Subject: The 3rd Discussion Summary
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Fri 14 Apr 2000 - 05:06:35 MEST
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 13:06:35 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: The 3rd Discussion Summary
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Third summary of the IFETS discussion on the topic "Knowledge transfer,
and education: toward a complete learning environment
Background:
The notion of empowering learners has been a starting point of the 3rd
round discussions. It has become apparent that the hope behind technology
in education is to make this very goal possible. The discussion has now
centred on what it means to empower learners and the kinds of
characteristics of the learning environments that would make this goal
possible. While flexibility and meaningful learning seem to be features
that are continuously attributed to environments which encourage on-line
learning, the very link between on-line learning and these features seems
to demand some form of articulation. For Ania Lian, an articulation of
this kind would be expected to throw light on the ways in which
educational goals and educational means are being (or should be)
integrated.
Our discussions
Peter Trethewey (9, April) responds to the question of "What is the task
of education?". Peter Trethewey argues for educational environments which
have a potential to go beyond the predictable, or as he says: "It [i.e.
education] is certainly something about leading out untapped potential".
For Peter Trethewey, this can be achieved through the means which build
learners':
(a) confidence by "Removing barriers that prevent us accessing any
knowledge that we need",
(b) teach humility by: "Reminding us that there is no such thing as "my
knowledge" but only "my limitations"" and
(c) sense of unity between the spiritual and the intellectual dimensions
of education: "getting over the big barrier that things spiritual have
nothing to do with learning."
It would be a worthwhile task to reflect further on the political and
pedagogical implications of Peter Trethewey's statements.
Barry Kort (9, April) follows the question of the task of education and
using a distinction between learning for future (i.e. typical goals of
education) and learning for now (as in therapy environments), he comes up
with a concept of "just-in-time learning", a model, as he writes, "in
which one senses that one is ready and motivated to learn some subject or
life skill that has become timely and important." A meaningful learning
appears to be a mode of learning where the WHAT of learning emerges from
learners' struggles or something that "becomes timely". Technology for
Barry Kort has a role to play in that it gives a "more readily access
information experts, and communities that match their current learning
needs". While this can be so, we seem still left with the dilemma of how
such a "needs based" learning can emerge and how could we ensure that the
forms of communication (in the broadest sense) do indeed facilitate a
desired "match".
Eric Flescher (9, April) attempts to reply to previous inquiries about the
practical difficulties which technology raises in education and advises
teachers to seek support from one another: "inform teachers about related
topics on alternative assessment, multimedia, project and problem based
learning". In order to make the need for technology more apparent, Eric
Flescher advises to look for ways which would reconcile theoretical
arguments regarding the process of learning and arguments regarding the
object of assessment. He writes: " raise questions about what constitutes
learning" and " make administrators understand that is not easy to use
technology in the classroom when they measure performance by other means
(keeping kids quiet, engaged (which does not mean they are learning."
Eric Flescher (9, April) also responds to Ania Lian's discussion paper on
"Knowledge transfer, and education: toward a complete learning
environment". He criticises the paper regarding the following major
points:
(a) its argumentative structure: [the article] "did not really address the
issue of knowledge transfer even adequately"
(b) the solutions proposed: [the article] "did not sketch out a framework
for thinking about technology and education as proposed"
(c) the concepts on which it builds and which appear to confuse
flexibility and learning: "does not discuss the main problem that teachers
let students go on the internet or use software without much structure or
guidance - they give them too much flexibility- but that is not even
discusse[d]."
This criticism has been replied to extensively by Ania Lian (9, April) of
which the main point she summarises when writing: [given the length of the
discussion paper], I was afraid that it will exhaust the discussion but I
am glad to see that there are points that we can all elaborate upon."
Bill Ellis (10 April) joins the discussion on learner's empowerment in the
context of education and suggests that we may need to think about learning
in terms other than just power. He writes: " But isn't the root of
learning something much more satisfying than that? Isn't there a feeling
or emotion that comes from knowing that is just satisfaction in itself?
Or perhaps it is to satisfy our basic need to "belong." I don't see that
reading Poe or Shakespeare gives us power any more than walking in the
forest, listening to birds or watching a sunset has anything to do with
power. There is a deep feeling of belonging that comes from such
experiences. A feeling of awe, wonder, and participation in a great
mystery. This is what Einstein called his cosmic religion. It too comes
from knowing; from comprehending and understanding the cosmos. Isn't that
what drives our curiosity, our motive to learn? Just knowing." Questions
may need to be raised regarding the very definition of power with which
Bill Ellis has a difficulty and the very concept of wonder that he wants
to emphasise. How do they differ and how can the two possibly different
perspectives be either integrated or exploited in education?
