PEDAGOGY & PROGRAM DESIGN

OUR LEARNING MODEL

Participating in The Soil Project, seeds will live together in a boarding school and move regularly here and there to learn related subjects with our distinguished facilitators/trainers/educators and partners organizations, communities and companies all over the world. In addition, in such democracy education environment, The Soil Project provides huge support for self-directed education. While TSP focuses on building its seeds (students) basing on essential foundations and strong inner power with self-understanding by various methods in a kindness community, seeds will have a wide range of opportunities to self-designed their own educational experiences or travel to explore and learn from the outside world during their time at TSP.

Learning Methods

Community-based (Peer-to-peer learning): In a healthy/benign community of learners, seeds will learn from each others and from facilitators, the role of “teachers” is usually be eliminated. This community allows everyone to teach others what they know and vice versa, other friends, aunts, and siblings excluding The Soil Project can also teach Seeds and/or be taught what Seeds know and want to teach others.

Context-based & Experimental Learning: Seeds will have plenty opportunities to travel around Vietnam and in regions as their way of learning or to learn in the project’s partners campus (school, community, organization, company, etc.). The program is strongly emphasized on context-based education (rather than content-based education in traditional school). Learning by doing.

Internet-based: Internet is not only help we connect but also open the door of knowledge to all of us with zero cost. The Soil Project will be the future educational model with online universities, which is a diverse international environment having classmates who are from all around the world with various industries in different ages. In addition, Seeds will use online resources from MOOCs, ebooks, videos, documentary films, etc., to serve their study and potentially apply virtual reality technology (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and even 3D printing technology into their learning experience.

4Hs Education: Unlike traditional university which only focus on training the mind (Head Education) of learners for jobs, without paying much attention to manual labour education (Hands) and emotional compassionate education (Heart), learners in this project will have to be cultivated all of these three elements. Beside learning knowledge, intellectual and skills (Head Education), Seeds will have to do housework, cook, clean up, plant and do agricultural work, even building houses (Hands Education). Also, through sharing sessions, meditation/mindfulness practices, trauma healing, film screening, field trips, volunteers and social activities, Seeds will be nurtured compassion and empathy with emotional understanding (Heart Education). Finally, with those capacity, Seeds are expected to positively contribute through their entrepreneurship spirit to radically transform our society toward more well-being society and regenerative/sustainable environment (Heal the World).

Project-based or Inquiry-based: Instead of learning separate and unrelated things, Seeds will work in team to point out the issues, find solutions to solve problem and then practically implement by applying various methods and diverse knowledge in many fields.

The Block Plan: subjects in The Soil Project will be taken place one by one, not simultaneously.

Mindfulness-based: practicing mindfulness daily in working/studying/listening/eating etc. helps the Seeds be aware and alert of what they do, say and think.

Sharing Education (Inspired from Sharing Economy): The Soil Project is not the only organizer who takes charge of and is responsible for the courses; depending on courses, it may have some specialized individuals, organizations supporting to organize classes or sharing with Seeds their practical experiences.

Program Design and Curriculum

The Soil Project is a self-directed education, giving a semi-structure program. In particular, parts of the program will be built by the project organizing team and parts will be created by each person's personal experience. The structure of the program will take place as follows for each 6-month module:

Part 1 (about 2-3 months): Structured Curriculum (Designed curriculum): The seeds (learners) will participate in the learning / experience program designed by the project organizing team or by the learning community itself.

Part 2 (about 2-3 months): Self Learning Journey: Seeds will actively choose and design their own curriculum, experience, internships, travel, etc. Seeds can choose to stay in the "campus" or stay with their family or work or travel around themselves, do internships, personal projects, etc. whatever is in the personal learning and development needs of that individual learner.

Part 3 (about 1 month): Reflection and Sharing: Seeds return to The Soil Project, reflect and share the journey, lessons, re-instructing other seeds of knowledge, skills, etc. that he/she has achieved through personal learning journey.

As an international youth-led project (a project founded and coordinated by young people in many countries), The Soil Project create a space for learners to explore and understand themselves and become into changemakers (makers of change) that create a well-being and sustainable society. Therefore, the framework of The Soil Project will focus on:

(1) self-understanding activities / experiences,
(2) understanding and rethinking development and the world
(3) nurture entrepreneurship
(4) sustainable development.

Accordingly, The Soil Project will have 4 main modules spread across many different locations in Asia:

(1) Self-Understand - Body and Mind Cultivation. Take place in Vietnam and Thailand (expected).
(2) Sustainable Living and Development. Take place in Thailand (expected)
(3) New Story: Paradigm Shift and Future World. Take place in India and other locations across Asia-Africa (expected)
(4) Entrepreneurship. Take place in different locations in Asia-Africa (Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, etc.) (expected)

However, The Soil Project does not fix any curriculum framework but tries to flexibly change according to the current resources and needs of the learners.

The expected program of study and estimated cost is here:

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Credentials

The Soil Project does not acquiesce degrees but instead the Seeds will have their own portfolios, blogs, websites, etc. which records what they have learned, how people who already worked or corporated with them comment about, or which projects they did, what interests them, how their skills and knowledge are? Through this, it contributes to show who they are. The Soil Project believes that a graduation certificate that hundreds of people have cannot show who you are, but a portfolio tells the story of oneself visually, realistically and lively.

However, the Seeds at The Soil Project are supported to learn parallelly in some online international universities (if they need it). Those universities will acquiesce Seeds a bachelor/master degree (worldwide recognized) as the major that they enrolled in.