Research has shown there is a reading for pleasure crisis among children in the UK, where enjoyment of books has fallen to its lowest level in two decades. Not so here at Christ Church primary, a tiny Church of England school tucked behind the maze of HS2 construction works in Camden, north London, where children fizz with excitement about books.
This is a striking decision at a moment when public confidence in higher education is eroding. It is also puzzling because rigorous research and evaluation have demonstrated, over and over, the value of the work of centers for teaching and learning, including positive impacts on student learning outcomes, institutional effectiveness and faculty development.
Collective learning is how a group or system creates, improves, and keeps knowledge. This knowledge lasts beyond any one person or cohort. That is the most practical collective learning definition, because it shifts the focus away from individuals and toward the learning system itself.
Like most Americans, my view of homeschooling was framed through the lens of abnormality. My own public-school education was my only frame of reference. Although my own experience wasn't great, it was familiar. It was the system I knew. As a college professor, I regularly saw the academic gaps my students carried with them from their public-school education. Yet even then, I struggled to imagine an alternative. My instinct was always to fix the existing system, not step outside of it.
Classic training setups are optimized for control. You assign courses, enforce deadlines, and measure completion. However, it carries much less value when you need to prove that trainees' behavior changed in a way that the learning objectives mapped out. Learning is decontextualized. Courses exist separately from daily work. There's no visible peer influence. Learners don't see how others apply knowledge. Feedback is delayed or absent. Questions go unanswered, and insights disappear. Motivation is external. People learn to comply, not to improve.
