I had a fabulous weekend in Bowral back in the last weekend of May, attending a Calmbirth workshop with my husband. Consequently, our first bub is now due in a couple of - ahem - days!

This is one reason I haven’t posted in a long while - too much going on and my brain has become more cottony than I had first anticipated!

Anyway, I’m moved to write following this amazing weekend experience as I see some links to lifelong learning, a phrase that seems to have dropped out of circulation of late (for whatever reason). Let’s first revisit the phrase and then I’ll draw some connections from the Calmbirth workshop itself. In essence, this is an ‘appreciative exploration’ of some thoughts really!

Lifelong learning, particularly as espoused by the OECD, champions the idea of learning for holistic personal, professional and workforce development, which occurs in various learning settings, informal and formal. Closer to home, DEST (now DEEWR) exercises a policy they claim is based on the OECD assumptions:

The lifelong learning policy agenda is built on assumptions about the importance of skills in the new economy. Almost all industrial sectors are increasingly ‘knowledge-based’ and economic returns are obtained from a range of ‘intangible’ inputs, one of which is workers’ skills. Participation in education and training is increasing and economic rewards are flowing to people with high skills…

…which in fact draws a parallel between productivity and further education, and extends further to lifelong learning and the ‘whole person’, especially where the VET sector is concerned. However, in today’s economic rationalist world we are not seeing this in its entirety. We are contending with the worker-learner and have yet to move to the whole person, in reality.

So how does this thinking link to what I experienced as ‘calm birth’ then? Well, from my view it means starting with the person, rather than the system in which the person likely operates. in essence it’s redefining what we have assumed to be learner centred approaches to teaching and learning. Still, we seem to take this as meaning providing options TO the learner to support and enhance their learning; rather, we should take the learner-at-the-centre approach and start there with their networks, their predispositions, their experiences, and so on. We require more discussion around the apparent preoccupation on separating ‘the system’ from the users/producers/agents (see for example, Mejias 2005).

Thus, the science behind Calmbirth (as laid out in the workshop booklet and the various parents’ stories, where mums especially are co-teachers), contends with the human design, participatory methods, holistic therapies and healing work, beliefs and attitudes (e.g. Errington, 2004), cultural values and awareness, as well as the health sciences of midwifery and obstetrics.

So what is out there in terms of calm learning practices? How can we progress this to lifelong learning status? For example, Calm Kids, Smart Kids uses

…a mixture of:

• Physical exercises proven to reduce hyperactivity & increase brain functioning and integration
• Emotional stress release to help reduce anger and frustration, improve communication and increase self esteem
• Unique Nutrition Plan identifies allergies and deficiencies specifically for your child.

What is of some interest here is the links made to factors that influence children’s ability to learning and grow, as discussed also in the Calmbirth workshop and booklet, particularly a stressful pregnancy, a traumatic birth, and medications and operations, as well as accidents, family trauma, and allergic reactions. As Peter Jackson stated in the Calmbirth workshop, ‘it all begins in the womb’. Check out Lyn Schaverien’s work on developmental learning (biological aspects of learning) too.

We may also draw links to appreciative inquiry (see also Cooperrider, et al, 2008) and inquiry-based learning which champions the inherent (and essentially positive) motivations of the learner from within. For me this also conjures links with schooling approaches such as the Montessori movement. We could effectively read open learning into this too. These approaches tend to focus on the learner’s self-guided interests, reminding me of a quote by Freire that champions the learner as teacher (as ‘learning by teaching’):

The teacher… is taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught, also teach.

I understand that I’m touching on a lot of potentially disparate areas of education here, but I think it’s worth noting that whilst we delve into supposedly ‘new’ thinking around learning and teaching, much has been developed in earlier times that remain credible and applicable today - in fact, possibly more so than they did in the past. The time for elements of schooling and education is ripe for change but not always to new and original ideas, but back to ideas that are now seen as befitting our current contexts.

Where can learning go from here? How do we continue to facilitate learning in ways that are relevant to our times? These are some loose connections which I hope to think more deeply about in coming months. I also see connections to networked learning here too, a draft essay of which I will post shortly (this essay picks up on action learning, ‘hot action’, and other action research frameworks that I’ve related to an investigation into VET pedagogy and practice).

References

Errington, E. (2004) The impact of teacher beliefs on flexible learning innovation: some practices and possibilities for academic developers, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 41(1), 39-47.

