Thursday, September 3, 2015

The Future of Education?

I stumbled upon an interesting looking course in Coursera: What future for education?

Of course, I got instantly hooked on the question. Where is education going? How could we make education better? Where should it go??

The introduction is promising: In this course, our aim is to encourage you to start thinking and questioning ideas about education.

There are very few more intriguing questions than that! An invitation to think! I love open ended questions!

This is the first reflective piece, the assignment for week 1: 
Based on your experience as a learner, what do you think you will be able to get out of this course? And what ideas do you already have about the future of education?

I certainly have lots of learning experiences, both formal and informal, and I would like to think that I am quite professional in learning. My own teaching philosophy relies on collaborative meaning-making, which makes it so crucially important for me to regularly take my own advice and reflect on my thinking, learning and knowing. I am sure this course will help me in doing this. 

My expectations are for learning new insights about education, new ways for empowering learners, and new ideas for connecting with like-minded educators. I am also looking for new tools for authoring and facilitating PD courses for teachers and faculty, and one of the best ways for keeping the fresh touch as a teacher is to walk in the shoes of students and engage in somewhat formal learning experiences.

My ideas about the future of education are plentiful and diverse. I strongly believe in learner-centered education and learner agency being the future of education. Students cannot be seen as automatons producing prescribed outcomes as a result of their engagement, like puppets spewing out factoids taught by the search machines. 

Learning happens in interactions, no matter what technology we use (or don't use).  In today's interconnected world the need for students to be able to choose the information they use is clearly becoming a very pressing issue for formal education: the teacher (or the university or school) cannot be seen as the main source of information or knowledge, because information and misinformation are freely available for anyone who has access to the internet. The premise of learning and measuring learning has already changed. We as teachers must know how to ask non-googlable questions - which is good, because these questions focus on understanding connections, instead of just memorizing a bunch of facts.

My big question is: we already have the necessary technology to personalize education to meet the needs of each and every student. Why don't we use technology for that?

Friday, July 3, 2015

Learning and teaching philosophy

Every teacher has a teaching (and learning) philosophy they follow, either knowingly or being unaware of the beliefs that have an impact on the daily practice. I tried to trace back the steps to the most influential points in the development of my teaching philosophy.  

It all began when I had to read Berger & Luckmann’s book about social construction of reality for my M.Ed. studies in late 1990’s. It was the hardest book I ever read – when I got to the end I couldn’t understand what I had just read, so I reread it. And then again. But, that book taught me how we actually do construct knowledge in everyday life situation (and while studying, too, of course, but learning is NOT limited to the classroom).  And as I don’t actually believe in unlearning, I became very conscious of what my kids and students are exposed to, and very, very curious to hear how they interpret what they see and hear.

Well, then there is the Hidden Curriculum (Broady, 1987).  What a gem!  What all lies behind our curricula? All our traditions and practices and words carry a huge load of unnecessary items (i.e. unnecessary or even harmful for learning) – and especially our words do that (Bernstein, 1971) because they can so easily be used to wield unnecessary power over others. And words can be interpreted in so very many ways! I should know, as a non-native speaker I have sometimes weird connotations for words… not to talk about pronouncing them weirdly!

I learned about the theories of Ziehe in nineties as well, and in 2008 he talks about normal learning problems in youth. I am so very opposed to the deficit-based educational model, because it labels and categorizes students, and at worst makes them believe in these tags attached to them. Schooling, or formal education, is just a continuation and specification of already initiated “natural” learning process.  Students should be empowered to become life-long learners! This is why I think agency is such an important thing while discussing or thinking about curriculum. 

Students' agency is seen as students intentionally influencing their own learning behaviours. Much of our self-regulation is based on the positive learning outcomes during the early childhood experiences of self-efficacy (Bandura 2006).   Students’ agency, according to Bandura (2006, p.164-165) is a construct of four different components: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness. In the classroom these components apply straightforwardly to students’ learning and academic performance. It really is a shame is a curriculum is so prescripted that there is no room for students to learn how to make good choices! This is also where my current work on my doctoral dissertation focuses: Students' perceptions of their learner agency. Very exciting!

Of course I have assimilated and accommodated all wonderful theories from Bruner, Engestrom, Ericson,,  Illeris, Kegan, Kolb, Mahler, Mezirov, Piaget, Vygotsky, Wiggins and beyond… but my core belief is in cognitive approach being combined with constructive and cooperative practices to enable effective lifelong learning.





Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on psychological science1(2), 164-180.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. T.(1966). The social construction of reality.
Bernstein, B. (1971). On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. Knowledge and control3, 245-270.
Broady, D. (1987). Den dolda laroplanen [The hidden curriculum] (5th ed). Lund: Acupress.
Ziehe, T. (2008). ‘Normal learning problems’ in youth. Contemporary theories of learning: Learning theorists... in their own words, 184.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Knowledge as collaborative meaning-making

What is contemporary learning like? Is it just memorizing and regurgitating unrelated facts or constructing understanding?

It is crucially important for every educator to think about their own epistemological beliefs about knowledge, because it has such a huge impact in instruction. How exactly does data become information? And is it enough for an educator to transmit information or is it necessary to support students' knowledge creation and meaning-making processes?

The amount of information in the internet was in April 2014 about 4,4 trillion gigabytes, and it doubles every year (according to this LibraryJournal article). With all this information being freely at everyone's fingertips there are far too many details and facts for anyone to memorize.  And if we just aim to memorize the data, how can we connect those details into the main concepts or general idea? (See the previous post about visuals in learning process.)

Data (or a collection of facts) is just a building block of knowledge, and we need to move past both emphasizing the recollection of some data and information and thinking that transmitting it is teaching. We must support collaborative meaning-making in the classroom, because this provides the opportunities for students to learn from each other. Scardamalia & Bereiter (2006) express it very well:  "(in knowledge creating organizations) People are not honored for what is in their minds but for the contributions they make to the organization’s or the community’s knowledge" (p.101). Why should students' experience in classroom context be any different? Aren't schools and universities supposed to be exactly that: knowledge creating organizations??




Teaching as transmitting information is very unproductive, because it doesn't engage students or stimulate their need to learn, or feed their curiosity to understand and know more.  We must stop focusing on  this ineffective practice as the goal of instruction and focus instead in knowledge creation and management of collaborative meaning-making. This requires the acknowledgement of students' existing competencies, acquired either at school or outside of the formal education.

Does it really matter where and how my student learned something, if s/he is competent? I am aware that this will make textbook publishers to go out of business at some point, but I think it is far more important for students to learn how to find the relevant data and information, and make well informed choices about using it to guide their thinking, than regurgitating a chapter from a text book.

Furthermore, in learner-centered learning environment teachers should change the focus from universal delivery of information (i.e. traditional teacher-centered educational model) to learner-centered or personalized learning approach (i.e. learning facilitation) and:

(a) include learners in decisions about how and what they learn and how that learning is assessed
(b) value each learner’s unique perspectives
(c) respect and accommodate individual differences in learners’ backgrounds, interests, abilities, and experiences, and
(d) treat learners as co-creators and partners in the teaching and learning process.

These  learner-centered principles (APA task group, 1997) are very applicable for collaborative meaning-making and supporting students' knowledge creation.  After all, in order have students to contribute to the discussion, and to bring some external information to the learning situation, they must be empowered to do so and encouraged to think outside of the box.

Also, the learner-centered principles are very applicable for various e-learning environments (McCombs & Vakili, 2005). Technology should be used as means for promoting collaborative meaning-making - not as a tool to make student jump hoops and do busywork in regurgitating content provided by the instructors, or means for spying on students whether they have checked all the boxes and taken all the quizzes.

I know the interactions for learning take more instructors' time than simply checking boxes to verify that students have finished all their activities, but think how different contemporary learning could be:

Imagine what kind of learning occurs in a learning environment (virtual or classroom) where students are deeply interested about the subject matter and curious to learn more, because it is so applicable for their life or profession -- and the instructor is encouraging the discussions and has built room for innovation into the syllabus in order to learn with the students! Imagine the knowledge gained from this interaction!

It seems to me that we still have a loooooong way to go....



- - - - - - - - - -

APA Work Group of the Board of Educational Affairs. (1997). Learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for school reform and redesign. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

McCombs, B., & Vakili, D. (2005). A learner-centered framework for e-learning.The Teachers College Record107(8), 1582-1600.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology (pp. 97-115). 


Thursday, April 9, 2015

Supporting learning process with visual organizers

I was re-re-re-reading about concept-based design for learning and decided to create an image for my students - and anybody else - to use in their teaching and design.

