Applied learning

According to Ovenden-Hope and Blandford (2017), applied learning is learning that is made practically applicable to real-world contexts. In my own experience as a middle years student, one of the primary reasons I found myself frequently disengaging from the learning was that I could not understand how it was relevant to me outside of the classroom. I distinctly remember the impact that an applied learning activity had on my engagement as a learner in the middle years, when my maths teacher presented us with an activity where we had to learn about calculating the area of shapes by determining, using a simplified map, how much aid needed to be delivered to certain areas impacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I was motivated to complete that activity and engage in the learning because it felt relevant to the real-world, especially to something that felt important and useful to me. These kinds of applied learning activities are also important for middle years learners because, as Dowden (2017, p. 3) argues in line with the philosophy of Dewey (1916), learning for middle years students should promote “social integration by engaging students in learning activities that [develop] skills and attributes needed in wider society”.

While my unit plan includes some opportunities for applied learning, such as the “partner persuasion” activity where students use persuasive skills to convince their classmates in real-world situations, the extent to which the plans include applied learning is somewhat limited. According to peer and mentor feedback, the summative assessment could have been an opportunity for applied learning where, instead of writing an essay, students could have written persuasively in a format more relevant to real-world contexts such as an advertisement or proposal to the school principal.

This caused me to reflect on the role of essay writing in English curriculums. Essay writing dominates the Victorian English curriculum (VCAA, 2024), but it is not a particularly practical form of writing. It does provide students with an opportunity to practise their writing skills in a highly structured format, which is helpful for many students who need the support of strict parameters to assist them in formulating their ideas. But in workplaces or in our daily lives, most writing formats do not resemble the essay format very closely. I think abandoning the essay format entirely would be too drastic a step at the level of a single classroom as students need to be able to write quality essays in VCE and in post-secondary education, but finding opportunities to vary the formats that students write in, particularly in the middle years, is an important step towards making the learning in English curriculums more applied.