HomeAbstract of 5th-tleconfThe Class as a Pedagogical Community of Meaning (COM): Nine Principles of Design

The Class as a Pedagogical Community of Meaning (COM): Nine Principles of Design

Proceedings of The 5th International Academic Conference on Teaching, Learning and Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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The Class as a Pedagogical Community of Meaning (COM): Nine Principles of Design

Dr. Shimon Azulay

 

ABSTRACT: 

This paper presents the “Language of Meaning” as a language for designing the classroom as a pedagogical sphere which I call: a Community of Meaning (COM).
The language of meaning is based on the premise that meaning and a sense of meaning are the primary and highest motivation for every human action. The principles, practices and regularities are based on a model of meaning which I call “The Transcendence Model”.  The model has a theoretical, philosophical and empirical foundation. The model is relevant to a long list of areas of life, but here I would like to present its pedagogical and educational applications, which have been developed and implemented over the past few years in several educational institutions in Israel.
The Language of Meaning is designed to give leaders of communities (class, family, staff, etc.) the tools required to transform the community they are responsible for into a Community of Meaning. A community that will not be a COM for its members will lead to alienation, violence and abandonment. At the same time, it will prevent its members from training and acquiring the basic skills and abilities required to face the challenges of the twenty-first century.
The presentation will focus on nine generic pedagogical principles designed to transform a classroom into a COM in different disciplines. These principles were formulated after a meta-analysis of various and diverse pedagogical studies, alongside an empirical examination of some of them directly.
One of the prominent studies that will be presented examined the effectiveness of the pedagogical principles, using a digital platform developed specially to implement the pedagogical principles in the classroom.

Keywords: Active & Experiential Learning, Classroom Management, community engagement, Learning Space Design, Technology Integration.