Reflect on how your understanding of the purpose of education is visible in your classroom. Think about also how you would like to record and perhaps share your learning with a wider community?

How visible the purpose of education is in my classroom is something I have been thinking about a lot as part of my teacher inquiry this year. One of the Appraisal Connector criteria I have chosen to look at is 

Students go beyond articulating what they are learning to explaining why they are learning what they are learning; what they are learning has contextual relevance and meaning for them.

I feel this statement is similar to investigating the purpose of education, the 'why' of learning. This is something that I frequently discuss with my students and they can now articulate independently why they are learning a certain thing. I feel that at the age my students are (7-9 years old) this understanding is pretty sophisticated. When having general discussions about why we go to school/the purpose of school I tend to get a generic "to learn things and get a good job" answer. This is something I would like to revisit with my students as I personally feel education is so much more than just gaining qualifications. During our MindLab session this week we created a mind map of what we feel is the purpose of education. It was interesting to discuss this concept with others in my group from different educational backgrounds (secondary, primary, specialist teacher). We all had very different views. The secondary perspective was focused on qualifications and bettering oneself while the primary perspective was more holistic e.g to socialise, to learn conformity/being part of a group, to question ideas. This difference was interesting as when I asked primary aged children they responded in a very 'secondary' mindset. This made me wonder if their ideas of the purpose of education are so socially ingrained in adults that they feed down to our children. This makes me wonder how we are going to change the mindset of young children to think of education as a much more holistic process than just gaining good qualifications. This then made me think about how to share this ideal with our wider school community. During recent student-led conferences most children could articulate their learning goals and successes clearly. They could also discuss with parents why they learned certain topics. This conversation was one way of sharing the purpose of what we do with our parents. Many of our parents still hold a view of education that reflects how they were educated. I recently had a conversation with a parent about why the children go to gymnastics and how she wishes they did 'fun' things like this when she was at school. We then went on to have an interesting chat about how education is changing and how learning is now becoming more 'fun'. I would like to think more about how to share the purpose of education with my school community. I don't feel our class blog is the appropriate platform as this is used much more as a celebration of children's learning. Likewise our weekly emails are used to build links with whanau at the end of each week. This could potential become a forum for sharing this purpose however I need to think about how I could do this without appearing 'preachy'.