Will Richardson

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The American Experiment

December 5, 2016 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

Reading me some Neil Postman this morning as I continue to be drawn to thoughts about education that are at least a quarter century old. In reflecting on my own thinking about all of this, I find it fascinating the extent to which going back in time seems to inform the path moving forward more than anything else. I’m sad to say that for a long time, I missed some eternal truths about learning and education, truths that if I’d realized them sooner would no doubt have sent my thinking and work in bit of a different direction. But, as they say, better late…

Postman has always been a mix for me. Somewhat a contrarian on technology but also a champion for student “voice and choice” as we seem to want to call it these days. I think he’s aligned with Sarason who says “the overarching goal of school should be to develop students who want to keep learning more about themselves, others, and the world” when they leave us.

But in light of recent events, I found myself thinking about one particular chapter in “The End of Education,” one titled “The American Experiment.” There, he suggests that schools should commit themselves to helping students “acquire/develop a love of one’s country.” But instead of suggesting more rote patriotism a la the Pledge of Allegiance, he offers up four questions that all students should grapple with:

  1. Is it possible to have a coherent, stable culture that allows the greatest possible freedom of religious and political thought and expression?
  2. Is it possible to have a coherent, stable culture made up of people of different languages, religions, traditions, and races?
  3. Is it possible to provide a free public education for all citizens?
  4. Is it possible to preserve the best of American traditions and social institutions while allowing uncontrolled technological development?


Those are some heady starting points for debate. Sure, we could add others dealing with globalization, the environment, and more.  But as Postman says repeatedly, kids are not only intellectually ready to grapple with these questions but, in some cases, they are closer to them in their real lives than the adults.

At the end of the chapter, Postman writes:

I mean to say that this is a powerful story that is at the core of what America is all about. The story says that experimenting and arguing is what Americans do. It does not matter if you are unhappy about the way things are. Everybody is unhappy about the way things are. We experiment to make things better, and we argue about what experiments are worthwhile and whether or not those we try are any good. And when we experiment, we make mistakes, and reveal our ignorance, and our timidity, and our naïveté. But we go on because we have faith in the future–that we can make better experiments and better arguments. This, it seems to me, is a fine and noble story, and I should not be surprised if students are touched by it and find in it a reason for learning.

I’m not sure where we are with this American story that has taken such an unexpected turn of late. The experiment seems a bit more dangerous these days. But the only way to a better future is to engage in the messiness of the debate in all of its passion and, at times, ugliness. Schools can do much to help students develop as citizens able to do just that.

(Image credit: Gabby Orcutt)

Filed Under: Good Reads, learning, On My Mind

“The Revolution Will Not Take Place in a Classroom”

June 3, 2016 By Will Richardson 7 Comments

zen deleteHere’s your Friday moment of EduZen to think about over the weekend. Read the whole thing, and embrace the push.

Carol Black:

In Indigenous societies all over the world, on every continent, we see babies and young children held close by parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins.  We see children intimately embedded in the natural world and free to move and use their bodies outdoors.  We see children embedded in their communities and free to observe and participate in adult work, leisure, and celebration.  We see complex social structures of mixed-age extended family and clan which provide child care and teach respect and hold anti-social behavior in check far more effectively and with less conflict than the institutions we now rely on.   We see people connected to the land with a depth and richness and sense of reciprocal ethical relationship that is unimaginable to modern urban humans.

We do not see children confined indoors for twelve years of their childhood, we do not see children segregated with same-age individuals under the care of strangers, we do not see a state of perpetual competition in which children are measured and ranked against their peers and in which “helping your neighbor” equals “cheating.” We do not see parents having to choose between raising their children alone with no support and paying strangers to do it for them.  We do not see young people starving themselves, cutting themselves, killing themselves.

