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Homeschool Australia
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Natural Learning - Learning Centred on Human Survival within a Social Context (Culture)
© Beverley Paine It's great to see so many people interested in learning naturally. Many of us have a general idea of what natural learning is in a homeschooling environment... mine is a little different from most. I'm much more family/parent oriented than most in my definition and believe that natural learning is a natural extension of simply living. Because we live in social groups - primarily that of the family - all learning is social in nature, and children's learning is strongly centred on the family experience. As the child grows his or her social circle also grows and learning becomes centred on family within community, and then community within world. I've never ascribed to the view that natural learning is child-centred learning, although I firmly believe that the child is central to his or her learning process. I prefer to think of learning as a social activity - children desire above all else to belong within a social group. This is an instinctive, survival need. It's our role as parents and care-givers (friends, siblings, relatives, even strangers) to provide a suitable social and personally meaningful context for the learner. We provide the scaffold on which the learners - our children - make sense of the learning opportunities they to themselves. Our role is mentor, guide, facilitator, researcher, guardian... We're teachers - but not in a school sense: parents are natural teachers, thus natural learning occurs at home! It isn't something we contrive or create consciously, it's something that simply happens. Unschooling is educating a child outside of a classroom parameter, in a way different from school, and thus encompasses the idea of natural learning. As an unschooler I deliberately placed learning opportunities my children would not have if they'd followed their own interests. Many of these opportunities were not related to any direct need or interest of their own, or related to what I now consider to be their individual natural development. As their parents we made judgements about what was important to learn. Often we were influenced by what other people thought. I now believe a natural learning curriculum grows primarily from basic human survival needs that are nestled within a social context (culture). To sum up, natural learning for us is centred on human survival within a social context (culture). It isn't child centred. It isn't curriculum centred. It's family centred, because family is at the heart of human society. Families don't survive in isolation, therefore natural learning is community based learning. Beverley Paine is a mother of three young adults and a prolific writer of homeschooling articles. More articles and essays can be found in her books, available from the Always Learning Books online bookstore.
After 20 years of being a contact and support person Beverley no longer takes phone call or email inquiries. Please join one of her yahoo groups if you want to know more about homeschooling or have a question.
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home. In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and became a committee member in 2008: she also edits and produce the HEA Newsletter, HEA magazine, Stepping Stones for Home Educators, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications. If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Facebook page.