Cooperrider, D, Whitney, D & Stavros, J (2008), Apreciative Inquiry Handbook: For Leaders of Change (2nd Ed), Crown Custom Publishing Inc: Brunswick OH.

All of these eportfolio template products we’ve looked at exist in a Thingamajig mindset. Rather than let students use tools that have a broad application outside the boundaries of our college, they push the student to think of eportfolios as dependent on institution-specific technology. They keep the student in an unempowered mindset. They force the student to see technology in the wrong way.

Mike Caulfield » Blog Archive » The Parable of the Thingamajig

A little thought from Mike Caulfield. As I’m thinking of ways to tell e-learning ’stories’ to management, Mike parables current thinking around e-portfolios. Parables make for powerful stories!

…and there I shall leave this Friday!

technorati tags:parable, Mike_Caulfield, stories, storytelling, eportfolios

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Catching up on my feeds and landed on Dave Pollard’s blog once again - if there’s anything I read up close it’s Dave’s blog.

# THE FIRST KEY TO CHANGE: Relate: You form a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that inspires and sustains hope. If you face a situation that a reasonable person would consider “hopeless,” you need the influence of seemingly “unreasonable” people to restore your hope–to make you believe that you can change and expect that you will change. This is an act of persuasion–really, it’s “selling.” The leader or community has to sell you on yourself and make you believe you have the ability to change. They have to sell you on themselves as your partners, mentors, role models, or sources of newknowledge. And they have to sell you on the specific methods or strategies that they employ.
# THE SECOND KEY TO CHANGE: Repeat: The new relationship helps you learn, practice, and master the new habits and skills that you’ll need. It takes a lot of repetition over time before new patterns of behavior become automatic and seem natural–until you act the new way without even thinking about it. It helps tremendously to have a good teacher, coach, or mentor to give you guidance, encouragement, and direction along the way. Change doesn’t involve just “selling”; it requires “training.”
# THE THIRD KEY TO CHANGE: Reframe: The new relationship helps you learn new ways of thinking about your situation and your life. Ultimately, you look at the world in a way that would have been so foreign to you that it wouldn’t have made any sense before you changed.

How to Save the World

I’m not sure where I’d be (in my head, that is) if Dave wasn’t around to offer some points of focus!

Change is imminent in my workplace - the path is now set, and the time for transition is upon us. Dave has proffered these timely points regarding change management, which I’m blogging here as a reminder for myself, should I feel lost along the way! These points above remind me again of the notion of emergence, or emergent design. Following this, Dave posted a conversation he had with Rob Paterson about the future of education, which I’m now going off to listen to.

I’ll post more in response to this shortly :o)

technorati tags:change, change_management, Dave_Pollard, emergent_design, future, organisational_change

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Just listened to the Leaders debate. Rudd v Howard. Whilst both were conservative, I’d have to agree that Rudd carried more energy about him than Howard, as these comments show. Nice one too by the ABC to stream the debate live over the Web.

[Image: ABC TV]

So, all in all, nothing really new if you’ve been following the campaign before it become The Campaign!

To me, Rudd won with his education policy, or ‘revolution’. The only tete-a-tete was a short joust over education midway through [see short clip here]. Then, with Howard’s big chance to make an impact in his final 2 minutes, all he could do was respond weakly to Rudd’s education revolution, by stating that we needed to go back to basics with education. His initial statement was to say how strong the economy is, and that a strong economy is the most important way to carry Australia forward. That’s as big as saying tax cuts - boring BORING! He had no passion about him regarding anything, policy or otherwise.

I wonder if Rudd will get his wish for two more debates? After tonight’s effort, what do ya reckon? ;o)

What does language have to do with learning and change in adult and work based learning contexts?

This short essay covers some thoughts about the use of language in relation to ‘learning and change’ (also the title of my Masters subject).

Introduction
Language plays a central role in learning as both seek to develop understanding and make sense of the world. Language enables us to interact with others in a shared process of making meaning. We use language to describe our reality and to communicate our sense of the world to, and with, others. In this same process, we also communicate who we are; that is, we construct not only our reality but also our ‘self’. When we learn we are engaged in a process of developing our understanding, attempting to make sense of something new or unknown to us. As described in the subject learning guide, ‘learning means getting access to new ways to mean’, so we not only learn new things but refine our learning process at the same time, or ‘learn how to learn’. Change then, is impacted by our efforts in learning new ways to mean; that is, to step from the known to the unknown (learning) and then to mark the transformation (change) from something unknown to known.

