Exposing threads: creating connections in teaching and learning

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of connections in learning and teaching, and exposes some of the threads that are apparent throughout the chapters by the contributing authors. We realize that the notion of creating connections might encompass making links, crossing divides, forming relationships, building frameworks, and generating new knowledge, and that it can involve cognitive, cultural, social, emotional, and physical aspects of understanding, meaningmaking, motivating, acting, researching, and evaluating. However, rather than taking a broad approach, our plan is to use two examples—one theoretical and the other pedagogical—to illustrate the importance of connections to education and learning. We conclude the chapter by discussing four themes that we have distilled from the chapters: connecting within the school contexts, connecting beyond the school contexts, making meaning from lived experiences, and developing virtual connections. These demonstrate the connections that have been identified by the book’s contributing authors as facilitating, or having the potential to enhance, teaching, and learning.