ABSTRACT
The relationship between teaching and learning can appear deceptively simple: you teach – they learn. But being a learner is a more complex and active process than this simple input model implies. Learning is certainly the necessary outcome of teaching, indeed it is the core objective, and yet teaching is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for learning. To be effective teachers we must recognise what it is to be a learner – the importance of self-esteem, the social nature of learning, the skills needed to work co-operatively in groups and the importance of imagination are all elements that play a key role in effective learning. Placing the learner at the heart of all teaching would mean starting from what we know about learning rather than from a body of knowledge to be learnt, the curriculum. David Fontana (1997) suggests that ‘education for being’ supports children in their self-actualisation. By this he means offering children:
… the right to express their own feelings, to give their own views of events, to explain themselves, to reflect upon their own behaviour, to have their hopes and their fears taken seriously, to ask questions, to seek explanations in the natural world, to love and be loved, to have their inner world of dreams and fantasies and imagining taken seriously, and to make their own engagement with life.