In an adult or work based learning context, language plays a significant role in one’s learning, as much as it does in early childhood development and learning. A workplace contains a specific profession (such as auto-mechanics), which involves language and discourse highly characteristic of that profession. The role of apprenticeship (a key component in the training and development in para-professions and trades) is in effect an initiation into the culture, context and discourse of a para-profession or trade. An apprentice, or ‘initiate,’ learns far more than the skills spelt out in a training package or work placement; I am certain that if one was to compare the language and demeanour of a third-year apprentice to a first-year, one would note significant difference. A third-year would use language and terminology with more authority and confidence and perhaps even embellish this with a greater experience than what you’d expect from a first-year, who would use the language more tentatively (and perhaps at times inappropriately).

It is important to also mention that teachers in the adult learning field are also challenged by language and discourse. Often a teacher in auto-mechanics is firstly an auto-mechanic prior to becoming a teacher. In fact, ‘becoming a teacher’ is as much an initiation for them as becoming an auto-mechanic is for their apprentices! It is this aspect of teaching in adult learning that is of most interest to me, being an educational designer and staff developer in a vocational education and training (VET) institute. In this short essay I wish to reflect on the VET teacher in relation to the overarching question:

What does language have to do with learning and change in adult and work based learning contexts?

Contributions from the research literature
I had not fully or explicitly considered the role of language in learning, prior to reading Painter (1989). Painter’s view of the role of language in learning is that we scaffold learning through the progression of our language development. While Painter refers to language development in children, this no doubt can be continually applied into adulthood. We can then add Halliday’s thinking about learning as a semiotic process, where he posits an approach to learning theory informed by language, where “theory would be based on natural data … in context, not in a vacuum; observed, not elicited” (1993, p.94), because “the process of language development is still a continuous learning process” (ibid, p.93). Again this highlights the inherent relationship between language and learning.

Just as Painter refers to scaffolding, Halliday uses the phrase ‘magic gateway’ (see p. 98) to discuss ways in which we might explicitly use language forms and interactions to develop strategies for learning. It is interesting that in adult learning approaches we engage in experiential learning approaches quite explicitly yet don’t seem to engage strategies informed by language. It is as if we assume adults have fully developed their language and it needs no further attention.

On reading Solomon (2003), this is not the case. Solomon discusses the role of portfolios in textually producing ourselves as worker-learners, as she outlines the use of portfolios in a higher education work based learning program. Solomon (2003, p.76) considers portfolio development as a pedagogical tool for learning in the program, and as a narrative text, and suggests that

portfolios can be understood as a site where learners reflexively create a life story of themselves by drawing on available social and cultural resources.

She then endeavours to answer a series of questions about how (and what) we can learn about the worker/learner, and indeed, importantly for me, when a learner or a worker becomes a ‘worker/learner’. The VET teacher is an ideal expose of the worker/learner, given they are in the unique position of being dual-professions as I call them. That is, VET teachers are firstly industry professions and secondly teaching professionals and need to constantly reconcile the two roles.

The scaffolding referred to by Painter (1989) is also evident in Solomon’s discussion around the work site as a site for learning; the academy explicitly frames the work site as a learning site, ‘reconstituting it as a learning experience’ (2003, p.79). This notion forces me to reconsider what we mean by informal learning (taken to mean learning that occurs in less formal settings, such as social and public settings, workplaces or otherwise), where we perhaps think too much about the physical setting and not enough about the frameworks that manifest or account for sites for learning. Reflection helps describe the learning encountered through the learner’s (work based) experience. Reflection is textually produced so thus involves written language. Solomon discussed the ways in which this reflective process is scaffolded (pp.79-83).

My reflections
Having worked through the literature in this module, I see some connection with aspects I would associate with in adult learning and work based learning contexts; namely reflection and the writing process involved in journaling, and in the development of portfolios. Reading the literature in this module has opened up some questions to me:

(1) Does a child’s internalisation of interactions (to produce models for speaking and writing, as described in Painter, 1989 and Halliday, 1993) pose a correlation to an adult’s learning in the process we call reflection?
(2) Does the textual production of oneself through the development of a portfolio adequately capture the discursive and dialogic processes adult learners engage in when they are learning in a workplace context (Solomon, 2003 and Kerka, 1996)?
(3) Is it possible to reconfigure adult learning spaces in ways similar to that proposed by Painter, to draw more deliberately on learners’ (and teachers’) interactions in talking and writing, especially in professional contexts (such as business administration, plumbing, hairdressing and other vocations)? Would this reconfiguration enhance what we have come to know as reflection, and also enhance the understandings about portfolio development for learning and assessment in adult learning settings?

