Contemporary Academics

Contemporary Academics, Innovative Practice

By Patricia Hunter McGrath and Christina Bianchi

“Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn.”

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994), Italian early childhood education specialist. Quoted in The Hundred Languages of Children, ch. 3, by Carolyn Edwards (1993).

The line is the fundamental unit of literacy, one of the foundational elements of understanding spacial geometry and an essential tool for Art.

Without lines, we can't write our names, track the trajectory of the stars or draw our first pictures of our families. But without something to communicate, without delighting in being able to write our names, without wondering at the movement of the spheres, without loving our families, literacy, representation, and mathematics can seem a chore rather than a form of joyful expression. As adults, we tend to isolate subjects into discrete parts such as mathematics, literacy, science, and art, but for very young children, all these subjects are integrated into their experiences which we call "Contemporary Academics." Using current educational research from universities across the US and abroad and in-depth studies of contemporary child development theory and practices we have developed this innovative teaching approach.

Contemporary academics transforms traditional academic and integrated play based curriculum into a holistic, integrated, creative and reflective teaching approach. All areas of academics are woven through the children's explorations and integrated throughout the day so that deep and meaningful learning can take place.

Current research supports this idea of integration all the way down to the neurological level. Dr. Dan Siegel, at the UCLA School of Medicine, states in his research on interpersonal neurobiology that "Although we focus on particular regions and circuits of the brain, the fact is that the brain is a complex set of integrated systems that tend to function together. The mind is created from the whole brain. “Integration”—the ways in which functionally distinct components come to be clustered into a functional whole—may be a fundamental way in which the nervous system functions." If the physical structures of the mind are fundamentally integrated, so too must be our approach to learning.

Integration and Memorization

While memorization can be a useful strategy in some cases, it is only one tool in supporting children's learning. For children to be literate in this century, they need to be able to communicate in many different ways using intelligent materials. For our children, memorizing the alphabet is only a tool for communication. It is not the main reason to communicate. Instead of memorization, we listen carefully to understand what theories and ideas children would like to communicate and then add materials and symbol systems to make their theories visible.

"drawing is one of the many languages which children use to 'talk' about their world, both to themselves and to others"

(Dyson, 1993, Gallas, 1994, Kress, 1997, Pahl, 1999, Lindqvist, 2001). Cooper, P. A. (1993). Paradigm Shifts in Designed Instruction: From Behaviorism to Cognitivism to Constructivism. Educational technology, 33(5), 12-19.

Through drawing, children can re-present action, emotion, ideas or experiences

(Malchiodi, 1998 Matthews, 1994, 1999).

Children want to learn how to communicate, to represent and to count. They are delighted to find connections and make discoveries. In using the concept of "line" as a tool for inquiry, we learn how teachers thread traditional academic ideas into the children's experiences. The presentation will highlight an investigation of line in which teachers and atelieristas work together to help the children observe, cultivate their theories and use the scientific method to engage in theory repair. Mathematics, literacy, science, and art are woven into the fabric of the investigation.