Corrie Bergeron (10 April) brings the discussion back to the philosophical
presumptions on which its various contributors rest and asks: " So why the
hand-wringing over the nature of reality?" or " Call "the real world" what
you will, it certainly seems to exist in more-or-less the same form for
just about everyone on the planet." The assumptions of a parallel between
the forms of reality that people experience leads Corrie Bergeron to
assert that: "As self-selected instructional technologists, we have taken
it upon ourselves to say that this thing called "knowledge" exists, and
further we say that we have or will become expert in the tools that enable
a learner to acquire or perceive it. "In short, Corrie Bergeron's argument
seems to reflect impatience with those who seem to deny the very existence
of the object of knowledge that needs to be taught. Interestingly, we may
wonder whether it is the knowledge that is being denied or is it knowledge
as an object that is proposed as problematic. Would there be a difference?
Dennis Nelson (10 April) on the issue of the link between reality (or
truth) and education (or means of its rendition) refers to philosophical
traditions which seek confirmation of their reality in some unified and
unifying spirit. He writes: "The source of truth either is God, nature or
something else. Whatever the source, by definition truth doesn't change or
it isn't truth." and: "If anyone can prove it [arguments] untrue for even
one example, it's no longer a truth.
As a result, the role of education is to " disseminate "truth" to more
people more quickly and subject the "truth" to the experiences and
research of more people than previously possible. In this way, flat
earths can more quickly be discarded and real truths either more readily
accepted or better modeled and repeated." If we do accept that truths are
products of conditions which render them true, it may be that in different
contexts the same truths are no longer neither true nor even an issue.
This may be of consequence to the questions which try to answer in this
debate: 'How to teach for others to learn?'
Dennis Nelson (10 April) tries to reaffirm his case about the notion of
truth in his reply to Barry Kort. Regarding the question of what it means
to empower learners, Dennis Nelson provides a solution which avoids
tackling deep questions (like 'What does this mean?') on the grounds that,
once we have a truth, the meaning will become obvious. He writes: "I see
the goal of education as empowering learners to gain deeper insights into
the way things work (including society and culture), and devising more
enlightened methods of solving them."
Sarah Tolley (10 April) makes it her task to elaborate on the question of
the possible link between educational means and goals. To do this, she
subverts the question and asks: "surely it is not up to teachers to enable
students to feel empowered". She continues: "Students do this for
themselves, and it is the technology that helps them." It seems that the
question of whether teachers can enable students to feel empowered is very
much worth further elaboration. It would seem that had this been up to the
teachers entirely, then the power to gain would have been located solely
in the teacher. This would be the Hegelian Master - Slave relationship
where both depend on one another and hence both need one another for
reassurance of one's certainties. So if it is not the teacher from whom
the feeling of power is to come, how else can this feeling be made
possible?
Sarah Tolley suggests two sources of power:
(a) the feeling of control over the medium "the first empowerment comes
when the student has mastered the new medium!", and
(b) the feeling that one can affect others with the medium whose value now
becomes even more apparent: The next benefit is when the student realises
they have an audience for their written work."
Question is: how else can these forms of power achieved? Surely,
electronic discussions do not exhaust such forms. How can we enrich the
contexts and the means which would enable learners feel in control rather
than as objects of control?
Summary:
The issue of power remains still rather problematic. We all want the best
for the learners and somehow we think, possibly correctly, that things
will sort themselves out provided out students will somehow be able to get
engaged in the learnig process. Technology seem to offer this form of
engagement if only because it constitutes a yet another medium for
interaction. While this is all true, it is also quite possible that the
technology of computers offers us a medium like no other which comes clear
in the very fact that we talk about computers as multimedia facilities.
However, this multimedia environment can be an empty, frustrating and
lonely place if it is presented to learners as a means which should fix
their problems. This thought takes me now t a yet another one, one which
emerges from the mails summarised above: if technology is to meet
learners' needs, what should now make these needs emerge? If we recall the
model of learning which is often referred to as I->R>F -> R-> F ..etc
(initiation, learner's response, teacher's feedback), my question asks:
where do Is come from? It seems from the discussions above that if
technology is to meet learners' needs, technology is therefore not about
teacher's needs, or? If so then Is, or initiatives, cannot come from
teachers? If they do, then technology is about satisfying the teacher's
curiosity, teacher's questions, teacher's problems It may then follow that
the ways in which we facilitate the use of technology or any learning
spaces, is about satisfying teachers not learners. How can we therefore
exploit the best of technology without making it a tool of our
satisfaction, a tool that ensures our control and answers to our pedagogic
games?
How can we then not only make room for learners' questions but make these
questions the source of their learning? How can we enable the
"just-in-time learning" and not worry that we teach them too little?
Ania Lian
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