The comments are worth it as well.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

 

Filed Under: Good Reads, learning, On My Mind

Looking Forward at Learning

March 14, 2009 By Will Richardson

From the “Making the Compelling Case Dept.” comes this article from the new International Journal of Learning and Media titled Learning: Peering Backward and Looking Forward in the Digital Era. Written by Howard Gardner, Carrie James and Margaret Weigel, all from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, for me at least it’s one of those must reads that helps put in perspective the many changes that learning is going through right now and helps affirm a vision of learning that may come to pass. As my critical friends frequently point out to me, my own historical context for a lot of these conversations is not what it should be, which is one reason why this piece has a lot of appeal to me. This is a great read, well worth the time, one that I’ll try to summarize the highlights of below.

The thesis here is basically this, that after an extended period of education as we know it, change might finally be upon us whether we like it or not.

In this article we argue that, after millennia of considering education (learning and teaching) chiefly in one way, we may well have reached a set of tipping points: Going forward, learning may be far more individualized, far more in the hands (and the minds) of the learner, and far more interactive than ever before. This constitutes a paradox: As the digital era progresses, learning may be at once more individual (contoured to a person’s own style, proclivities, and interests) yet more social (involving networking, group work, the wisdom of crowds, etc.). How these seemingly contradictory directions are addressed impacts the future complexion of learning.

The authors weave a very readable narrative of the history of schools and learning to present day, making the case that

the European classroom models of the 19th century continue to hold sway: Teachers give out information, students are expected to master it with little help, and the awards of the culture during the years of school go to those who can crack the various literate and disciplinary codes.

There are some shifts, however. Over the last century, education has become more and more universal, we’re moving away from the humanities and language toward more science, technology, engineering and math disciplines, and there is now more emphasis globally on nationalized curricula and international comparisons for assessment. These have not, the authors suggest, changed much about what happens in schools or the learning that takes place.

“Learning is problematic.”

I was particularly struck by this passage about truth, one which articulates really well the struggle that I see a lot of traditional teachers having right now:

In the absence of recognized authorities and standards for determining what is considered true, learning is problematic. This postmodern perspective is not universally shared. Many continue to operate in a climate in which facts are fixed entities taken for granted, information is created and circulated relatively slowly, and authority figures are invested with the responsibility of determining and sharing what is considered true and good. Even so, it is undeniable that new opportunities for individuals to assert the truth, or their truths, are afforded today; educators will likely grapple with questions about what is true, and what is worth teaching and learning, more and more, both now and in the future.

There is talk about new skills that this new world requires.

In these frameworks, the traditional “three R’s” remain but are supplemented by a broader focus on metacognitive skills and an acknowledgment that individuals live in a complex world defined in part by existing but fluid frames of meaning (Geertz 1993). Most would agree that a well-educated individual should be able to successfully participate in a global economy where money, culture, ideas, and people circulate rapidly; to synthesize and utilize vast rivers of information obtained through a variety of channels (textual, visual, multimediated); to engage with this information across a variety of disciplines; to be comfortable negotiating a range of social connections, including interacting with diverse populations; and to serve as an engaged and responsible member of one’s profession and one’s communities.

I think I would add a need to create their own learning opportunities and spaces in which they interact in passion-based, self-directed activities. Or something like that.

The Promises are Realized

While the authors “recognize that we could be wrong” about this vision, it seems we may be at a “perfect storm” moment because of the affordances that new digital media (NDM) create.

That having been said, we believe that a “perfect storm” of NDM affordances, sociocultural changes associated with globalization, and the growing pace and interconnectedness of human life may potentially add up to a formidable tipping point. We operate on the assumption that NDM contain affordances that, if leveraged properly, could create future learning environments and cultures in which the promises of constructivist, social, situated, and informal learning are realized. We recognize that we could be wrong. We also recognize—and will elucidate at critical points—how the integration of NDM practices into a school setting can be challenging, such as the difficulties of implementing more social-based Internet practices in the classroom, or of incorporating youth’s extra-curricular, digital pursuits into fruitful classroom instruction, for example.

I love that line: “We operate on the assumption that NDM contain affordances that, if leveraged properly, could create future learning environments and cultures in which the promises of constructivist, social, situated, and informal learning are realized.” And the key there is the phrase “leveraged properly.” While we may not know exactly what the most effective uses of these technologies are yet, this is where I just believe our work as educators is right now. We need to be deep in the practice of leveraging these connections for ourselves. (Broken record, I know.)

