The Learner's Journey

While searching for a picture  of a Head First book for yesterday's post, I stumbled across this description of the learning process by one of the Head First editors, Brian Sawyer.

They use a slightly different metaphor to describe the learning process. They call it a  Journey.  He describes a basic outline in the slideshow below.




Learner's Journey from Brian Sawyer on Vimeo.

In the footnote to this post, Brian describes the reasoning behind the Journey process:

"While this post focuses on the construction of what we call the Learner's Journey, the concepts behind the idea really warrant a post of their own. In brief, though this particular approach and visualization was developed in house, the ideas behind it are loosely modeled on Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, combining teaching elements with a compelling scenario to create a rewarding quest for the protagonist (the learner) to accomplish."

How cool is that! I would have loved it if my EDU 100 instructor had come in with a copy of the Hero's with a Thousand Faces and said, "Before we get any further with this teaching stuff, I want you to read this book." Education as a journey. As a quest. I love this.  In the slide show he covered many of the same concepts we did in education.  I like this metaphor better than the one we used.  While it was never stated as such, I think what I got was the factory metaphor.  Raw materials in. Finished competent citizen out.

[Image: Flickr: "The JLC - keeping the Piedmont safe since 2006"; Uploaded on July 4, 2006 by Cryptonaut;http://www.flickr.com/photos/cryptonaut/181707052/  (CC:Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic)]