Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
Initially, no particular principle comes to mind when considering this standard, and instead, what jumps out at me is the first standard about valuing student success. It seems logical that knowledge of student growth and development is necessary or learning. My mind flies to scientific research into things like learning progressions for literacy and numeracy. However, I then think of how new this research is, and that human learning has been happening for millennia without the particular kind of knowledge we have today about student growth and development. But what about all the numeracy and literacy! There has never before been so many people who are literate and numerate to the extent that we are today. Is this in part due to the knowledge of growth and development produced by scientific inquiry? Perhaps in part, but then who am I to say? To me, it seems that the knowledge we do have about when and how to teach, today as it was yesterday, comes from story and practice, whether it’s based in science or culture.
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Prior to the widespread institution of public schools, globalization, and the advent of the internet following technological revolutions, we knew what, when, and how to teach according to stories and practice.
Moreover, even the knowledge that we have about student growth and development is best learned and recalled in the format of story. Additionally, memory and history are necessary for their discovery and use! What I mean by this is that scientific research is built on a long history of learning and unlearning, so history informs where we are today in our considerations of student growth and development. Moreover, as with all knowledge, if it cannot be recalled, it cannot be applied, and how it is recalled changes over time, influencing how it is applied. So, in this third standard, I see the sixth principle, since history, memory and story, inform how educators understand and apply their knowledge of student growth and development.
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Learning Principle 6: Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story
Additionally, I see the second First People’s Principle of Learning informing this standard because of the positive outcome that holistic, reflective, reflexive, experiential and relational learning tends to have on student success. This is compared to more compartmentalized, unreflective, decontextualized, passive, disconnected learning. Of course, there is a place for practising multiplication drills, for example, but contextualizing them, providing time for reflection, and building connections between the skills they require and future success, greatly improves students motivation and engagement in the drills. This in turn leads to better learning.
Learning Principle 2: Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place)