Scrapbooking as a learning activity Presented by Ruth Vandenbor and Hilary Kennedy University College of the Fraser Valley

Scrapbooking is a booming hobby and big business as scrapbookers gather at “crops” to chronicle vacations, family histories, celebrations, work experiences, and personal stories. Are scrapbooking skills transferable to adult basic education? Ruth Vandenbor and Hilary Kennedy think there is. The two enthusiastic scrapbookers put together a workshop to encourage adult educators to consider the merits of scrapbooking in the classroom. Ruth presented the “pedagogy of scrapbooking” and Hilary designed templates and display pages for the workshop.

“The Pedagogy of Scrapbooking”

Scrapbooking is:

1. a learner-centred activity
   • Draws on the learner's life experiences rather than on a predetermined set of skills and tasks
   • Allows learners to choose relevant themes, topics, stories, activities
   • Focuses on learners' strengths and prior knowledge rather than on deficits
   • Provides opportunity for reflection, evaluation, visualization
     
     
2. A multi-modal activity
   • Accommodates different learning styles and modes:
   • Visual: scanning and focusing on pictures, diagrams, colours, symbols, text; formatting layouts; coordinating colours and patterns
   • Auditory: sharing ideas, speaking and listening to presentations, participating in class discussion,
   • Tactile-kinesthetic: hands-on experimenting, creating, formatting, cropping, pasting
     “The modality concepts help assure that students have an opportunity to hear, see, and do each time a new concept is presented and reinforced.”
     
     Guild, Pat Burke. Marching to Different Drummers http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ucfv/Doc?id=10115188&ppg=128l
     
     
3. 
   A whole language activity
   • Includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening
   • Involves intellectual, social, cultural, spiritual, and physical learning
   • Uses meaningful contexts and whole experiences drawn from real life
   • Excludes competitive, isolated approaches in favour of cooperative, collegial activity
   • Builds on oral traditions and family stories
     
     Davies, Paula and Anne McQuaid, Whole Language and Adult Literacy Instruction. College of New Caledonia, May 1990.
     
     
4. 
   A social activity
   Fosters dialogue and collaboration between:
   • Instructor and learner
   • Learner and learner
   • Learner and family/friends
   • Learner and social networks
     
     
5. A cultural activity
   • Provides opportunity for learners to highlight and discover their own cultures
   • Encourages learners to study and appreciate other cultures Provides a forum for intra-cultural and inter-cultural dialogue
     
     “Literacy learners must have access to an education that they help shape and that builds upon their cultural experiences and structures of feeling.”
     
     Sparks, Barbara, “Adult Literacy as Cultural Practice” p. 67 in Learning and Sociocultural Contexts: Implications for Adults, Community, and Workplace Education, Mary V. Alfred, ed., 2002
     
     
6. 
   A creative activity
   • Provides a medium other than print for personal expression: drawing, painting, photography, use of colour, design, balance, symbolism
   • Produces a product that is tangible, portable, “demonstrable” and gratifying Promotes personal identity and helps learners find their own creative “voice”
     
     
7. A reflective activity
   Facilitates personal reflection on:

   → Experiences                → Values
   → Goals                         → Culture
   → Successes                  → Relationships
   → Mistakes, failures         → Knowledge
   → Attitudes                   → Learning
   
   

   Results: self-examination, evaluation, affirmation, revision, recreation, transformation
   
   
8. 
   a transformative activity →   transformation of the self
   • May lead to changes arrived at rationally (Mezirow, 1997): Critical reflection on past experience Re-evaluation of present assumptions Perspective transformation leading to revisualization of the future
   • May lead to changes arrived at intuitively and emotionally (Boyd, Taylor, 1989). Individual becomes open to “alternative expressions of meaning” Individual “grieves” over old patterns and perceptions that are no longer relevant Individual “integrates old and new patterns” (ERIC Digest # 200, Imel, Susan: “Transformative Learning in Adulthood”

Continued...