Aligning School and Home: Crucial to Learning

In his article, "Deconstruction of the 'Taken for Granted' Practices in the Early Years Education in Bhutan," in ARNEC Connections (November 2016; www.arnec.net), Tshering Wangmo from Bhutan, discusses the importance of aligning school and the home:

"The typical notion of learning as an individual process with a beginning and an end, that can be separated from other activities and is a product of teaching, is an outdated concept that can in certain circumstances lower the quality of education. Children enter school with a variety of 'virtual bags' and sadly schools choose to open only those bags that have contents matching the game of schooling. Those who have no opportunity to open their bags run the risk of not being able to comply with the demands of the school and the teacher.

"Central to Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory is that a child learns best when teachers create instructions that use the child's 'funds of knowledge' for learning new knowledge and practices that validate their experiences. Researchers and educationalists have confirmed time after time that no single curriculum is appropriate for deciding what should be taught in school and questions of which curriculum and which textbooks are trivial, unless enacted within the framework of the children’s lives."

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