Literacies (Macken-Horarik 1996) and contemporary learning settings which include information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a highly debated topic. The shift from commonsense to uncommonsense, or systematised, language (see Halliday 1993, pp.93-4) fits with this debate, given the rate of change in technology-enriched learning environments: portfolios are now e-portfolios, work based learning is often supplemented with online components, and one’s reflection can be recorded for ‘playback’ via online forums, emails, electronic documents, and audio and video clips. For example, I have found that new ICTs like blogs and wiki provide me with a greater space in which to write that potentially widens my audience (and thus my critics) to enable me to broaden and deepen my ideas as I ‘script’ them in the writing process. I have always kept a journal from a young age and now find that these web based tools complement my journaling in a positive way, extending my writing and discursive and dialogic processes at the same time. In addition, I have also found that I take copious amounts of notes knowing I can revisit (and thus re-use or re-organise) these (e.g. on a wiki) whenever and wherever I may be. Consequently, I feel as if my vocabulary, as well as my understanding of topics, is being enriched more deeply and more broadly than ever before. It seems that while we privilege experiential learning processes in adult learning settings we don’t necessary make the language development process as explicit.

Conclusion
What I’ve found incredibly interesting in this module is my journey of understanding as it has been reframed through a consideration of the role of language in learning. Speaking and writing in adult learning settings are manifested in textual practices such as portfolios, essay writing and structured discussion. I would contend that while language and learning share much, so too do text and identity in parallel, as posited by Solomon (2003, p.87) in her closing remarks:

Our focus here has been on the textual practices [used in a higher education Work-based Learning program], suggesting that these practices are an interesting pedagogical site to explore the way learners produce themselves as worker-learners.

Forming our identity is a key part of making meaning. Our ongoing development of language is also a key component to expressing our identity as well as new understandings and knowledges, and we can discuss our experiences and how we grow and change as a result.

References
Halliday, M.A.K. 1993. Towards a language based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education 5, 93-116.

Kerka, S. 1996. Journal writing and adult learning. ERIC Digest No.174. Retrieved 08/09/2007 from http://ericdigests.org/1997-2/journal.htm (ID: ED399413).

Macken-Horarik. M. 1996. Literacy and learning across the curriculum. In R. Hasan and G.Williams (Eds), Literacy in Society. London: Longman.

Painter, C. 1989. The role of interaction in learning to speak and learning to write. In J.R. Martin and C. Painter (Eds), Writing to mean: Teaching genres across the curriculum. Applied Linguistics Association of Australia, Occasional Papers 9. Sydney: University of Sydney, pp.62-97.

Solomon, N. 2003. Writing portfolios in work-based learning programs: Textually producing one-self. In C. Chappell, C. Rhodes, N. Solomon, M. Tennant and L. Yates (Eds), Reconstructing the Lifelong Learner: Pedagogy and Identity in Individual, Organisational and Social Change. London: Routledge.

Mobile Tagging Your World with Semapedia…

Alan’s picked up on the Semapedia links too…thanks Alan for driving further questions on this.

Actually, Alan promoted me to delve a little further into Wikipedia at the local level and I dug out the WikiProject Canberra! It’s a veritable rabbit warren that Wikipedia thing! :o)

[Image: WikiProject Canberra]

And indeed, how DO we explore Semapedia’s possibilities in our learning contexts? I’m still discovering what my own mobile phone is capable of doing! I’m sure it could probably get my washing done if I had the right application installed! :o)

What this (and Alan) has raised for me, is not just how these things might be possible in our educational contexts, but has me asking whether or not we are achieving real transferability of skills and ‘wonder’ about the use of technologies to enhance learning and teaching, in our professional development activities.

Technologies, I think, will continue to be misconstrued as a ‘fad’ or subsist at the edges unless we truly invest in and commit to using such tools, in line with (or by re-aligning) our strategic directions (within institutes and other stakeholder bodies), so as to build capability that directly impacts and shows benefits to (and for) our learners (and other stakeholders like industry groups). And also acknowledges that ICTs are a necessary life-skill/acquisition/experience that we should seek to develop in learners for the contemporary, networked world we live in.

