Comparison of School Grown and Skills Link Experiential Learning Approach Case Studies:
For my Theory in Practice, I examined two case studies: School Grown and Skills Link. As we saw in the
introductory video, School Grown is
an urban farming project, based in selected Toronto high schools, offering
students a project and place where Experiential Learning grows along with of
their marketable products.
Skills Links, by contrast, is a federal program, aimed at
reducing employment barriers for multi-barriered, immigrant and rural/remote
youth. Through formal instruction, group
participation and work placements, the youth in Skills Link are supported in work
placements and oriented to the bigger picture process of transitioning from
school to work.
While it could be argued that features of each program align
to several pedagogical approaches, the
greatest alignment of both programs is to the Experiential Learning
approach. In both programs, the youth
are put into authentic and competitive employment situations in order to better
understand the challenges of the real-world of work. By using these real-world experiences to
reflect on personal needs, growth and even failures, the students are able to
become motivated and learn new self-regulation skills that will ensure transfer
beyond the duration of the program. The
idea of transfer is important, as these youth merge into adulthood and learn
the rules of the labour market in contrast to the rules of school. These programs teach students the skills they
will need when they are no longer controlled by adults and have to learn to
thrive on their own.
Having a opportunities, guided by the Experiential Learning
approach, transforms thinking and changes student attitudes about what work
means. Common to both programs is the
financial need that often drives youth participation. In a situation where there is a pressing
financial need, either when youth are helping to generate revenue for the
family income or when they are self-supporting, the learning stakes become
higher than simply working toward course credit. This becomes the fertile soil in which
Experiential Learning is planted and students harvest the experience through
deep and personally meaningful learning.
Through this case study comparison, I gained a deeper
appreciation for the strengths and drawbacks of the different approaches and
what students can gain by becoming involved as active, rather than passive
learners. Different approaches offer
different opportunities to learn and so the idea of suggesting improvements
stretched my thinking to consider how other approaches could be considered,
borrowed and implanted in existing programs to improve them. One example is found in my School Grown program improvement
suggestion in which I recommended building a story that doesn’t have to reach a
final conclusion. By using the ideas of
Networked Learning and Situated Learning in communities of practice, the wonder
and curiosity would not have to end when the course ended, or high school
finished, but could grow broader and deeper by continuing to mingle farming
ideas with others in using the features of Network Learning and Situated
Learning (community of practice) approaches
To learn more about my learning through these case studies,
please see the links below and my completed Case Study output, which is
attached for your review.
Links:
School Grown:
Skills Link:
Examining Theory in Practice
By Tammy
Jinkerson
An
assignment submitted to the Faculty of Education
In
conformity with the requirements for
PME
832
Queen’s
University Kingston, Ontario, Canada
January
31, 2018
Introduction- Program Selection
I found myself
most drawn to School Grown because
offers a hands-on farming experience to students who are making the transition
to paid employment. This appeals to me because it aligns to my
professional learning and teaching context.
I decided to contrast this program with Skills Link, which is a federal program used to overcome employment
obstacles for multi-barriered youth. My
agency has delivered this program in the past, so I am quite familiar with the
format, which is comprised of group-based learning sessions and opportunities
to learn in paid employment placements (Service Canada, (n.d.)).
Alignment to Learning Approaches
School Grown aligns with Place-Based
approach because it has a theme (urban farming), operates with a community
partner (Foodshare) and has a distinctive place in the school and community
(the garden and farmer’s markets), as well as being inter-disciplinary
(Place-based Education Website, n.d.).
According to the description in 2015 Publication, “Project-Based
Learning: Drawing on Best Practices in
Project Management”, the School Grown
program could also be considered as a Project-Based approach because: the students are motivated by critical
questions, work in a team to co-create learning, and engage in experiments that
link to a final product (Hutchinson, 1).
According to Davis and Jordan, Service-Based learning approaches are
unique in that they provides “a benefit to both the student and the recipient
of the service while ensuring that the outcomes are equally shared by both
parties involved (The Influence of Community Service Learning on Student
Engagement, Retention and Success (n.d), 1).
By providing produce for the community partner, Foodshare, School Grown could also align to Service Learning approach. However, I feel that this program is most closely
aligned with the Experiential Learning approach because, as pointed out by
Schwartz (n.d.), Experiential Learning is purposeful, takes students beyond
their comfort zones involves emotions and values-clarification, while focusing
on the bigger picture in a unique and highly unpredictable journey of
self-discovery, self-teaching and self-reflection (Best Practices in
Experiential Learning, 1). What I think
really distinguishes School Grown as
a Experiential learning opportunity is the unpredictability of the experience
that often provokes emotion and requires students to simultaneously manage farming
tasks and emotional regulation- this mirrors the real world.
Skills Development Outside the Classroom
I
feel that the most important learning offered by both the School Grown and Skills Link
programs is in the authentic, real-world employment experience. Traditional classrooms
can’t teach this, and what’s worse is that they are often structured for right
and wrong answers. However, in contrast,
actual workplaces are ill-structured, contextual and subjective, providing a
different set of criteria for problem solving and success. Feelings and
emotions are important in authentic workplaces, as they effect workplace
communication, team functioning and conflict management. Emotional intelligence can be taught in
traditional schools, but it is really put into practical application through Experiential
Learning approaches.