One important part of teachers' work is to show the interrelations of topics in their subject matter, or in the elementary classroom to provide an inclusive view for students and make learning more meaningful. It often seems self clear for us as education professionals how different things  are related to each other, but at that point we forget that we have studied the phenomenon for years, and our students may be exposed to it for the first time in their lives.


Sometimes students struggle because they try to start learning from facts and details - and often their chosen learning strategy for this is memorizing. It is really hard to build your way up to the general idea or theory, when you don't know what is the main concept, and how to chunk all details together. Visual organizers like mindmaps and concept maps are very handy tools for this. Sometime students find them hard, because there is not one correct answer for building a mindmap, as it is a visual representation of one's own thoughts, and thus a very open-ended task. For this reason I would not grade students' mindmaps even if creating one was an assignment. Applying unnecessary power over learning process can be detrimental for good learning quality.

More about engaging students in their learning process can be read at NotesFromNina.


Saturday, January 10, 2015

Engagement in learning - or just in schooling?

One main problem n contemporary education is that “students are typically presented as the customers of engagement, rather than coauthors of their learning”.[1] It is really, really hard to be intrinsically interested and very engaged with things you cannot control, or in activities that are mandated by someone else. To be engaged in the learning process students must be given ownership for their learning. This ownership grows from personal and situational choices within the learning experience.
Schooling engagement is more typical in educational setting with prescripted instructional design, where students' learning outcomes are defined as an observable change in their behaviour.  Students may perceive these learning objectives as "an external imposition"[2], and use a strategic learning approach to complete the task.  In learning experiences like this students' main concern is to jump the hoop, and memorize (not understand) the content, because they know there will be questions asked about the content.  (I would like to remind that the prescriptive ID models were born in army and corporate training settings, NOT in a pedagogically or andragogically driven systems, but where top-down management implements learning objectives in order to produce desired learning products that benefit the system and/or corporation.)
In qualitatively different learning environment that supports personally meaningful learning learning engagement is more predominant, and the learning outcomes are significantly better. When students attempt to understand the learning content and make sense of it, this deep learning approach engages students in their own learning process, and often results in change in students' thinking. This is how life-long learners are born - students being allowed to engage in their learning, and pursue their interests, within the boundaries of the topic to be learned. 
It is extremely important to remember that "every student is capable of both deep and surface approaches, from early childhood onwards" [2].  The easiest way I have found to support engagement in deep learning is to provide students with choices in their assignments and assessments.  It is important to actively choose HOW you teach! 
:)
Nina

[1]Trowler, V. (2010). Student engagement literature review. York: Higher Education Academy.http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/61680/1/Deliverable_2._Evidence_Summary._Nov_2
2] Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education (2nd ed.). London: Routledge Falmer (quotes from pages 42 and 45).

Saturday, November 15, 2014

If a student learns....


There is an old philosophical thought experiment that has attributed to philosopher George Berkeley: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”  
Our subjective realities are references to the lives we live.  We see and hear things based on our preferences and expectations.
Every teacher knows how hard it is to help students to learn new concepts, if they have very strong misconceptions about the topic.  Similarly, our own observations may be clouded by preconceived ideas, and we sometimes forget how much students learn  while they are not taught. Or, sometimes even in spite of the teacher (this was a common joke among the faculty in the school I taught in Finland, and I still think how a good dose of self-irony sometimes saves the day ).
In education a common misconception is to believe that significant learning only happens when students are taught.  In reality students are born learning machines, they learn all the time, everywhere. But teachers are needed to enhance those individual learning experiences and help students to dive deeper into the subject or the area of their interest. Documenting and testing should not be the primary focus of teaching.
Yet, in today’s world we are very busy in documenting all kind of things: taking pictures and videos of events to make memories, and sharing them in social media.  A common joke is to question whether a *thing* really happened, if nobody posted it into social media. This may be the modern version of the falling tree thought experiment.
But how about teaching and learning?
I sure hope nobody is seriously asking this:


If learn

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Releasing the Magic!: HOW DO WE BUILD BRILLIANT?

Reblogging from:

Releasing the Magic!: HOW DO WE BUILD BRILLIANT?: It is strange that so many people believe that you create great schools simply by wheeling in the 'best' headteachers, changing the ...



To me it is fascinating how simple the basic concept of building brilliant (or successful) education is: collaborate, be constructive and focus on adding cognitive tools for students' disposal. Why is it then so hard to achieve....?