I’d add this question to your question Alan; ‘how can we change our current paradigms to open up opportunities to explore such “cool tools” for greater use in educational contexts?’ What will it take for us to do so?

Hope to be able to talk more during your visit to the ACT, Alan, in line with your presentation on “being there”!

technorati tags:mobile, alan_levine, semapedia, wikipedia, situated_learning, strategy, educational_context, WikiProject_Canberra, ACT, tagging

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I’ve picked up on Tracy’s posts recently as I’ve really seen a connection with her process and mine around the nature of emergent practice, where practice leads to (rather than being based in) theoretical approaches to learning and teaching. Perhaps some call this praxis?

Following on from her curious curriculum, Tracy talks a bit more about her teaching process - this time about ambiguity.

Crossing over, I’ve also recently picked up reading Tom Haskins’ blog after meeting him (online) in Sydney last week. Tom’s post, Learning from not really learning, got me thinking once more about the unsettled moments and ambiguities we encounter daily in our work and life.

Those liminal spaces help us to reach forward in our learning as we grapple to understand and make sense of new knowledge. So too, in a changing workplace, we are often in the same state, yet it seems that very quickly we try to find the closest ground, somewhere ’safe’ with some semblance of permanence or firmness. This seems normal in a high state of change, such as a restructure, for example.

Liminality requires time and space. It requires careful holding and is, as Tom reiterates in his post about learning, a process not a product that we can mold. It’s an intangible feeling (usually a feeling of vulnerability) that is often uncomfortable. When we feel uncomfortable, we of course seek comfort. In the learning process we seek understanding in order to feel a sense of comfort and feeling of achievement thus follows.

In learning, these liminal spaces require empathic intelligence (from within us and with others), not a rush to achieve learning outcomes. They require little content and are more a space to wander through one’s learning in process. They are tumultuous and unsettling but have space for stillness and reflection.

‘They’ are not spaces really - liminality is us and our journey towards knowing, where we realise we are on the threshold of understanding.

Thanks Tracy and Tom for your quiet words of wisdom.

technorati tags:liminality, change, emergent_design, learning, practice-led, spaces

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I’ve been reflecting on recent events and readings that have caused me to ponder the state of play in education institutions, especially where much change is evident, and particularly around flexible learning (restructuring is the ‘tool’ of the naughties right ).

We’ve seen a growing push for industry engagement with flexible learning, nationally and locally. We’ve seen professional development and its links to broader strategy in varied ways. And a good deal of time has been spent deliberating over the benefits of global versus local efforts on standards and systems. More broadly we see much discussion and activity around the changing nature of learning, of teaching and of organisations that ‘conventionalise’ both (for want of a better word).

What I seem to be hearing in amongst all of this (and from a range of parties) is a ‘need’ for specialists or strategists to make sense of this thing called flexible learning, which is fine and to be expected. But also I’m hearing that “we want YOU in our area/centre/team”! Perhaps it’s a symptom of the constant struggle we see between the centre and the local site. As a specialist, I work in a central area and have the good fortune to work with many people covering diverse subject areas. For example, if I was to be ‘coveted’ in one area specifically, does that not diminish my opportunity to work across a range of sites? Why couldn’t I work across sites of learning?

[image: RobertFrancis]

Embedding specialists is somewhat different I think. Embedding requires an understanding (by the ‘embedded’, the ‘embedder’ and the ‘embeddee’) about the part the specialist will play in the strategic development in that local site. There is a sense of semi-permanence enough for the specialist to work within the parameters of their ‘placement’, yet still remain attached to the network or ‘centre’ (should there be one), thus remaining connected to other activities and developments.

So why covert specialists? What is at stake here? A specialist is usually part of a special interest network or collective (that validates their ’specialty’), and can communicate changes and developments in their area of specialty more broadly too. When I say specialty I don’t necessarily mean expertise, rather, I mean a focused area of interest, where one is motivated to delve deeply into that area to uncover more and learn a great deal. When a specialist is ‘coveted’, there is limited opportunity to share one’s learning and growth with others who understand that specialty in similar ways. Also, the propensity to ‘on-sell’ those experiences is of benefit only to that locale, not necessarily to the ‘greater good’ (or the other areas of an organisation, pragmatically speaking).

It is important, from a specialist’s point of view, that one is able to carry ideas, learning and innovations from one site to the next; thus, sharing corporate knowledge and supporting long-term growth, shaped by the diversity of their practice. Specialists then also have the freedom to engage with others in their field of interest on broader matters, keeping the lines of communication open for emerging knowledge, ideas and approaches.

