When I talk to practitioners about 'active learning', responses range from 'it's all about letting them run round' to 'children need to be active, don't they?'
Well, yes, but active learning is about far more than the purely physical. It embraces all aspects of a child's cognitive and social development, and in so doing, often challenges practitioners to reassess their role in children's learning.
For 'active learning' to take place, practitioners need to become co-partners in children's learning story, a role that is rewarding for the adult and intellectually stimulating for the child.
Getting Engaged
When children are engaged physically and cognitively in an activity, adults engage better too. Likewise, when adults are truly engaging with them, the children display higher levels of concentration, motivation and perseverance in the learning process - as Laevers states, 'deep-level learning is taking place'.
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