Pedagogy of cooperation … Maltese National Curriculum!

In work on design of curriculum and pedagogy I came across this quote.  It must be shared because it’s good, and it’s Maltese.  (Malta is a tiny little country rich in culture being at the centre of history for thousands of years.  I’m half Maltese but spend too little time there 🙁  )

a pedagogy of co-operation, based on group work, should transform … classrooms in to a hive of synergetic collective endeavour … The vehicles for the development of critical and independent thinking are: questions, systematic investigation and the exchange of ideas with others … Genuine group work implies that the control over the production of knowledge does not remain in the hands of teachers but is shared among students.  An educational context based on holistic principles is essentially a democratic context in which a balance between individual and participatory learning is achieved.

Maltese Ministry of Education: National Curriculum 1999

This is good stuff.  Radical compared to what most readers might have experienced and certainly compared to the approach felt in most state schools, but actually very human, necessary and perhaps even leaning toward the ancient dialectic method of Socrates.

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