AbstractLearning is very important in our life.
School plays a great role in everyone’s life. It changes our way ofthinking, it opens new paths, and new experiments. We must give importance tothe education than other targets in life as it is the one the most importanttools discover yourself and the world around you. Yet it’s not given enough attentionin Egypt. The problem of education in Egypt in the last few years began to growand to be recognized by all parts of society. The root of the problem is thetraditional education system that we work with, it forces the kid to sit inclass full of students to receive the information in a very boring way, thechildren have a different background and experiences, they are living in a veryadventures environment, so forcing the kids to set and listen to theinformation to memorized is not going to work, children need to touch and feelthe information they got. It also one of their rights to play and have the freechoiceThe paper is going to discuss someof the causes that made this problem rise like: memorized subjects, the lack oftechnology and the absence of interactive learning.
Discussing solutions of howto convert the current curriculum to subjects based on children’s needs,interests and patterns of learning promotes agency, self-regulation andcontrol. Keywords: Play-basedcurriculum,kindergarten, teacherperspectives, developmental education, interactive, learning. 1. The problem of education process in Egypt It is unknown when the problemreally started but according to M. June Allard and Pamela R. McKay in theirresearch about education in Egypt “that in 1990 when Egypt started to facea serious population explosion. In 1985 there were only one hundred and fifty-fivethousand teachers that served approximately ten million students” (Allard,& McKay, 2010)that means that every one teacherhad sixty-four students to serve.
That statistical review was before what it iscalled population explosion. That of course did not serve the educational process,due to the overcrowded classes the educational system in Egypt started to deteriorate gradually.Till it reached the current situationwhere experimental education or self-learning is almost non existed. The standardizedexams are the only thing that matters and evaluate the educational processes aswhole which of course kills any chance of creativity or thinking that can befound in the student.The main disaster is that this wayof current educating system is conducted on students in Egypt form a very youngage.
Most of the schools nowadays are requiring an interview with the 4-5 yearsold kids so they can evaluate the kid and accordingly they accept or refuse thechildren. Such a stress to be put on thechildren from a very young age, also be educated by the same old traditionalway of education, evaluated by the end of the semester by one standardized exam,facing the stress of failing only by the age of five.Lack of technology, adequatelaboratories and libraries is also one of the major defects in many schools inEgypt. Unfortunately, most of the schools in 2010 still do not have any kind oftechnological development.
The libraries hardly have useful books to use andthe laboratories do not have any proper physical equipment or any chemicalcompounds that the students can even see to know and visualize what he istaught. 2. Definition of learning styles Learning style was defined byseveral researchers such as Dunn (1979), Reid (1998), Fleming (1998), Kolb(1984), and others. Gallaherand Nunn (1998) compared a learning style to human beings ‘fingerprints.
Theyargued that a learning style is very unique and very individual, so theycompared it to a human fingerprint.Scientists and psychologists havedeveloped a number of different models to understand the different ways that peoplelearn. One popular theory, the VARK model, identifies four types of learners: visual,auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic.
Each learning type responds best toa different method of teaching. Visual learners will learn the best by usingpictures, colors and spatial understanding, while auditory learners willremember information best by using sound and music, reading/writing prefer touse words, they try working with others and using role-playing, kinestheticlearners will jump at the chance to participate in a hands-on activity. Although every type of learners respondsdifferently to the same information, there is only one constant fact, that theyall need different types of learning environment, that cannot be limited in the traditional classroom, where thefurniture design and disturbing is the same, without considering the requirementsof each class, and each subject. Changing the learning environment to suitsbest the requirements of the subject, at the same time suits all the studentsis the main aim of the paper.
3. Technology effect on children Today, morethan ever before, technology plays an important role in society. It is changingand will continue to change every aspect of how we live. It is changingthe way we communicate, the way we do business, how we learn and teach, andeven it’s changing the way we think.childrenused to play outside all day, riding bikes, playing sports.
Masters ofimaginary games, children of the past created their own form of play thatdidn’t require costly equipment or parental supervision. Children of the pastmoved… a lot, and their sensory world was nature based and simple.Children nowrely on technology for the majority of their play, their interaction with the externalenvironment is very limited, it very often to see Children as young as two canbe seen watching a cartoon on a tablet or playing with a cell phone. Child whoexcessively uses electronics may become isolated and fail to develop normalcommunication skills such as conversational skills, listening, and making eyecontact.
School isone of the most important tools to make the children escape the technology bad influenceon their personality, as it introduces them to different types of people, differenttypes of environment, it’s also supposed to educate them how to use technology totheir advance, how they learn, search through it, avoiding its bad influence.This is why it’sa necessary that the traditional classrooms of the current educational system changeas soon as possible, as the technological effect on children is huge on their mindsets,their way of thinking, how to analyze current information, and how to makefriends. 4.
Interactive Learning environment We live in an era whereinteractivity is gradually becoming more available, yet our schools are notcatching up to this trend, instead we are faced with passive learningenvironments where active construction of knowledge is limited. Classroomenvironment is a second teacher for any student, a large amount ofthe child’s time is spent sitting in a school classroom. This place iswhere they will learn the various skills. With the classroom being such animportant place, it is important to understand the ways inwhich to manipulate the environment in order to receivemaximum effectiveness in instruction. Classroom design should be accordingspecific design parameters: light, flexibility, connection, complexity, and color,and texture.Each one of those parameters shouldbe conducted, designed to suit the educational process the best. 1. LightThere’sno substitute for natural daylight in a classroom, but if sunlight is limitedmake sure that there’s enough artificial light, lighting undoubtedly influencesthe perception of comfort in a particular space.