Which leads, inexorably, to this:

While the ubiquity of digital media resources allows for more customized learning within a formal learning context, its primary value lies in the acknowledgment of the legitimacy and value of learning that take place beyond formal schooling.

And that, is what we have to be preparing our kids for, that learning that is going to happen, using these technologies in these mediated spaces or “networked publics” throughout their lives. It’s about self-study, self-direction, independent learning. Right now, as the authors suggest, our biggest challenge is we’re not teaching kids to be that type of learner.

However, there are serious challenges associated with implementing an NDM-based pedagogy. NDM may be seen as sources of entertainment and escape, not learning; additionally, the determination of the proper level of scaffolding can be difficult. The Internet’s potential for learning may be curtailed if youth lack key skills for navigating it, if they consistently engage with Internet resources in a shallow fashion, and/or if they limit their explorations to a narrow band of things they believe are worth knowing. Left to their own devices and without sufficient scaffolding, student investigations may turn out to be thoughtful and meaningful—or frustrating and fruitless. A successful informal learning practice depends upon an independent, constructivistically oriented learner who can identify, locate, process, and synthesize the information he or she is lacking.

Schools as Almshouses

There is much, much more here to read, and I don’t want to just list all the really powerful snips that are in there, but the conclusion is compelling.

Part of the answer to change surely lies beyond the walls of schools themselves. Parents, government, the professions, even the marketplace, are all important stakeholders in the state of learning. Alignment among these diverse constituencies may be hard to achieve; here political leadership of the highest order is essential. In the last few decades, the phrases “learning communities,” “lifelong learning,” and “the learning society” have virtually become clichés. Yet like many clichés in education, and elsewhere, the terms themselves are more familiar than actual instances of the phenomena they describe. In our view, no society is likely to thrive in the future unless it actually is dedicated to lifelong learning; and this, in turn, will require both a society that values learning, and communities that continue to learn. As educators, we hope that this learning will continue to take place in educational institutions. But unless the schools are equal to the task of absorbing the new digital media, and making acute use of their potentials while guarding against their abuses, schools are likely to become as anachronistic as almshouses, teachers as anachronistic as barber-surgeons. Any culture that wishes to survive will ensure that learning takes place, but the forms and formats remain wide open.

Amen.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts.

Filed Under: Good Reads, On My Mind Tagged With: learning

From Access to Information to Access to People

January 31, 2008 By Will Richardson

Nice article in Educause by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler titled “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0” which is another great conversation starter for those who still may not have a basic understanding of these shifts. It’s written more toward the higher ed audience, obviously, but there is still a lot of resonance for the K-12 set.

There are many familiar themes here, but a couple came a little clearer for me. First, the idea that while this is still about being able to find information in many ways, the Read/Write Web makes it more importantly about finding people.

The latest evolution of the Internet, the so-called Web 2.0, has blurred the line between producers and consumers of content and has shifted attention from access to information toward access to other people.

I was on an Elluminate session for our PLP project yesterday with Brian Smith and he made the point that he’s no longer as apt to do a Google search as he is to do a del.icio.us search when he’s looking for information, and I find myself doing that more and more as well. I know that’s still about information, but now it’s becoming more about information in the context of the network. It’s people with an interest in a particular topic making a decision about the usefulness of a resource, and, in doing so, making themselves available for connections.

I also liked the way the authors described the the importance of participation in this world:

Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice.

They talk about the apprenticeships that can now be found online, citing the open source software community as an example. But most critically, they highlight how participation is now a part of gaining mastery instead of an outgrowth of it.

But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field. This encourages the practice of what John Dewey called “productive inquiry”—that is, the process of seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.

That’s certainly been borne out in my own experience.

There’s more here, obviously, and I think it’s well worth the read. Bottom line is that we have to prepare our students to be much more active participants in their own learning, and that we have to help them experience the value of being embedded into communities of practice that can sustain their lifelong learning needs.

Technorati Tags: johnseelybrown, learning, education, communitiesofpractice, plpnetwork

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