• build learning capacity,
• develop deeper and richer networks and links for core competencies,
• think together and develop collaborative teams of learners, and
• find ways to ensure that everyone achieves.

It feels kind of strange to be learning about the need to change the way we learn in the 21st Century  in a 21st Century conference paper that is accessible only to those prepared to attend the conference or to pay for the print copy of the conference proceedings. 

The experience of reading the conference proceedings was in truth a retreat to a past way of learning.  The freedom that comes from living outside of the institution in the day job is balanced by relying heavily on accessing my professional learning online rather than from print sources or from officially sanctioned professional reading circles. My ability to interact with content and ideas in Gilbert's paper seemed limited in some way … In reading the NZCER conference paper I felt like I was practising pedagogical austerity.  

So it was ironical to read future focused calls for schools to change “the way they do learning” when the researcher and research organisation calling for change is operating in an environment where;

• content is still centralised,
• communication remains in the form of a monologue with no opportunity provided for online collaborative comment, trackback  or conversation,
• learning is all about push over pull, and
• where unlike a wiki document, the learning manuscript is presented in its final form, ensuring that the learning process and editing involved in creating this thinking is not available for scrutiny.    

It is a little like the teacher who claims to value discussion and student questioning for learning when talking to other educators but whose educative classroom practice reveals that for their students “learning is listening”.

Our limited access to Jane Gilbert’s paper, “Progress” in 21st Century Education? is worth thinking about. 

It is worth challenging why we are so ready to accept espoused values of educational researchers in New Zealand when the integrated or lived values of their institutions are so different.  If only Jane Gilbert had a blog…. and NZCER had a wiki…. how different would our learning opportunities be?

My experience working with and in schools in the day job suggests that the ideas in “Progress” in 21st century education?” are dated.  Especially the ideas around how to measure the complexity of what a person is able to do in real- world situations.  After all Eisner was talking about curriculum connoisseurship over 20 years ago.  But I have no easy way of testing these ideas in the context of the paper, and I guess there is often a dislocation between what educational researchers claim is happening in schools and what schools are actually doing…

Many of the educators we work with in the day job would claim that Gilbert’s building learning capacity, developing deeper and richer networks and links for core competencies, thinking together and developing collaborative teams of learners, and finding ways to ensure that everyone achieves, are already with us.   And unlike the NZCER conference paper, New Zealand schools are no longer broadcasting their learning outcomes solely through print copies of the school newsletter or at meet the teacher evenings where the teacher shares a paper sample of a student learning outcome with the parent.  

A virtual (or face to face) tour of students’, teachers’ and principals’ practice would reveal that primary, intermediate and secondary schools across New Zealand are already building learning capacity, rich networks, collaborative teams, learning through participation and collaboration.  And they are using social media with their students, their teachers and their communities  to help them do this – including using wikis, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, social bookmarking, tagging, online photo libraries, Diigo, Google docs, Open notebook, shared online calendars, aggregators, RSS feeds etc.

In fact there are so many of these 21st Century appropriate learning conversations going on that I sometimes worry about the adverse influence of social media on the relevance of the local.

I increasingly want to explore Mejias’ question 

Does social media contribute to the irrelevancy of the local?

I want to ask

Does social media create learning networks that discriminate against the student's immediate surroundings?

Or in the context of the Auckland ICTPD Cluster Home Group Meetings

Does social media create learning networks that discriminate against an Auckland ICTPD facilitator’s immediate surroundings?

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to claim that in embracing social media … in creating our own personal learning networks (all that Twitter, Skyping, blog reading and commenting, wikis, YouTube and TED talks and or podcasts vodcasts etc) we have increased the irrelevancy of the opportunity to meet f2f to learn with/ from our immediate companions in our local surroundings in a Home Group Meeting.

After all if you consider that the learning networks available to those attending the Auckland Home Group Meeting … they rely largely upon happenstance … who decides to turn up, for how long on the day …. It seems we cannot even count upon the National team members attending given that “This is not a day where the national team deliver content – this is a day for you all to participate and contribute.”

