Homeschoolers are by definition outside-the-box learners.
This is a powerful advantage in a world where traditional education is no longer preparing students with an education that provides the skills required to thrive in our rapidly changing economy and world, according to the Connected Learning Alliance’s 2020 report. Today’s students need more than test-taking skills: they need hands-on experience, resilience, and passion to thrive in modern careers.
One educational approach that brings these skills to life and fits naturally into homeschooling is connected learning.
What is Connected Learning?
Learning is amplified when it connects personal interests with meaningful relationships and real-world opportunities, which is at the heart of connected learning! Connected learning is an educational framework that connects interests, relationships, and economic opportunities; it does not focus on a particular educational technique but instead is an approach to learning. Its overarching goal is to prepare youth for life after high school with 21st-century skills while also creating a learning environment that excites them.
This can give students ample opportunity to apply their education in a range of ways relevant to them and to future employers.
Connected learning assumes the most meaningful and resilient forms of learning happen when a learner has a personal interest that creates an opportunity to bridge the gap between what students are learning in their classes and how this applies to the larger world.
Elements of Connected Learning
There are two main pillars of connected learning. If you are homeschooling, you’re probably already practicing connected learning in certain ways, but understanding this educational approach can allow you to intentionally think about how you would like to integrate it into your child’s year.
Youth-Leading Education Through Their Interests
When students get to explore the things that interest them (sports, art, gaming, nature, politics) they are driven to energetically pursue those interests. With that excitement comes many opportunities to tap into their passion while integrating multiple subject areas like math, science, history, etc. It also provides students the opportunity to excel in a potential career path. Excelling in something and seeing how that can become a career or connect to their future in a variety of ways can give students a sense of identity and purpose.
Supporting a youth-led interest might mean working with your child to find them a mentor, resources, and community to pursue this interest. It might also mean co-creating projects that integrate critical subjects into their passion.
Make Connections Between Settings
When learners engage in a passion and engage with a wide range of programs, communities, and opportunities that help drive that interest, they grow as learners and have the opportunity to build a sense of purpose and social connection. This aspect of connected learning brings joy to education, and is the way that grown-ups learn. To support this, you can facilitate this type of connection by finding clubs or other networks, and tools or resources to create deeper learning.
While this is a relatively simple concept, it can help close achievement gaps and provide students with a greater sense of intrinsic motivation in their education.
Let's explore an example to better understand what this might look like for your family:
Imagine a homeschool student is passionate about animals. Through a connected learning approach, their parent might encourage this passion by helping the student find volunteer opportunities at the local animal shelter.
Perhaps the homeschooling family also begins a research project into the biology of different animal types, and integrates some of the work they are doing in their statistics study to create a presentation.
The student then has the opportunity to interview three individuals whose career revolves around animals, and joins classes through their local 4-H that trains them how to care for animals, with mentors and peers who encourage their passion.
In this example, we see that this student’s passion and learning are integrated and on top of that, their learning is connected with community, all of which is furthering their understanding of their future career goals.
Connected learning isn’t applicable in all contexts, but it can be a wonderful framework to integrate throughout your student’s time as a learner and helps them build skills and experiences they need to thrive in todays rapidly changing world