Read more
A well-documented case for how integrated, holistic, and democratic education can actually be achieved.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Ecosystem Learning Framework
Chapter 2: The Whole Frog
Chapter 3: Why Do We Educate?
Chapter 4: Diversity in Ways to Learn
Chapter 5: Networking
Chapter 6: Emergent Properties
Chapter 7: Finding and Constructing Learning Niches
Chapter 8: Interpretation of Learning Spaces
Chapter 9: Education's Ecosystem
Chapter 10: The Ecosystem Curriculum
Conclusion
Captions
Notes
About the author
Bertram C. Bruce has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and is currently a Professor Emeritus in Information Science at the University of Illinois. He has worked on education in many countries, across grade levels, and in diverse areas of the curriculum. His work contributes to a tradition of democratic education, asking "How can we guide the educational enterprise by an ethical vision, not simply a technocratic one of transmitting isolated facts and skills?"
Summary
A well-documented case for how integrated, holistic, and democratic education can actually be achieved.
Additional text
Bruce argues for a conception of school as embedded within, and an integral component of, the communities in which we live.
Bruce suggests “If learning is truly open to the world, the teacher doesn't have to, cannot, know it all. Instead, she or he becomes a fellow explorer, possibly a knowledgeable guide, but not the final answer to anything.”
Bruce is an artful questioner and Education’s Ecosystem: Learning Through Life tackles many questionable assumptions on education. It could easily be titled ‘questions for educators - other ways of thinking about school and community’.
Bruce argues consistently that education happens in the community. He takes us beyond the near and the obvious. We are presented, quite literally, with a global perspective, an ecosystem of education that may be embraced and nurtured for learning about the world.
