Subject: the 4th summary of teh discussion on learning environments
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Fri 14 Apr 2000 - 07:36:55 MEST
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 15:36:55 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: the 4th summary of teh discussion on learning environments
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Fourth summary of the IFETS discussion on the topic "Knowledge transfer,
and education: toward a complete learning environment
Background:
The notion of empowering learners is still the centre-question of the
discussions below. The debate continues to develop along the issues
regarding flexibility and meaningful learning as reflected in the ways in
which we portray the task and the means of teaching.
Our discussions:
Barry Kort (11, April) looks at the issue of empowerment and a sense of
wonder (cf. Ellis, B). He opposes the two on the basis of the former
reflecting the struggling aspects of individuals' and groups' realities
while latter for him reflects a form of engagement in "peaceful,
recreational activities." Thus while the latter Barry Kort identifies as
reinforcing a sense of belonging, the reality leaves him with a different
feeling altogether. He writes: "When I encounter these aspects of the
world in which I find myself embedded, I don't experience a feeling of
belonging. Rather I experience a feeling of alienation."
In the educational context, it would be interesting to elaborate whether
the problems that Barry Kort mentions in his posting do not come exactly
from the fact that most individuals or groups cultivate this sense of
alienation if only to assert own dominance. In the context of teaching,
the very divide between experts and non-experts, teachers and learners,
those who know and those who are known about, knowledge worth and not
worth knowing, they all may form the breeding ground for forms of learning
where at stake it is less to know and more to be known (or be recognised
as one worth being trusted). In such a context, to belong would mean to
draw the borders of the field of belonging. To subvert this model, would
mean to resource the power of one's sense of being a part of everything
and to seek ways for making room for all. The divide between knowledge as
forms of life (Wittgenstein) and knowledge as an object grows as I write.
Dennis Nelson (11, April) brings up the issue of law as a constrain and
opposes it to a notion of care. He writes: "the laws etc. are not
constraints, they are road signs. Even a well-worn sign about a bridge
being out or a dead-end deserves
attention."
Nettleton Gavin (13, April) refers back to Bill Ellis' distinction between
power and wonder and although sympathising with the latter and still
stresses the need for a vigilance and continuous examination of the
contexts of our actions: " We cannot rest in the cosy arms of faith and
believe that it will be alright in the end. As adults we need to be
constantly vigilant, active and participate in the process of making
meaning."
Eric Flescher (12 April) continues his critique of Ania Lian's paper. On
the question of empowerment Eric Flescher writes: "empowerment is usually
letting students make their own decisions. But it is more then that. It is
teaching them the process and all that is involved. It is not letting them
do what ever they want. (that should get things started)."
There seems to be a thin line between empowerment and, as Eric Flescher
outs it, letting them do whatever they want. Possibly, an attempt to
outline "all that is involved" in the process of feeling empowered and
teaching empowerment (as Eric Flescher seems to suggest) may illuminate
the question regarding power and its management in educational contexts.
Ania Lian (13, April) refers to Bill Ellis' dichotomy between therapy and
education and his appraisal of on-line learning. She asks: "if we were
given a chance to make education better, would we tell the government that
the problem is that not everyone is on-line?" In this question, an attempt
is made to continue a distinction between educational and environmental
features of our learning spaces. If on-line learning is considered
worthwhile because, for example, it puts people in touch, maybe to offer
richer conditions for learning we may need to shift our discourses away
from assumptions statements about on-line learning. Instead, we could
state the things that we want our educational environments to provide and
then look at the ways in which we could make these goals possible.
Otherwise, it seems that we might be giving too much credit to
communication channels which may in fact need further complexification.
Notions like flexibility or meaningfulness thus will longer be a function
of an environment (i.e. for example, not intrinsic to on-line modes) but a
function of the power that our learning spaces make possible for each and
every individual. The real question now is: what would it mean to give
rise to such a power? She writes: "in the context of education, questions
arise regarding the sources of those contexts in relation to which our
sense of achievement (or learners' sense of achievement) is to arise."
Yannis Karaliotas (13, April), drawing on previous discussions, calls to
our attention to what he describes as the school-based *learning paradox*
i.e. " where learners not only are expected to grasp 'new' concepts more
complex than those they already have available by simply mirroring
prescribed external representations, but are also left unmotivated and
alienated as to the purpose of their learning."