There is an interesting tension here…. in advocating for the increased use of social media for building learning networks by educators we undermine the relevance of the local … the opportunity to attend the Auckalnd Home Group Meeting for building learning networks. 

This argument holds even when looking at the “loss leader” … the “outside expertise” attendance enticer…. it seems plausible that the opportunity to learn from/network  with  the “outside expertise involved in the session” would lose some of its relevance if this same presentation and shared expertise were available online through social media .

All this thinking makes me wonder  

How should we re-approach nearness at the Auckland Home Group Meetings?

And this in turn makes me suspect that “Progress” in 21st Century education?  will end up being an exploration of: 

How should we re-approach nearness in our schools?

References:
“Progress” in 21st Century education? By Jane Gilbert Paper presented at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER)  Conference: Making progress – measuring progress, Wellington, 13 March 2008. p.63-73
URL: http://www.nzcer.org.nz/default.php?cpath=139_133&products_id=2194 

Re–approaching nearness: Online communication and its place in praxis by Ulises A. Mejías
First Monday, volume 10, number 3 (March 2005),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_3/mejias/index.html

Source: Artichoke

For …. much like reading Phil Rosenzweig’s The Halo Effect  undermined my faith in the Best Evidence Synthesis on School Leadership and Student Outcomes.   …. Glass’ meta-analysis critique promises to betray me …

It is important to note here that I don’t know enough statistics to refute Glass.  This lack of statistical referencing probably explains why, as I read Glass’ paper, I am reduced to imagining myself Dolly Parton-ised, belting out “Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene …I’m begging of you please don’t take my man  …” 

If I sing loudly enough perhaps I will block the following Jolene thoughts from undermining all the MoE “evidence based practice” “Best Evidence Synthesis” stuff in my mind

Jolene Thought #1: Does the process of selecting and discarding studies as described in the School Leadership and Student Learning Outcomes BES  equate to Glass’ censorship by some a priori set of prejudices?

Jolene Thought #2: Is it valid to make inferences from meta-analysis generated “effect sizes” when the nature of the studies used means that meta-analysis must lack both “a well defined population that has been randomly sampled” and “subjects that have been randomly assigned to conditions in a controlled experiment”?

Jolene Thought #3:  Are the statistical tests used to determine homogeneity in meta-analysis studies adequate for the task?

However, my biggest Jolene Thought Moment came on reading “Another reason why I'm leery of meta-analyses”  on the Respectful Insolence Blog (thanks to link from Stephen Downes)

Jolene Thought #4:  Are meta-analyses nothing more than systematic reviews of the literature with attitude?

The Respectful Insolence Blog post describes an investigation into the use of meta-analysis in evidence based medicine (EBM),  which does not sound all that dissimilar to the use of BES in New Zealand education.

The post goes on to describe an investigation into the meta-analysis of “randomized clinical trials (RCT) and review articles on the efficacy of intravenous magnesium in the early post-myocardial infarction period.”

The investigators found that 

Gene Glass has a future focused suggestion in his paper – one that in 2008 we would most certainly claim as Web2.0 or even Web3.0 thinking ….. he suggests that researchers contribute to online data archives instead of publishing meta-analyses and or BES studies … it sounds worthy … it sounds like something that just might let me un Dolly myself and stop singing Jolene …

Source: Artichoke

To ask ….

I guess the answers will depend in part on what we assume from the silence of others and on how we understand or see “Student Silence” in the context of school.

I think I have seen silence ….. in some profoundly moving and breathtakingly beautiful images in a book about to be published by photographer David Maisel, Library of Dust.  Link and exerpt from Geoff Manaugh's  BLDGBLOG

It disturbs to imagine/know that no one “listened to their silence" until Maisel,
… and if he had arrived earlier or later we would never have been able to listen to/ value their silence either.  

