Micro-schooling is the reinvention of the one-room school house, where class size is typically smaller than that in most schools (15 students or less in a classroom) and there are mixed-age level groupings. Generally, micro-schools do not meet all 5 days of the school week, and their schedules look different than a traditional public or private school. Classes can be taught using a flipped classroom approach, a form of blended learning, though not all micro-schools focus on technology in the same ways. Classes tend to be more impactful due to meeting fewer times in the week. Classes may use instructional methods, ranging from traditional lecture-based approaches to hands-on and activity-based approaches. Micro-schooling is viewed as a replacement for various school paradigms that are standard worldwide.
Micro-schooling is seen as being in between homeschooling and private schooling and is designed to offer a full-year of education at around $10,000 or often less. Its growing popularity stems from a general dissatisfaction of how schools (public and private) often structure their content. Homeschool families are drawn to the idea because of how micro-schooling establishes a core set of learning experiences similar to what might be found in normal schools that parents can then expand on and individualize for their children. Private and public school parents see micro-schooling as an affordable option that provides their children with a more worldly education that some might consider as Constructivism (learning theory) in approach.
Video Micro-schooling
History
Micro-schooling began in the UK as small independent schools, privately funded by groups of like minded parents, with no dedicated premises (home rotation) led by a full-time paid tutors (as opposed to homeschooling where a parent tutors their own child (or children)). Cushla Barry first coined the term micro-schooling in February 2010. http://microschool.blogspot.com/ It has also been explored by education writers like Anya Kementz, who spoke about the return of the one-room school house
United Kingdom
It is set to be a rising trend in the UK, where getting your child into a good local school is becoming increasingly difficult due to underfunding and overcrowding. The UK Conservative party alluded to the concept of Micro-Schooling in 2007 with their concept of Pioneer schools.
New York City
In the early 2000s, as the cost of private school became increasingly exorbitant and availability of spaces declined, a movement of preschool co-ops and homeschool co-ops started by teachers and parents started emerging to directly meet the needs of children in the community. Founded by a teacher or parent, these small schools are generally own in cost and attract exceptional teachers who are able to customize the curriculum to their students, creating a more personalize learning environment. Brooklyn Apple Academy [1], Dida Academy [2], and Gabi's Creative Cottage [3] are a few examples in the high school, middle school and early childhood categories, respectively. In 2015, Brooklyn-based teacher Manisha Snoyer, founded CottageClass, a community marketplace to empower independent teachers to start microschools.
San Francisco Bay Area
Since 2010, micro-schooling has evolved in scope from the simple idea of privately funded groups of learners to a full concept of a specialized learning environment dedicated to ensuring individual understanding of the subjects being taught. Students attend a school for up to 2 days a week and cover a more diverse set of topics and subjects than would otherwise be accessible in small, private groups. These schools do not make the use of tutors for instruction or teaching, instead of using professional, full-time teachers. These teachers tend to be specialists in their respective fields and it is not uncommon to see middle schoolers receiving instruction from PhDs in a particular subject. The incorporation of highly specialized instructors into the classrooms of younger students is one of the most attractive reasons that people are beginning to utilize the micro-school concept in greater numbers. Micro-schooling has grown in popularity as it offers Bay Area families an innovative, private based approach to schooling at a fraction of the cost that other schools in the area are charging. The number of families micro-schooling in the Bay Area has been doubling consistently year after year.
Maps Micro-schooling
Austin, Texas
Inspired by the micro school movement, Austin has seen it's growth of this re-imagined type of schooling. Austin has a large network of private and alternative schools. Schools such as Long-View Micro School and Acton Academy are paving the way for innovation in education.
San José, Costa Rica
The first and only alternative school in Central America opened up in Costa Rica in 2010 after a group of students from a tutoring center suggested they should stop attending the regular system because they felt such system was limiting their potential. Soon after, the tutoring center known as The Launch Pad - TLP started preparing students for the national homeschool tests through the national distance education programs.
From the beginning, this system was a success for The Launch Pad and their students because it allowed making a very personalized learning, more fun, richer, without unnecessary stress and with excellent results. This kind of learning allowed searching for teachers or other specialists that suited perfectly each student and design for each student an individualized learning route, with all the methods and technologies that adapted to their necessities. All of this with a schedule and academic load that were chosen in function of the particular necessities of each student.
Pedagogy
In order to provide the same amount of learning in fewer days, micro-schooling has of late become associated with a movement in education to provide students with hands-on and activity-based learning that often pairs experts with the students in the classroom. The overall approach might be considered Constructivism (learning theory) in approach. Lecture, worksheets, and book work are often eschewed in favor of carefully constructed activities that are designed to help the learner to develop their own personal understanding. In this model, teachers will typically avoid making definitive statements of understanding to the students and will instead help the students work towards their own understanding. It is uncommon to see letter grading in micro-schools. Micro-schools will often pair suggested extracurricular activities, field trips, programs, books, and other multimedia with their classes so that students will have a broader exposure to content than what is just offered in the classroom.
Learning Outcomes
Despite the relatively short time frame that micro-schools have existed, there has been evidence that shows students are often learning more concepts in the classroom in a shorter time frame. It is unclear whether or not those students are retaining those concepts over longer periods of time due to the short time frame that micro-schooling has existed.
National Standards
As a potential point of controversy, micro-schooling often does not consider national standards as relevant to the educational needs of students and instead seeks to develop content and curriculum that helps create a passion for learning in the students that focuses on real-world knowledge and skills. Educators involved with micro-schooling often feel that standards hamper their flexibility to develop engaging and enriching curriculum. Micro-schools will often choose their own set of standards and it can readily be shown that many of those standards, but not all, map to the Common Core. In many cases the content covered by micro-schools can exceed the standards provided by the state, particularly in regard to the four key content areas of mathematics, language arts, history, and especially science.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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