Expeditionary Learning
Reading about the inaugural public event of the Constructivist Consortium brought back memories of the middle school where I completed half of my internship back when I was getting my certification for school counseling. The school was King Middle School in Portland, Maine, and King’s school wide model is Expeditionary Learning… which is very much a constructivist model. From the King MS website:
Our school wide model is Expeditionary Learning. Our students engage in eight to twelve week experiential learning expeditions. These expeditions are in-depth and interdisciplinary in nature and require students to engage in sophisticated research, use the community in authentic ways, and represent their knowledge with high quality products which are presented to legitimate audiences.
It was exciting to learn about the Expeditionary Learning model while I was interning at this school… observing how students learned about and applied language arts, math, science and other subjects while cooperatively completing an “expedition”, or large project, over a long span of time. How wonderful to be able to learn subjects while applying them in the moment to real-world experiences and projects.
Recently, a new public elmentary school was built in Portland which also integrates Expeditionary Learning into their framework for learning. Looks like it’s catching on!
Does anyone else have any experiences with Expeditionary Learning schools, or other schools that model a constructivist approach?
July 31st, 2007 at 7:41 am
That sounds amazing! There are actually two schools in California that I know of (I worked with one of them at the Constructivist Conference last week) which are fully Constructivist Schools.
The real-world relevance is especially (unfortunately) rare in a lot of schools these days. Here’s hoping it continues to catch!!!