Ivan Illich allows us to appreciate silence in a different way from Maisel’s photographs and Manaugh's text … his  meditation on silence provides some significant new thinking for educators wanting to understand the language of “Student Voice” – (This meditation is designed for  a group of missionaries learning Spanish in a way that allowed
them to “attune their ears and open their hearts to the anguish of a
people who were lonely, frightened and powerless”)

I didn’t understand the significance of silence in understanding another until I read Illich …
Before Illich I saw student silence as a challenge, silence as a pejorative notion, silence as a communicative pathology, I wanted my students to talk, to discuss, to argue, to debate with each other … I didn’t want them mute …

I guess I had imagined “Student Silence” as failure akin to the interpretation in Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound Of Silence …

Understanding silence as a communicative pathology is probably not far off the mark for many of us the context of school.  For example, I saw “Student Silence” in school in simple terms … as in there are times to be silent and times to talk …

I think we are encouraged to see “silence” in simplistic terms because our institutional power over students means we indicate these times of student silence and student voice in much the same way we might switch a room light on or off.

For example, there are times in school when teachers expect “Student Silence” and there are other times when teachers expect “Student Voice”.  In both cases a refusal to oblige on the part of the student is frustrating to the teacher who is orchestrating the soundscape. To be met with “Student Voice” when you have asked for “Student Silence” or to be met with “Student Silence” when you have asked for “Student Voice” can precipitate a teacher rage out  entertaining enough to be worthy of posting on YouTube    

Which makes me suspect that when we ask for “Student Voice” and are met with “Student Silence” many of us assume that this “Student Silence” is a failure to communicate that means that students are not thinking (not learning).

For if we saw “Student Silence” as communicating that students are thinking deeply about something (aka learning) then instead of insisting through elaborate questioning strategies on Student Voice we would pause and embrace the silence.

I guess to be fair our response also depends on whether we assume that “Student Silence” indicates that students are thinking/learning about something related to what they have just been reading, watching, doing or listening to (intentional learning outcomes)?

Or whether the thinking/learning is about something tangential to what they have been reading, watching, doing or listening to (unintentional learning)?

Or whether we assume that when students are silent they have disconnected from what they have been reading, watching, doing or listening to and have retreated to a happy/ safer place, daydreaming, woolgathering?

And there are many reasons for students to disconnect when they feel marginalised, or coerced into providing a “Student Voice” that makes them vulnerable if they respond in a way that is different from the norm. 

But as Illich’s meditation on silence when learning a foreign language suggests that silence is much more than the Sounds of Silence lyrics indicate.  He classifies four forms of silence that missionaries need when learning Spanish … in school we only recognise the first when trying to understand the language of “Student Voice”  ….  and we do that grudgingly. 

[Note to self: suspect there are some analogies to be drawn with Illich’s classification and the rhythm of blog commenting and responding on Artichoke .. all those times when a comment is left in silence while I wait for words that are worthy to sit alongside it. ]

1.  The silence of the pure listener.

2.  The silence of syntony,”

3.  “The silence beyond words,”

The last category is harder to imagine in a school classroom where timetables mean that the time shared in voice and silence may be only 55 minutes … still I will leave it in because some educators work outside of the classroom world of the tame and form different conversations of voice and silence in the world of the wild … where maybe this silence is possible.

4.  “The silence of the Pietà”

“The Eloquence of Silence” by Ivan Illich in Celebration of Awareness – A call for institutional revolution 1969. P46 to 51

Source: Artichoke

Calls for educators to listen to “Student Voice”  have been with us since Dewey …. This recent promotion of “Student Voice” is probably a response to the collective educational ennui over “personalisation” - the last “good thing” to be broadcast, MoE glossy pamphlet-ed, and edu_conference work shopped and keynoted across the conversational corridors of education in New Zealand. 

Much like personalisation  (see “Personalisation as education’s killer app”  ), “Student Voice” is one of those terms we assume is a “good thing” and as such is a term whose meaning is never interrogated and clarified … we carelessly fling “Student Voice” around in educational conversations along with terms like “learning community” “child centered classrooms”, “inquiry learning”, "engagement,  or “relevant and authentic” ….. and we all take different meanings from what is said.

