Living and Learning Globally Education Department, University of the People EDUC 5810 Writing Assignment Unit 7 Dr. Javier Lozano October 25, 2023
Situation in the field of foreign language teaching
Let's imagine the usual style of teaching at school. The teacher gives an explanation of a new topic, assigns the task of mastering the section of the textbook in which the topic is presented, as well as exercises to be performed to consolidate the knowledge gained. At the next lesson the teacher checks the exercises and evaluates them. He/she corrects mistakes. Moves on to the next lesson. Fundamentally the same scheme of training is preserved in most academic disciplines in higher education, only the current control of task fulfillment is produced less often, but each discipline is completed by the final control - a test or an exam. What is the student's role in this form of learning? Listen carefully, take notes, ask questions if something is unclear. Then read the textbook section at home and do the exercises. The student acts as a performer and only that. Sometimes students will write an essay, read additional material, do independent work or discuss with the teacher the information they have received from friends, relatives or the Internet. All this is very far from real life, full of problems, uncertainty of their expression and solutions that require independence and initiative. Many students feel this, preferring school detachment to another world outside the school walls, even if it is childish, but independent and real.
Why innovation is needed
Today's children and young people will be adults in 2030 (Goethe Institute, n. d.). Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will affect them directly. It is about their personal real life and their future. Some of the fields of activity are suitable for foreign language lessons with science content due to their everyday relevance. This is also supported by the fact that the 17 objectives are accompanied by a very good, visually rich and universally accessible set of materials for pupils all over the world.
Particularly appropriate topics relevant to everyday life include nutrition, water and energy consumption, and everyone's consumption behavior. The impact of the behavior on the global community can be presented and compared using the so-called ecological footprint. These materials allow for motivating lessons in German and science subjects on the Sustainable Development Goals. The topics offer a variety of opportunities to activate everyday knowledge, existing vocabulary, deepen familiar syntactic constructions and learn new ones. By engaging with the global theme of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, pupils are motivated to approach the topic in a particularly productive way.
Outline current actions - " Working on the work".
Education for sustainable development requires teaching children to think through problems and find possible solutions, rather than simply providing knowledge. It also requires opening up opportunities for multilateral and interdisciplinary analysis of real-life situations. All of this can affect the structure of curricula and teaching methods, so that the teacher is no longer only transmitting information and the students only receiving it, learning becomes a result of joint action.
In the alternative variant of the organization of the learning process, the student is given a very active role, if not the leading one. Instead of outlining the unit, the teacher points out the field of study and the most prominent problems, formulates a set of questions if the students are not yet able to formulate them themselves, and invites the students to find information on their own in order to use it to propose their own answers to these questions and come up with new ones. The search for information should not be limited to the textbook section, but requires active reference to explanatory dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a variety of information sources, including the Internet. Tasks can be differentiated taking into account individual abilities and aptitudes of pupils. Everyone should feel his/her indispensability in the team. Work can be partially or fully organized in groups. Discussion of the results is more like a research paper than a report. It should also be taken into account that parental involvement has also been linked to psychological processes and attributes that support student achievement .
As a result, the teacher must educate, develop the strength of his and the student's personality, strength of character, ability to own himself, to be worthy, beloved, useful and reliable member of the collective (society). Here are some qualities of social compatibility that are necessary for everyone to live successfully in society (Marfenin, 2010):
- ability of self-management, self-mastery, self-control, self-restraint, self-control;
- blocking rudeness, excessive directness;
- politeness, caution, attention to others;
- patience, ability to wait, wait, wait, wait;
- abstinence as a property of strong character, helping to avoid deprivation, depravity, defilement, pampering, weakness;
- endurance - the ability to endure physical exertion, discomfort, intellectual overload;
- courage - the ability to avoid panic or cowardly fear of possible punishment, failure, defeat;
- decisiveness - the ability to make decisions in a situation of significant uncertainty of criteria and parameters of choice;
- the ability to withstand failure;
- respect for others, the ability to recognize positive qualities in people and respect them;
- kindness to others - the ability to evaluate events and actions positively rather than negatively, the ability to forgive others for mistakes and wrong actions;
- honesty - the ability not to give in to temptation or fear and to remain a reliable person, partner, comrade, whatever the cost;
- nobility in the sense of forgetting one's own interests for the sake of moral and ethical standards;
- scrupulosity as a principled ability not to put one's own interests above the interests of other people;
- delicacy - a character trait expressed in attention to other people, the desire not to burden or disturb others.
References
Goethe Institute, n. d., EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT https://www.goethe.de/ins/ru/ru/spr/eng/bne.html
Hoover‐Dempsey, K., Walker, J., Sandler, H., Whetsel, D., Green, C., Wilkins, A., & Closson, K. (2005). Why Do Parents Become Involved? Research FIndings and Implications. The Elementary School Journal, 106(2), 105-130. doi:10.1086/499194. JSTOR, JSTOR www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/499194
Marfenin N.N., Russia in the Surrounding World: 2010. Sustainable Development: Ecology, Politics, Economics: Analytical Yearbook / Edited by N.N. Marfenin; under the general editorship of N.N. Marfenin, S.A. Stepanov. - Moscow: MNEPU Publishing House, 2010. - 352 с.