Active vs. Passive Learning: "At the Intersection" of home and school with Prepared Parents' Mira Browne

Prepared Parents believes that the future of education lies at the intersection of home and school. As parents have stepped in to manage their kids’ learning during the pandemic, they’ve peeked behind the curtain at what it takes to educate a child.

Through this series, Prepared Parents founder and Executive Director, Mira Browne, shares how to support success at home and champion change at school.

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When you were at school, you read a bunch of textbooks, did worksheets, took tests. Maybe you enjoyed history and loathed chemistry. But what if you had actually liked chemistry and chose to actively pursue it? What would your life look like now? Kids learn best by actively engaging in their interests and applying what they know to real-life problems.

But instead, many kids get to use textbooks. Diane Tavenner, CEO and co-founder of Summit Public Schools says:

Answering textbook questions and worksheet questions encourages a rule-following approach to taking in information and spitting it back out. It trains kids to do what they’re told when they’re told and how they’re told…

The difference between how kids are learning in Zoom classrooms and real classrooms when school’s open and how they actually learn best lies in the difference between passive and active learning.

▸ As passive learners, students do nothing but listen or absorb information as it is relayed or fed to them in the form of lectures, assigned readings, and workbooks. Passive learning promotes defining, describing, listening, and writing skills. But, it can disempower students and encourage convergent thinking (there is only one right solution).

▸ As active learners, students learn through discussion and collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, and connecting the dots between learning and the real-world through hands-on project-based learning. Active learning is how we learn best and it encourages divergent thinking (big picture thinking that develops various solutions to a topic).

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