Higher Order Thinking & the SAMR Model

Secondary discipline areas are often content-laden. Use Robyn Collins Curriculum and Leadership as a foundation, and consider the Australian Curriculum in your selected junior discipline area. Identify the process/research/inquiry skills that are required. They are skills that, according to Collins, are best developed through application to real-life contexts. Use the Aims, rationale and structure of the curriculum to uncover the global approaches of importance, as well as the content.

My discipline areas are Physical Education and Home Economics. In Physical Education (PE) students are required to use inquiry based learning which means they are involved in their learning, formulating questions, investigate widely and build new understandings, meanings and knowledge. The skills required in PE are formulating questions, gathering and organizing, interpreting and analyzing, evaluating and drawing conclusions, communicating and reflecting. These are all research and inquiry skills that are paramount to succeeding in PE. According to Collins (2014), teachers are expected to use high order thinking which is subcategories into three sections. The one relevant to PE is the transfer category. This category promotes retention and transfer, which when it occurs indicates meaningful learning. Retention requires students to remember what they have learnt, whereas transfer requires student not only to remember but also to make sense of and be able to use what they have learned i.e. sport or real life.   

References: Collins, R. (2014) Skills for the 21st Century: teaching higher-order thinking. Curriculum Leadership and Journal. Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/leader/teaching_higher_order_thinking,37431.html?issueID=12910

Write a reflection that draws together Blooms Taxonomy, your understanding of ICT pedagogy and the SAMR model as it relates to your teaching context.              Rather than think about what you have experienced in schools, try to take an aspirational position on this reflection. Examine not what currently exists, but what is possible.           This will become the foundation of your own pedagogical framework which will later be mapped against a learning design.

It is clearer now how technology effects our everyday lives. It is a vital aspects to our development as educators but also our students future development. Blooms Taxonomy explains how learners need to have the ability to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create. This can be applied in any learning space and teaches students basic learning skills that are vital to their development. This framework uses the key aspects to show students how to use technology and digital tools to facilitate their learning and outcomes. The SAMR model has the same foundation where it is helping teachers understand how to develop their use of ICT in the classroom so it has a positive effect of student learning. SAMR stands for, Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. The higher you get on the SAMR model the more  actively you are using ICT's. With the use of these frameworks we can slowly build schools use of ICT's and better student development. Students are usually given the information, instead of making them critical thinkers and sourcing it themselves. We need to give our students more responsibility, with the development of ICT's by challenging them.