Life-Wide Learning often goes together with the more familiar life-long learning. Instead, though, it is about breaking down the four walls of a school and integrating learning with authentic work and community experiences, health and wellness, moral and character education, and every other domain of life that we might traditionally consider outside of the range of schools. Hong Kong schools are a major source of information and implementation of life-wide learning. In practice, it might look like taking students to an open mic event and having them perform, then reflect on the experience, during a poetry unit, or having them teach younger kids in the school or the community what they learned during their poetry unit. It might also look like discussing the ethical issues that a poem raises in the classroom, not just doing close reading, and putting this new learning into practice by figuring out how we can apply what we learn to change our own habits or attitudes in our lives on a daily basis. For a school to implement this effectively, it requires commitment to reflective practice and deep engagement with the community and with students’ families. It is similar to, but more comprehensive than, the idea of “experiential learning” that may be more familiar to U.S. educators.

At one school I know, the principal holds the belief that “every teacher is a reading teacher.” Thus, her gym teacher is one of the most successful implementors of their phonics curriculum, since he works closely with many struggling readers in an athletic context, forming deep mentoring relationships with these students that are clearly relevant to their lives and moral education.

Some of the intended gains of life-wide learning include resourcefulness, relation to the real world and the self, informal education, flexibility and choice in methods and who to interact with, and quick and constant feedback to the learner. It emphasizes the process of learning, rather than results or rewards. It should make a long-lasting impact on students, much more than a single traditional classroom lesson was, and have clear takeaways that are relevant not just to curriculum, but to students’ development as whole people.

http://cd1.edb.hkedcity.net/cd/lwl/QF/02_eng_main03.html