For example, listening to “Student Voice” (all that talking, laughing, crying, yelling, txting and whispering) is one thing …. acting upon “Student Voice” quite another …. 

For if we are only charged with listening the first thing you'd want to ask is whose voice are we listening to …

And if we are only charged with listening with no expectation of action, the next thing we might ask is why those students who can see past the personal glory of being the chosen one … the “safe one” invited to represent “student opinion” by those with institutional authority …. would continue to bother to share their voice …

It is a bit like what happens to teachers who are consulted widely by SMT but find none of their suggestions acted upon …

In truth there is a sad irony in hearing all these educators talk about the importance of “Student Voice” when so many of their colleagues work in schools where they lack “Teacher Voice”.   

Michael Fielding’s analysis is useful here, and his Framework for Assessing Student Voice pasted below is a great place to start looking at what is really happening in schools who claim to value “Student Voice”

Framework for Assessing Student Voice

In response to Fielding’s questions about new structures and new ways of relating to others … I’d say yes, yes, yes …

For calls for “Student Voice” in school, to have any credibility we need to see educational institutions where students are not only participating in the ways identified through the framework, they should also be participating in different contexts …

“Student Voice” should see institutional structures develop where students are participating and contributing as:

And when they participate, students need to see their contributions acted upon.

And even then, if the balance of authority means that what is acted upon is determined by teachers then it would seem fair to challenge the whole notion of “Student Voice”  … to ask what exactly are “Student Voices” participating in.

Still this week I am more interested in exploring the other side of “Voice”  – in interrogating the many meanings of "Silence' .

and that is making me wonder about how we should understand “Student Silence”….

Source: Artichoke

I am imagining what a digital voyeur would see if they could gaze out of the “screens” in schools across New Zealand at all the student faces gazing in.  I am reading “Blown to bits – Your life, liberty, and happiness after the digital explosion” by Abelson, Ledeen and Lewis.  It explores the social and political notions of privacy, identity,  freedom and who is in control in the digital world.  It is an easy read, and full of topical examples that clarify the many provocative issues raised.

The first thing “Blown to bits” made me realise was that I didn’t understand “privacy”.

If privacy is a right that makes society work … then perhaps the lack of privacy in our schools …. might be a wrong that explains why our schools oftentimes don’t work.

Gatto’s seventh lesson taught in school … “One cannot hide”.…. can only be exacerbated by the  exhortations of the hawkers of screens for digital learning. Because the adoption of SMS student management systems, learning management systems (LMS) and increasing calls for transparency in school assessment data sharing must increase the  panoptic like surveillance of students identified by Gatto.

So what are the social roles that we limit and exclude when students are learning what it is to be human in an environment that precludes privacy?

Blown to Bits argues that for three important social roles for privacy (p63 and 64)

The passage suggests that the institutional structure of a school is designed to deny students the right to self preservation, to make social progress, and to develop independent thought.   

Thinking about Gaze B: We observe the screen

This thinking allows me to explore Illich’s claim that objects change who we are. 

This passage from Illich is one of my favourites … when I read it I always want to switch off the screen and go find a human face that I can gaze at in the way of the old Greeks  …  Although gazing at someone in a way that “fingers” or “touches”  is an activity that would be viewed with enormous suspicion in the culture of the screen.   Attempting this with the wrong person is liable to lead to uncomfortable exchanges, complaints to authority or even arrest.

What does an object that captures our gaze (aka a screen) do to us?

Or to ask this question another way,

If  the introduction of digital technologies into schools means that students are spending increasing amounts of time immobilised, gazing at the screen … more time in fact than they do gazing face to face with another or gazing at the dirt and the sky, then how are they changed… ?    

Source: Artichoke

The Girl Effect

A typographical movie about the powerful social & economic change
brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their
society.Link from Infosthetics Data visualisation and Visual Design

Imagine the discussion and new learning that exposure to the ideas in this movie would bring to New Zealand students exploring the power of sharing

Exploring The Girl Effect through the Key Competencies participating and contributing, relating to others, managing self, thinking and making meaning through the multiliteracies including language symbols and text.

