På låtsas och på riktigt. Verklighetsnära lärande i Freinetpedagogik och entreprenöriell pedagogik
Structuring education so that students can discover connections between schoolwork and their everyday lives is a crucial task for a teacher. This is especially true in today?s school system that seeks to foster a spirit of lifelong learning, since educational motivation depends on being able to connect to the tasks at hand. In a system where these connections are not present, students will be motivated only by institutional mechanisms such as test results and grades. This leads to them using a number of techniques for ?optimizing the system? by getting maximal results for minimal effort.
This essay looks at two pedagogical movements that aim to decrease the gap between schoolwork and students? reality. Freinet pedagogy, named after Célestin Freinet (1896-1966) is a ?pedagogy of labour? that concentrates on equating the ?labour of the hand? and the ?labour of the mind?. Entrepreneurial pedagogy, which has been gaining ground during the last few years, is centred on project-based learning that stimulates the skills commonly found among successful entrepreneurs.
These movements have several important differences, most notably the idealistic political visions of the Freinet movement that are absent in the more modern, pragmatic entrepreneurial pedagogy. In spite of this, they are united by the principle of school being as close to the students? reality as possible ? a fact that gives hope for the school of tomorrow.