What
I like about the School Grown program
is that shifts the dynamic of teacher/student relationship, as students become “staff”
of School Grown. As a School
Grown teacher, Katie Germain, explains, “For
these students it’s a job—which is interesting, because some students I worked
with the whole year, and then you work with them as a job and it’s very
different. Same space, same people, different relationship” (Mount, 15).
I
was also intrigued by the self-regulation skills that the youth in the School Grown program learned through their own interpretations of the Experiential
Learning process. In the video called
School Grown-Toronto, the youth reflected on how they learned to overcome past
self-regulation issues such as:
absenteeism, tardiness, self-limiting thoughts, negative self talk, body
image issues and lack of physical activity (Foodshare[video], (n.d.)). This growth is commonly reflected upon in Skills Link as well, as the youth reflect
on both success and failure and learn to voluntarily adjust behaviours to create
more desirable outcomes.
3 Top Challenges
Public
perception and stereotyping of youth seems a common challenge to both programs.
According to School Grown teacher,
Katie Germain, “In society, teenagers and young people are often framed in a
really negative way and I think that is especially true of racialized youth” (Foodshare[video], (n.d.)). What excites me about Service-Based approaches
is that the programs create evidence of an alternate reality of youth capacity,
and I feel that it could provide important public relations, if media is used
to promote “good news stories” for these programs.
Another
challenge is the availability of employers in the community who are willing to
participate. Authentic employment, in
competitive markets, is critical because it creates the backdrop for learning
how things work in the real-world. In
the case of School Grown, youth are
become actual vendors and face of the real challenges of a competitive
workplace.
I
think a further challenge could be the student mindset regarding success and
failure. In his 2015 paper, “Freedom to
Fail”, Miller explains in detail that, “When we fear failure, the chemistry of
the brain literally gets in the way of learning” (2). To gain deep learning for students involved
in Experiential Learning approaches, teachers need to reach students at this
base level and acknowledge their fears and encourage (and reward!) risk-taking
behaviours. In my experience with Skills
Link and other school-to-work transition programs, it is not just the
multi-barriered students who struggle with failure. Failure may be particularly difficult for the
high achievers, who often struggle to find the same success in real-world
endeavours as they do within traditional classrooms. For top performing students students, Dweck’s
insights from her book “Mindset: The New
Psychology of Success” are helpful, noting that, “Students unaccustomed to
failure may become impatient with challenging schoolwork and devalue anything
they don’t get correct on the first try” (48). Building tolerance for failure and instilling
a growth mindset connects to Miller’s ideas about “failing forward” and using
failure to develop “grit”, giving teachers important clues about how to best
frame Experiential Learning experiences for students (Freedom to Fail ,2-3).
Ideas for Improvement
On
a personal note, I grew up in a rural farming family, which provided me
excellent entrepreneurial and experiential learning opportunities. As I researched School Grown, I began to wonder how urban and rural may be both similar
and different. I think the School Grown program could be greatly enhanced if there was an
opportunity for an exchange of rural and urban students. In doing so, they could layer on the same
benefits of Situated Learning approaches, providing something of farming
community of practice. Through the common interest of farming, they could also develop
a Networked Learning approach, which would be beneficial after the Experiential
Learning experience has ended, thus extending the learning beyond high school
completion.
The
improvement I could suggest for Skills
Link is leveraging some benefits of Service-Based Learning to allow for
multiple community service experiences.
In this way, participants could access a range of feedback working with
agency mentors that better tolerate learning from both success and failure. I also believe that borrowing from the
Service-Based learning approach would allow students to scaffold learning from
a variety of experiences so that they can build more of a formative
self-assessment of new learning, rather than relying on a single summative assessment
of either passing (being hired) or failing (job loss). Having more information from a number of
sources would likely create more program reliability, validity and better
transfer of learning.
Conclusion:
Although
the Student Grown and Skills Link programs are very different from
one another, they share similar approaches to learning. These Experiential Learning experiences not
only teach important workplace skills, but also self-regulation skills that go
beyond the classroom to solidify the learning into deep and meaningful personal
experiences. These connections to the
real-world of work carry students, more confidently and competently, into their
future transitions from school to work.
Resources:
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset:
the new psychology of success.
New York, NY. Random House.
Foodshare.
(n.d.). School Grown. Retrieved from: https://foodshare.net/program/schoolgrown/
Miller, A. K. (2015). Freedom to Fail : How Do I
Foster Risk-taking and Innovation in My Classroom?. Alexandria, VA:
ASCD.
Mount, P.
(n.d.). The Foodshare ‘School
Grown’ program.
Retrieved from: Project
Soil- Shared Opportunities on Institutional Lands website: http://projectsoil.ca/project-overview/case-studies/foodshare-school-grown/
Service Canada (n.d.).
Skills Link Summary. Retrieved
from: http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/eopg/publications/20110201_skills_link_summary.pdf
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