional teaching as well as e-learning. It is
therefore an excellent way to conduct individualized education of children in
the Dalton kindergarten. Undoubtedly, the implementation of
mixed forms and teaching methods does not solve all the significant problems of
children's education . It is important not only what , how or why we teach, but above all who we teach. These issues
have been depicted in a diagram of Simon Sinek, who introduced the concept of
the "golden circle". Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle is being implemented
in the Dalton education in the Netherlands, the idea was started by the Dutch
pedagogues at Katholik Pabo Zwolle university. However, the most important
issue is not why and what do we teach, but “who”, since the starting point of educational
process ought to be the child, since it is the pupil is most important. It is
derived from the child-centerd education philosophy but also personalistic
vision of education (so called “personalism”). In the context of this
assumption I decided to enrich the scheme commonly known as Golden Circle of
Simon Sinek. The following scheme has been enriched with the issue "who",
and therefore placing the pupil as the most important subject of education .
The visualization of the
process process:
In the above
presented scheme there was introduced the diverse and integral development of
the child.
The above scheme is closely related to the Polish vision of differentiation. This issue was Highly considered by one of the
personalistic Polish philosophers, Stefan Kunowski , who introduced, so called “a
contour theory of human development”. He
introduced the basic components of education, as follows: BIOS providing
physical and psychological development of the pupil, Etos- ensuring adequate
development of cultural and educational process Agos- planned and
organized process, in which there is a personal development of the child and Los-
intangible strength, impossible to predict, faith, Autoagos-
self-education, self-development. It is worth paying attention to the fact that this Autoagos
component plays a
significant role in the Dalton pedagogy, also in English education.
It allows the juvenile to self-knowledge, self-discovering, taking aware actions. Consequently, such diversified
educational process, raises the role of the object to the role of the subject, since
it enables self-development, the self-discovery of own
talents, including the classes of English language. Hence, taking into account the
theory of multiple intelligences in the English classroom of is a vital process,
since it allows the teacher to the individualization of work, focusing on the
person and the pupil's individual educational needs.
Differentiation of teaching English in the context of the theory of
multiple intelligences and the Dalton Plan
And individualisation of work
in English language education is extremely important, since it eliminates learning through acquiring only encyclopedic
knowledge. The example of such differentiated school, a
school, catering for every child’s whim is undoubtly Dalton school. Such school
is oriented to the implementation of
differentiation principle. It is definitely the school
of the future, which educates the masters of different fields. It should be emphasized that as many as children
constitute a group of learners, there may be so many different styles of
learning English.
Every child
learns in their own way.
Currently in Europe, there are different strategies and methods for learning a
foreign language. This means
that specific methods of learning English are effective for specific pupils. Every
child has different predispositions, needs and sensitivity to specific stimuli
. Therefore, in an effort to improve the quality and
effectiveness of English education in Dalton kindergartens, Dalton
International Research Platform in cooperation with Adam Mickiewicz University
in Poznań, represented by Renata Michalak , proceeded to develop methodological
assumptions. The aim of the research is to examine the effectiveness of
teaching English based on the theory of multiple intelligences, stages of
thinking by Bloom and educational pillars of the Dalton Plan.
Based on research assumptions, there have been constructed empirical verification tools, in
which the linguistic and educational assumptions have been assigned with a
specific types of intelligence: verbal-linguistic, mathematical and logical,
naturalistic, interpersonal and intra-personal, visual-spatial, musical-rhythmical
and naturalistic. Dalton International Research Platform took into account the basic skills of the child in the area of
individual characteristic functions for a certain age group. Observation cards were
constructed on the basis of a ministerial program and adapted to the reality of
preschool education in Austria, Germany China, the Netherlands and Poland. The above mentioned countries, became the pilot schools and the
measurement of the research will be carried out. Summary
of the research can
help evaluate
what linguistic skills are mastered by the child and which require particular
attention of teachers and parents in order to compensate for any deficiencies. We hope
research will arouse interest of teachers working in
kindergarten.
Teachers interested in taking part in the research can send
an email to the following address: agata.sowinska@kpnmail.nl
Bibliography:
S. Sinek , Start with why. How great leaders inspire
others to act , Penguin Group Publishing, New
York 2013.
S. Kunowski , Fundamentals of contemporary pedagogy , Warsaw 1997, p. 165; "... the real importance of upbringing
today it is about transforming a human being into moving a developing
individual from the animal state
of nature and raising it to
the cultural stage of humanity. " On pages 166-169 S. Kunowski
describes
different ways to define the concept of upbringing.
D. Marsh, Using Languages to learn and learn about learning for parents and young
people. TIE-CLIL: The ECML Archive. http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/clilmatrix/pdf/1UK.pdf
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