Living Ideas – Instructional Methods:

“The intellectual life, like every manner of spiritual life, has but one food whereby it lives and grows – the sustenance of living ideas.”

(School Education, p. 121)

Because Mason purported a preservice teacher training model in which “teachers do what students do”, our course methodologies will attempt to mirror her practices.  Students should maintain and keep a Sketchbook in which are recorded major elements of Mason’s theory and practice – narrations, nature studies, art and music appreciation, Book of Centuries, etc.  Discussions if possible around selected texts in Mason’s “canon” will provide a vehicle by which her ideas are analyzed and applied, thus reading the assigned works is essential, as well as working to talk and ask questions with others. 

Course activities include readings, narrations, discussion (if applicable), field observation, and other research projects and papers, Students will engage certain of Mason’s realized pedagogy to make their thinking visible and to create artifacts that demonstrate a growing understanding and application of her ideas and practices in a current schooling context.