The naturaldaylight might be that more light always creates a better, more positiveimpression of a classroom’s qualities.2. FlexibilityTookinto consideration how well a given classroom could accommodate pupils withoutcrowding them, in addition to how easily its furniture could be rearranged fora variety of activities and teaching approaches. 3.
Connectionwhichis also evaluated according to the furniture type and displacement, is it amoveable desks or chairs that can easily connect children with each other andwith the teacher, where they are centered in the space and no one is leftbehind in the corner of the classroom.4. Complexity the morethe design of the classroom is complex the more it is adventurous for the children.The classroom should include more than one type furniture to suite all thetypes of learners, it should include different colors, different textures on thewall, shelves used should be from different materials, the last thing thearchitect should do while designing a school, is using prototypes for theclassrooms, which is mostly conducted on the school, which lead to the boredomthat affect the students form a young age causing them to hate the school andthe whole education system.5.
Color Theeffects of exposing people to particular colors have always intriguedscientists. Color most certainly affect the way our brain works. Eachcolor has a certain effect on the students for example: red—alert, increased pulse,activity; green—balance, judgment, arrested movement, stasis. Accordingto stone (2001) observes that if any relationship does exist between the colorof the classroom and the student’s performance, the most likely associationsare red and yellow colors with stimulation and blue and green colors withcalming effects. Stone also found out that color did have an impact onqualitatively different tasks (math task versus reading task). The color of thesurrounding environment affected performance on more difficult tasks, i.
e., thereading task. A further finding was that the lowest performance on cognitivelydemanding tasks was in classrooms with red walls. 6. TextureThe idealclassroom design should continue more than one finishing design especially inthe early stages of learning, the should continue a place where the studentscan hang their artwork, their assignment, their to-do list, it also shouldcontinue a place for storage and a place for the board.By following those design parametersin the classroom, it should improve the learning process by increasing the abilityto engage in preferred learning methods, active involvement, collaboration, feelingcomfortable to participate, focus, opportunity to engage, physical movement, real-lifescenarios, repeated exposure to the material through multiple means.
Eventually it will make the studentsfeel more comfortable in the class, create a calm environment around him tohelp him learn. 5. Learning through playing Playing is one the fundamentalrights for children, especially at the preschool stage, where all the childrencan do, want to do, have the right to do is playing.”how can my child learn anythingwhile all what they do is playing “is often a question that a lot of parents askfor the teachers in the preschool phase, while most of the teachers don’t havea real answer for these question. Will the real answer be that kids need to play?Playing is the foundation for alllearning for young children, and giving the child the time and a few basic toyscan provide them with a variety of valuable learning opportunities.”Play is how children begin tounderstand and process their world,” says Angie Rupan, Program Coordinatorfor Child Development Center in South San Francisco, CA andearly childhood educator for over 20 years. “Children’s play unlocks theircreativity and imagination, and develops reading, thinking, and problem solvingskills as well as further develops motor skills.
It provides the basefoundation for learning.”Playing increases, the ability ofimagination and creativity for the kids, children who do not play have a difficult time entertainingthemselves as they simply do not know what to do without instruction. Byproviding opportunities for open ended play, your child will automatically get becreative try to think of different solutions, they get creative, imaginativeand finally they have learned something at the end of the day which is how to getcreative and how to think without further instructions whether it’s from theparents or form the teacher, the child was able to manage the situation.Children can solve complex problemsthat arise as they play and learn a few mathematical principals as well. Blocksand puzzles are excellent “basics” to provide the children with manyopportunities to foster these important skills.Instead of telling kids to sit onthe tables copying some letters that they do not understand, and actually donot care about.
Is kind of education will producepeople who can discover and innovate, or will merely produce people who arelikely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors.Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century? The educational curriculum should be based onplaying, it is widely accepted that planning a curriculum based on children’sneeds, interests and patterns of learning promotes agency, self-regulation andcontrol. According to Tina Bruce There are 10common principles that should be conducted on the early years of education:1. The best way toprepare children for their adult life is to give them what they need aschildren.
2. Children are whole people who have feelings,ideas and relationships with others, and who need to be physically, mentally,morally and spiritually healthy.3. Subjects suchas mathematics and art cannot be separated; young children learn in anintegrated way and not in neat tidy compartments.
4. Children learnbest when they are given appropriate responsibility, allowed to make errors,decisions and choices, and respected as autonomous learners.5. Self-disciplineis emphasized. Indeed, this is the only kind of discipline worth having.
Rewardsystems are very short-term and do not work in the long-term. Children needtheir efforts to be valued.6. There are timeswhen children are especially able to learn particular things.7. What childrencan do (rather that what they cannot do) is the starting point of a child’seducation.
8. Imagination,creativity and all kinds of symbolic behavior (reading, writing, drawing,dancing, music, mathematical numbers, algebra, role play and talking) developand emerge when conditions are favorable.9.
Relationshipswith other people (both adults and children) are of central importance in achild’s life.10. Quality education is about three things: the child, the context inwhich learning takes place, and the knowledge and understanding which the childdevelops and learns.