I return to the emergent design thoughts I’ve raised here before. Practice enables understanding. Focused practice develops specialised skills and knowledges. Specialisation returns to practice to benefit others, growing the broader schemata. Thus, research and development fuses with practice-led innovations for the benefit of all, rather than applied as a play-thing for the few to meet immediate (often ill-defined) needs.

technorati tags:specialist, learning, strategy, future, professional_development, emergent_design, practice-led, research_and_development, covet, centralised, networks

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The following is a short essay I submitted for a Masters unit I’m doing. The brief was to critically reflect on my own development in the first weeks of the unit and to link my learning to the readings and online disussion about learning and change as development, the developmentalists and generative learning, in a developmental(ist) way.

Learning and change as development

Workplace context
I am an educational designer working in a small multi-disciplinary team of educators and developers, at a vocational education and training (VET) institution. Our team is one of three teams that make up a centralised centre for education development, which includes teacher education and curriculum development. Within my work context lie a range of ‘spaces’; one I actively create for myself as an educational designer, another for collaboration with my colleagues and with teachers, and the wider space that encompasses the machinations of the institute itself. These are not mutually exclusive, nor are they finite or static.

My role as an educational designer has changed in the eighteen months I have worked here, so much so that I have revisited many times my own definition of what an educational designer is and does (or as Minsky 2006, p.39 states, ‘what you ought’ to do). External factors have perhaps helped to bring about this revisitation; reduced funding for projects supporting innovation in education, reduced staffing so remaining staff take on the work that is left behind, and a management structure that appears inert when change is a reality. Other’s conception of my role is also a factor. Not many people have met an educational designer, nor have they worked with one. Often there is a mismatch between their assumptions or expectations of my role and my duties as I carry them out on a day-to-day basis.

Why has my role changed? While I have outlined some possible factors (and I think that not all these are external), I am still deliberating over the fact I have experienced such change in such a short time. I began my educational design career in another state in a tertiary institution and as part of a team of educational designers. The impact this has had on my own development as an educational designer is in many respects life changing. My expectations since are perhaps still tied to my growing experience and development as an educational designer back then.

Growth and development
Given my journey so far, what does it mean to grow, to develop, and in particular, to develop within a field or discipline? Why do I consider my prior experience as a fledgling educational designer ‘life changing’? How has it changed my life?

I began this subject when my interest was peaked by Bruner’s chapter ‘Knowing and doing’ (Bruner 1996). I read this chapter while flying interstate to a conference about action learning and action research. I envisaged a connection between Bruner’s work and the conference itself; the conference theme was ‘Aboriginal ways of knowing and doing’. In effect, I was preparing for the myriad conversations and connections possible at this conference and hoped that Bruner could give me a head-start. At that point, I was making a connection between rebus and action learning/action research, and ‘understanding by doing something other than just talking’ (Bruner 1996, p.151). I mulled over Bruner’s own ‘reckoning without rebus’ too (p.152), wondering how often we think things through to the point where they remain an internal dialogue and never quite manifest in action. This developed as a theme for me at the conference, and I noted a tension around ‘doing’ action research or action learning and ‘talking about’ it in theoretical terms. It was perhaps a discussion not sufficiently opened up to the delegates, rather I sensed it as an undercurrent; perhaps it was seen too much as ‘navel-gazing’ to those who wished to simply get on and ‘do it’.

By this time, I had also read Diamond’s chapter (Diamond 2005) [see also this video] and initially had trouble working out a meaningful connection, particularly one that resonated with the conference activities and my own conferencing ‘space’ at that time. Diamond initiated a fresh pathway of thinking; I had not previously engaged with a biological viewpoint of learning and development, seeing such works as dry and lacking wholistic theses about the ways we learn and grow. Diamond’s chapter encouraged me to reconsider my standpoint. The angle from which he discussed the development of cultures is perhaps left-field enough for me to take notice, to feel some dissonance in reaction to his words. I am reminded, at this point, of the subject learning guide when the teaching team ask us to keep an open mind as we approach this subject. I cynically thought that wanting others to keep an open mind meant being able to then fill our minds with your own thinking! Asking one to keep an open mind perhaps is more about wanting to seek trust from such a group. Being open is like saying ‘trust me’.