Source: Artichoke

While rms explained that sharing is the basis of society I was struck by the alignment of this insight with our MoE's identification of the key competencies as the basis for learning what it is to be human   … all that: thinking, making meaning from language symbols and text, managing self, participating and contributing and relating to others.

Whilst Stallman calls for “sharing” , in New Zealand schools we identify “relating to others” and “participating and contributing” as worthy

But listening to our current arguments over copyright, DRM, A2K makes me suspect that many of us no longer understand what sharing might be …. probably because we have unconsciously adopted the thinking of consumerism and business … we can only imagine living in a society predicated upon consumption and the accumulation of personal advantage/ wealth.   

That we can no longer imagine how sharing could or should be the basis of what it is to be human … is pretty frightening

And it doesn’t surprise me that Illich was alert to this

And I think Gatto gets close to the same analysis in the context of schools

And while rms was taking about what it took for something to be free  The Four Freedoms – “free as in speech, not free as in beer” I was thinking about what it means to be free to learn in the context of the different ways we design for learning in libraries, museums and schools.  

It is interesting to think about how learning available in a library or museum is different from the learning available in school

It becomes more interesting when we do this in the context of learning that respects the learner’s freedom ….

… especially when we frame the freedoms a learner must have through Stallman’s The four freedoms

And Gatto’s analysis of libraries and schools in A Confederacy of Dunces  is a great start to this imagining ….

Source: Artichoke

In PBL they will tell you … students learn through activities that are interdisciplinary, student-centered, collaborative, and authentic in that the PBL scenarios are integrated into real world issues and practices…. and what they learn … well what they learn through PBL learning experiences is stuff that prepares them for living in the 21st Century.

This is usually followed by a string of process talk that buttons the buttons of authenticating the learning> awakening prior knowledge> strengthening prior knowledge> constructing relevant questions> planning the research, discovering relevant information>constructing the knowledge> new insights and understandings is .

And because of these beliefs discussion over the student learning outcomes in PBL tend to revolve around

What information is given to students in the “scenario”?

What do students infer from the information they are given in the “scenario”

And sometimes but not often enough

What do students assume from the information they are given in the “scenario”

These are undoubtedly worthy questions for educators to explore but I think there are better ones…

I’d like to “lucychili wind” the focus out a bit and look at learning through problem solving per se.  To ask what else is being learned through PBL activity?

To ask …

1. What information is given to students who learn through PBL pedagogies?
2. What do students infer from the information they are given?
3. What do students assume from the information they are given?

I think that an inconvenient problem is exposed when we examine the information, inference and assumptions made by students when they are immersed in PBL.

In PBL students learn that:

1.  Problems in a lived experience are identified and described by people with institutional authority.
ie The act of giving students the PBL scenario means for students problem finding and problem scoping is something passive, something done by others with institutional authority.

Students must assume that

2. People with institutional authority can reliably and validly identify problems in the lived experience of others.

And although they sit outside the problem framing, and outside the lived experience, students must infer that 

3. They can “solve” the problems identified and described by someone in authority in a way that satisfies the perspectives of the person who framed the problem …. the person with institutional authority

And that although they sit outside the problem framing, and outside the lived experience,I suspect that all our talk about authenticity means that in PBL we encourage the belief that

4 They can “solve” the problems identified and described by someone in authority in a way that satisfies the perspectives of the people identified in the scenario. 

When we asssess or encourage their peers to assess the outcomes I suspect we tell students that

5.  When problems are initiated by others, the problem solving response must fit within the solutions pre-determined by the problem constructor 

By that I mean that the way in which the PBL case study is constructed will favour particular solutions – that old “Problems are formulated by people who can envisage a solution”.

Furthermore In PBL we suggest to students that

6.  Complex and conflicting lived experiences can be simplified to solutions

And that

7.  These solutions can be identified by outsiders … by students (who are essentially coerced into the role of becoming observers of the observations of an institutional observer of the lived experience.)

