Teachers: Part of the design for causing learning

On the first day of summer I came across the article, How Good Teachers Decenter Themselves, by the late, Grant Wiggins. We sometimes consider the classroom as the center of learning, and correspondingly, the teacher at its nexus. However, what Wiggins' (2013) work asserts is that learning, not teaching, is at the center of education. And if we, as educators, are to be part of a design which is created to cause learning, one which fosters interesting, worthwhile tasks, and engaging learning experiences, then we must embrace our own role as a learner, as well. Summer, with its affordance of extra time away from the classroom, can be a season where teachers take advantage of broadened perspectives in order to discover and develop the ability to think like a designer, creating an education plan which supports student learning under the optimal conditions, "...making sustained engagement and understanding possible" ( Wiggins, 2013, para. 3).

References

Wiggins, Grant (2013, September). How Good Teachers Decenter Themselves. teachthought. Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/how-good-teachers-decenter-themselves/