It was on re-reading Diamond’s chapter that I saw why the teaching team hoped we would be open-minded about the readings, structure and flow of the subject. In fact, it was the student’s question in Diamond’s article that helped me to remain so. Thanks to Frances’ comment in the online discussions (F. Traynor, 6/8/2007) for returning me to the quote: ‘what did the Easter Islanders say as they were cutting down the last palm tree?’ (Diamond 2005, p.420). In this, I saw a connection to phrases like ‘out of the mouth of babes’ or the ‘naïve inquirer’:

What it made me question was how we often remove ourselves from situations (perhaps to look back in on them, or to try to get an ‘objective’ view of things), and to me, hearing this student’s question made me wonder if the student was perhaps trying to place him/herself into the picture at that very moment, in the shoes of the woodcutter (M. O’Connell, online discussion, 12/8/2007).

From this point, I began my other readings with refreshed thinking. Harre’s discussion about the developmentalists, Piaget and Vygotsky, helped me to see both as people before their roles as psychologists (Harre 2006). To imagine that Vygotsky’s illness was the driver of his insatiable appetite for learning and research, or Piaget’s childhood interest in biology initiated his work with children in their environments, is enough for me to see that these are passionate learners at work. It is our context and our historical links that, perhaps, make them ‘theorists’.

I have not entirely subscribed to Piaget’s thesis that ‘cognitive development proceded (sic) along an ineluctable sequence of stages’ (Harre 2006, p.34). However, I wish to revisit his claims that developmental psychology is perhaps a larger project about ‘genetic epistemology’ and to further understand how knowledge grows (p. 35). As I see it, learning and knowledge are not one in the same, and how they interrelate is of great interest to me. Learning perhaps is the process through which we acquire knowledge. Is learning just a process? Is knowledge simply an act of acquisition? To date, I am perhaps more at ease with Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’ and the impact of one’s (social) environment on one’s learning and development. There is some correlation with Bruner’s discussion of ‘knowing as doing’. Vygotsky saw our pattern of human thought as maturing through the acquisition of language and practical skills. So too, Bruner explored ‘skills’ as being just one aspect of ‘knowing’ which he describes in terms of conventionalisation (i.e. skills as culturally formed and acceptable ‘habits’) and distribution (i.e. intelligence resides within communities rather than simply with individuals) (see Bruner 1996, pp. 153-54). In all, revisiting these theoretical positions has me stepping back into learning spaces that I perhaps didn’t appreciate in my earlier efforts to understand them.

What kinds of learning fit?
In my comments via the online discussions in this subject, I expressed some points about the creation of spaces for learning and change to take place, referring particularly to spaces in my workplace:

… people are moving away from areas [or practices] that seem unchangeable or inert - such as trying to deal with a disengaged manager or a policy that is no longer relevant. I see people creating new spaces in which to go about their business, to try to innovate ‘on the side’ or ‘at the margins’.

… I see these innovative teachers leading through new practices in new spaces that may inevitably contribute to changing and new standards. Teachers are often renowned for their passive resistance, but I often wonder to what - given the increased admin load and other ‘extra-curricula’ duties teachers take up?

So I’m not surprised too (sic) see teachers working to create new spaces for doing things that the ‘centre’ may not otherwise encourage them to do - it’s healthy subversion in many ways! What I’d like to try to do is help to find ways to legitimate the work in these new spaces, to bring them back to the centre or perhaps to move the centre to where they are! (M. O’Connell, online discussion, 12/08/2007)

In my attempt to understand the changes in my role and the context in which I ‘perform’ that role, I see that one way may be to create learning and change spaces that are supportive and safe. I anticipate the need (or perhaps my desire) to create a participative or collaborative space for this kind of development to occur. In her working paper, Schaverien asks:

Perhaps some of the very tentative student behaviour we see in conventional educational contexts (which contrasts with the higher frequency of risk-taking we note outside these contexts) can be viewed as uncertainty about exactly what teachers expect – especially when teachers have drawn up the inquiry (Schaverien 2007, p.2)

I can see this form of cautious learning in teachers I collaborate with. Perhaps tentative students are in part a product of tentative teachers? Teachers are as much a cultural production (or social construction) as are our learners. So, if I return then to the development models as discussed in Moghaddam (2005, p.143), perhaps I should continue to ask, do developmental models ‘reflect social constructions or objective universals?’ Certainly, I’d agree with Moghaddam that there is a level of concern that such stage models (by the simple fact they are ‘models’) widen the theory and practice divide; that is, how things look on paper as compared to how they manifest in one’s practice (and I’d extend this beyond a critique of Kolhberg’s model of moral development, see Moghaddam 2005, p.144-45).

