International Festival of Learning 2020

This focuses on how the Joy of Not Knowing (JONK) philosophy of education and of school leadership uses a learning to learn approach to the curriculum that instills, in all pupils, a love of learning and of thinking creatively, critically and philosophically.

The session will demonstrate how the JONK approach embraces the international and multicultural aspects that every individual brings to the classroom and uses this to promote the ability for students to think creatively and problem solve using aspects of all the languages they speak or have knowledge of. It has been shown that if students are able to use more than one language to think through a process they benefit enormously from a cognitive and from a motivational perspective.

A multilingual and multicultural classroom learning environment has also been shown to benefit and enrich the experiences of all students in the class, even if they are monolingual. The session will provide participants with a number of easy to implement strategies that will enable them to create a bilingual approach to their teaching and learning routine and place the multicultural richness of the class at the heart of the curriculum and classroom ethos.

Publications
Start Thinking (Imaginative Minds, 2005)
The Joy of Not Knowing (Routledge, 2020, in press)

On the Web:
https://www.jonklearning.co.uk
https://www.thefutureperfectcompany.com/the-michael-aldrich-foundation/