It is Sponge Bob and Patrick all over again

“You mean to say they’ve taken what we thought we think and made us think we thought our thoughts we’ve been thinking our thoughts we think we thought… You think?”

And it is not as if any of this is remediable by dealing with the different authority structures in PBL and letting students identify and craft the issues and problems they find in a lived experience

We still have the issue that learning through PBL means that student learning is happening in a context that assumes life is a problem to be solved

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”  Soren Kierkegaard

8.  PBL reinforces the assumption that life is a problem to be solved

For Pita Sharples argument in Speech: Boys in Education Conference – Wednesday 19 April, 2006* in
New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, Volume 3, Issue 1, 3-11, 2006…

If we construct boys as a group of people who lack equality, resources, opportunity, expectations, confidence, talents, achievement, communication skills, literacy skills, support, attention we are forever restricting the discussion to one around negativity, a discourse of disadvantage.

… could be just as easily made for schools whose students predominantly learn through pedagogies of problem based learning

If we allow [those in authority to construct through PBL scenarios the lived experiences of others as experiences] that lack equality, resources, opportunity,  expectations, confidence, talents, achievement, communication skills, literacy skills, support, attention we are forever restricting the discussion to one around negativity, a discourse of disadvantage.

All of which makes me want to ask

How can students learn in school that life is a reality to be experienced?

Source: Artichoke

Dr. Zoidberg: How do I look?
Bender: Like whale barf.
Dr. Zoidberg: Then the illusion is complete.

Ken Sane’s Transparency essays  provide a fabulous overview
for my start up thinking on “whale barf” in education and “whale barf”
in myself....

Whenever it happened, today, we have entered a period in history that can truly be referred to as an age of simulation, in which advanced forms of fakery and illusion are now dominant elements of culture and society.Transparency 

And the Onion Video: “Warcraft” Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing “Warcraft” captures my “where to next ….?” …. imaginings

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

Although it is convenient to blame technology we don’t need technology to betray and manipulate … our words are enough ….

I have been reading The Power of Words   - an article from cj about Fernando Flores, someone I only “knew” or as it turns out “did not know” as the name on the spine of Understanding Computers and Cognition.

Flores works to transform individuals … leaders …..  using “speech acts’ that confront deception.  

“Talk all you want to, Flores says, but if you want to act powerfully, you need to master “speech acts”: language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities. Speech acts are powerful because most of the actions that people engage in — in business, in marriage, in parenting — are carried out through conversation. But most people speak without intention; they simply say whatever comes to mind. Speak with intention, and your actions take on new purpose. Speak with power, and you act with power.” The Power of Words

Now Flores technique for exposing the “whale barf” sounds rather like brushing up against a 240V electric fence for anyone accustomed to how we confront individual weakness within organisations in the wobbly isles …

We might not be aware of “the amount of self-deception and self-limitation that we collect in our personalities. “ but when you look at our institutional practice in education in New Zealand it seems plausible that many of us have chosen to remain unaware …  

I guess I could experiment with a Flores-like   “following the script exactly as it is written … “ exchange with the Magnet ….. we have always been pretty frank at critiquing our work  … and pretty good at moving on …  

…… perhaps week four  would be a good time to Flores-explore the “whale barf” …. when we are trapped in the snorting beast on the road to Hamilton … 

…. still the likelihood that she would deposit me on the roadside in Huntly and carry on to do the conference by herself

(or vice versa)

remains

too high.

I am dumping Flores action script in preference for submerging myself in Prune Blogs Other Simulated Worlds  where Alexander Trevi has the most wondrous post exploring the historical photographs of the permanent and temporary exhibits images made available by The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the way in which these simulations are influenced by their place in time

Apparently, dinosaur displays are not entirely the product of accumulated scientific data, of empirical truth. They are cultural artifacts, our “national psychic erector sets which we’ve put together in different ways depending on our mood.”

I figure that despite all our talk about “evidence based practice” … in time we will be able to make a similar exhibit featuring  all the versions of The New Zealand Curriculum.

Source: Artichoke

There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in several pastels. 

Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed, burnished, bright. People tore filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.

”Everything is concealed in symbolism. . . . The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation . . . code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering. . . . Not that we would want to. . . . This is not Tibet. . . . Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. This simple truth is hard to fathom. But once we stop denying death, we can proceed calmly to die. . . . We don’t have to cling to life artificially, or to death. . . . We simply walk toward the sliding doors. . . . Look how well-lighted everything is . . . sealed off . . . timeless. Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet . . . Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think.” White Noise Don DeLillo

This passage aligning the sterility of shopping with the art of dying from Don DeLillo’s White Noise always makes me think of schools … where everything is also concealed in symbolism … where everything is sealed off … and for the most part timeless …. and our OECD stats on 16 to 19 year olds suggest that many of them  find “the difference is less marked than you think”

I am still reading Jonathan Zittrain The Future of the internet and how to stop it and am currently enjoying thinking around the ideas in Chapter 4 – The Generative Pattern.

For starters I like Zittrain’s term for the quality of the Internet – generativity.

Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” (p70)

As he notes “Terms like “openness” and “free” and commons” evoke elements of it, but they do not fully capture its meaning, and they sometimes obscure it.”

Zittrain describes the five principle factors at work in generativity as:

1. How extensively a system or a technology leverages a set of possible tasks;
2. How well it can be adapted to a range of tasks;
3. How easily new contributors can master it
4. How accessible it is to those ready and able to build on it; and
5. How transferable any changes are to others – including (and perhaps especially) non experts

If we accept Cuban’s suggestion that school is a technology (or way of doing stuff) then perhaps we can use Zittrain’s notion of generativity and the five principles as criteria to help us develop more generative ways of “doing school”.

Generative thinking that might be quite useful for those School Plus folk who are charged with writing policy around

…. transforming secondary schooling to encourage young people to stay and complete qualifications, and strengthening partnerships between schools, tertiary education organisations, employers, industry training organisations and non-government organisations to extend the learning opportunities available to students, and to connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

It sure sounds like they are after a system that facilitates changes … that they need a  generative system that will provide…

1. Unanticipated change: innovative output new things that improve people’s lives
2. Participatory input – a life well lived is one where there is opportunity to connect to other people, to work with them, and to express one’s own individuality through creative endeavours 

Given that it is likely that it is our existing school systems sterility, has contributed to The Land of Milk and Honey’s distressing OECD demographic for 16 to 19 year olds not in school, not in training and not in employment implementing a transformation towards generativity is no small task.

And in truth we probably need to do all this whilst maintain some measures of sterility within the technology of school …. for as  Zittrain notes about generative tools …. they are  individually useful but not inherently better than their sterile counterparts … could just as easily be claimed for generative systems – the tools and practices that develop among large groups of people.

Generative tools are not inherently better than their non-generative (“sterile”) counterparts.  Appliances are often easier to master for particular uses, and because their design often anticipates uses and abuses, they can be safer and more effective.  For example, on camping trips, Swiss Army knives are ideal.  Luggage space is often at a premium, and such a tool will be useful in a range of expected and even unexpected situations.  In situations where versatility and space constraints are less important, however, a Swiss Army knife is comparatively a fairly poor knife – and an equally awkward magnifying glass, saw and scissors. P73

Just imagine for a moment that you were charged with both developing the programme logic and overseeing the implementation for the following outcomes. 

A.  Change the behaviours of young people so that they:
1.    Stay in school
2.    Complete qualifications

B.  Extend the learning opportunities available to students by strengthening partnerships between schools and:
1.    Tertiary education organisations
2.    Employers
3.    Industry training organisations
4.    Non government organisations

C.  Connect young people to their next steps beyond school.

I am puzzling about what will go in all the programme logic boxes …and whether the limitations in thinking through boxes - all that subjectivity in problem identification, policy imperatives, political sensitivities, complexity and heterogenity and absence of an evidence base stuff will mean the whole initiative will be yet another case of  “The difference is less marked than you think”.

Source: Artichoke