There was also some online discussion around Diamond’s chapter and the anticipation of problems. Schaverien outlined that this was perhaps one aspect many students had, importantly, picked up on, and was different to problem-solving (or problem-framing) (L. Schaverien, online discussion, 4/8/2007). In a teaching ‘practice’ sense, I’d call this practice-based; that which is current. My comment about creating new spaces for learning and change perhaps relates more to practice-led notions of development [an example], or a form of ‘praxis’ as described by Bruner, but also illustrates that we perhaps need to remain critically aware of the cultural conventions that manifest in these spaces as well.

‘By entering such a community, you have entered not only upon a set of conventions of praxis but upon a way of exercising intelligence’ (Bruner p.154). My question then is, how do we engage in learning, as educators, and involve our bodies as well, so that we can practice what we preach to other learners? (M. O’Connell, online discussion, 12/08/2007)

To conclude, this is just the beginning. I have been invited into the subject learning space to develop my questioning further, and in relation to past learners who present us with models, as possibilities of understanding and practice. I’ve entered a liminal space that feels unstable and uncertain, but in keeping an open mind I trust that teachers and learners (as we all are in many ways) will help keep this learning space safe enough for me to explore these questions further.

References
Bruner, J. (1996). Knowing as doing. In J. Bruner (1996). The culture of education (pp.150-159). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Diamond, J. (2005). Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? In J. Diamond (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive (pp. 419-440). London: Penguin Books.
Harre, R. (2006). The developmentalists. In R. Harre (2006). Key thinkers in psychology (pp.25-44). London: Sage.
Minsky, M. (2006). Attachments and goals. In M. Minsky (2006). The emotion machine: Commonsense thinking, artificial intelligence and the future of the human mind (pp. 36-65). NY: Simon and Schuster.
Moghaddam, F.M. (2005). Stage models of development. In F.M. Moghaddam (2005). Great ideas in psychology: A cultural and historical introduction (pp. 131-149). Oxford: One World Publications.
Schaverien, L. (2007). An introduction to a (biologically based) generative view of learning. Working paper, 2007.1.

technorati tags:Masters, MEd, Learning_Change, development, generative_learning, workplace_learning, spaces, professional_development, learning

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I was sifting through my Bloglines feeds and came across a slideshow via elearningpost, by Leisa Reichelt. It’s quite timely, as our small team has been looking into refreshing our approach to supporting - and leading the way for - teachers to design and develop online learning in their subjects. Here’s more on “us”…

So, I checked out this one:

http://www.disambiguity.com/waterfall-bad-washing-machine-good-ia-summit-07-slides/

…then was keen to see what else Leisa had done and spotted this one:

http://www.disambiguity.com/social-project-management-at-enterprise-20/

I began this post when I got to this slide which outlines a Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

The following points have me breathing a sigh of relief that others are also thinking along these lines!

• individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• working software over comprehensive documentation
• customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• responding to change over following a plan

In these points I see interaction, responsiveness, collaboration and action, which says to me that we should try refocusing our design process to be FIRST a communicative one, rather than a content-driven one. That is, not WHAT you want to do, but start with the WHY then look at the HOW, before settling on the WHAT.

Project based work and developmental projects really do require a high level of organic activity, to allow room for creativity and growing of an idea. Often, we’re (especially managers insisting on outcomes and deadlines) easily caught up in paperwork, processes and attempting to work with others who have so little time to ponder, explore and indulge in creative activity (because of paperwork and processes!!), that we end up forgetting why we were doing all this in the first place!

I shouldn’t talk in the third-person like this, because really, that’s been my feeling over the past few months - why am I doing this educational design work again? What is it achieving? Well, after some time letting such thoughts and issues percolate, it seems to be that now the time is ripe for some change!

I have attempted to look at our work processes using this diagram to sort of “draft” my own thinking, as we continue to discuss this as a team. I’m liking the emergent bit (think emergent design) and probably need to flesh that notion out more…

Oh, and thanks to Leisa for helping me to get my thinking back on track! :o)

technorati tags:Leisa_Reichelt, disambiguity, user_experience, educational_design, emergent_design, organic_process, Gliffy_diagram, work_flows, developmental, online_learning

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