Learning is always a risk. It means, quite literally, opening ourselves to new ideas, new ways of thinking. It means challenging ourselves to engage the world differently. It means taking a leap, which is always done better from a sturdy foundation. This foundation depends on trust — trust that the ground will not give way beneath us, trust for teachers, and trust for our fellow learners in a learning community…
…Connected learning depends, then, not just on agency but also on generosity. In my classrooms (physical, virtual, or some mixture of both), I work extremely hard to keep my own expectations from being the fuel that makes everything go. My only real expectation as a teacher in a learning environment is that students don’t look to me for approval but take full ownership of their own learning. And I work to develop trust by showing up as a student myself.
Pedagogical generosity is about making gaps in our work, space for the burgeoning expertise of other scholars and students to fill. It’s about advocacy, guarding space for growing expertise, dialogue, discovery, and disobedience.
Read the whole thing. Some excellent thinking on the changing role of the teacher in a connected world.