Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Authentic Learning

Anyone else's kid show a very strong preference for authentic learning? This site has a definition of the term as I am meaning it:

http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template...dPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=24&ContentID=4697

My son had an interesting interaction with his kindergarten teacher and counting beads. She wanted to show him how there is a single bead for 1, there are ten beads wired together for 10 and so forth up to 1000 which look like blocks made from beads. Their conversation went like this:
Boy: Why are we counting them? Are we making necklaces or a bead city? (engaged and excited)
Teacher: No, we don't make things with these beads, we count them.
Boy: But why are we counting them?
Teacher: Just to count them.
Boy: oh okay (no enthusiasm, minimal effort to get through exercise)

If she had said "Sure, everyone is making a necklace and then we'll see who made the longest and we'll count the beads", he would have been really into it. He seems to lack motivation for "just because" learning and it worries me because that is what most schools are all about. It is almost like with authentic learning his giftedness really shines and with more traditional teaching he can't care enough to be more than average.
Anyone out there have any experience with this?

DS4.75 is definitely an authentic learner type. He absorbs info when it is useful but equally doesn't like doing something for no apparent reason. School is going to be interesting... He drove his Montessori teacher nuts last year inventing new ways to use the equipment (which to be fair he had really outgrown prior to starting). The calm and laborious explanations on how to properly use things eg the beads was of no interest. Between us and the school I guess there will be a need to give meaning to doing things to help keep him engaged.

Yup.

This is the primary characteristic of my child as a learner and more to the point, as a human being.

"WHY?" is the first thing out of her mouth during most educational activities, and I don't mean about the material being taught. She means it about the pedagogy, nine times out of ten.

It is a frustrating problem on a motivational front.

Aren't there domains where your son has acquired knowledge out of sheer curiosity? When my middle child was 4 and 5, he was obsessed with learning about the different types of dinosaurs, and judging by the large dinosaur section in the children's section of the library, he was not the only one.

I see a clear difference for my DD in learning which is intrinsically motivated, in which case, there need be no practical application at hand, versus that which is externally imposed upon her by others.

In the latter case, one had better be armed with a sound explanation for why the material matters. It's strange, but she seems to regard such things with a great deal of suspicion; all potentially being a waste of her time, as near as I can tell.

Obviously, learning which is her own idea is a separate matter entirely.