Learning "as a mirroring process rather than an interpretive one" presents
now a problem to education. If, as Yannis writes,
(a) "we were to adopt the historical notion that learning is our eternal
'dancing' between individual and collective taken-as-shared realities",
(b) "Could such an approach enable us to better detect learners' needs"
tap learners' intrinsic motives so that we can have a more complete
learning environment where goals meet the needs, and the means (content as
well as technologies, media, channels) are more appropriately utilized
towards the ends?"
And, if no knowledge is unbiased, it may turn out that the task attempting
to detect learners' needs may have two sides to it, as usual. On the one
hand we can assist, but, on the other hand, we need to assist in ways that
do not preempty learners' needs by reducing them to the meanings that we
give them. The notion of flexibility is beginning to shape up as a complex
one. If flexibility now is about making room for history and its
negotiation in contexts, then for our environments to be flexible we need
to rethink the ways in which we make room for history and its contextual
negotiations. How do the on-line discussions give learners access to
history and to a possibility of its negotiation? How can the Internet
searches alone make this goal possible? What is needed, it seems to me, is
a larger perspective on the educational task, one which would be able to
generate contexts, places and communication forms so as to position
learning in a historical perspective. On-line discussions and other forms
of exchange would not be seen as generating a meaningful learning. This
something else would be, something which is bigger than the sum total of
all the modes of communication that we can enumerate. Learning will not
be an object of those channels but vice versa. The channels will be the
object of learning i.e. they will be used only and exclusively then when
students see the need for them. So we will not conduct on-line learning
because it is good. Rather on-line learning would need to be an integral
part of a multiplicity of goals that led to a selection of a specific mode
of communication or exploration. In this way our students will be able to
reinvent the Internet to own needs, to reinvent communication channels as
they see them fit their needs etc. Flexibility, as I wrote, will be a
function of the environment's adjustment and not learners' obedience to
some presumably valuable things.
Crispin Weston (13, April) focus on the question of legitimation of
knowledge. He refers to Ania Lian's questions of who, and by which
process, can tell what is knowledge and how it should be acquired "who,
and what grounds and how this process can be facilitated, is given the
right and opportunity to correct, improve and, move forward the things
that constitute the knowledge?"
Crispin Weston's suggestions to this question, all locate the power of
knowledge in the knowledge itself: "What grounds". Answer: rational
argument and empirical evidence. Of
course we may not all agree on what constitutes either, but..."
This is a very crucial point which Crispin Weston follows arguing that: "I
think the teacher should always welcome correction by students, not only
on the grounds that the teacher might be wrong, but also on the grounds
that it is the process of rational debate by which students will
understand their subject most fully."
Now if our students are to be given a fair go, we must think about the
learning environment as a place where they are given a fair opportunity to
make arguments, or cases as I call them, for themselves on a maximally
informed basis. Otherwise teacher's tyranny against which Crispin Weston
argues would be reinforced by the means of preventing learners from such a
basis.
Summary
I think that the debate has moved forward with large steps. Agreements
have been reached regarding the following issues:
(a) knowledge does not exist independently of its producers
(b) to learn therefore is to engage in the process of knowledge
production. Learning therefore is not about recording information but
about its management.
(c) Meaningful learning is about meaningful management of knowledge. It is
about understanding what one's knowledge can do.
(d) Empowering learners therefore seems to be about creating conditions
where learners can see that the pat on the shoulder comes from many texts
other than that of the teacher i.e. it is about creating conditions where
power is a product of one's realisation that on e can do things.
(e) These things therefore are not tasks presented by teachers for the
purpose of showing to learners what they need to know (hence limiting).
Rather these things (sources of power) are answers that learners create as
a result of a challenge that their knowledge presents them when they
confront other forms of knowledge.
(f) Learning therefore is not about confronting knowledge as if it could
be seen a unified object but about confronting many knowledges and
generating on the basis of these experiences models which are better and
better informed and which allow them to do more and more.
I have to close for now but I will return to this issue later.
Ania Lian
ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2
please, keep checking my IFETS-site:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mlal2/lists/ifets/ifets.htm
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