PostGrad
MindLab Study 1 : The Purpose of Education:
Our great-grandparents would see our lifestyle as bizarre – “electronic nomads wandering among virtual campfires” – yet in counterpoint many youth today see prior generations as hapless prisoners of geography, trapped in the limits of a single physical location Mitchell (2003).
A timely, pioneering and courageous approach to learning would address the need to develop students who are "learners" rather than setting out to achieve the end goal of making sure they are "learned”. Learners need to be involved in inquiry based learning process presenting content that seeds and stimulates interaction and the development of new concepts and skills. The development of a close community of fellow ‘learners’ to organically facilitate partnerships and teamwork in the learning experience provides further benefit through the exposure to different student perspectives and experiences. While the building blocks that form the skills to think, act, respond, investigate, evaluate and action are core to all education paths and careers, few of these skills are utilised in existing online learning experiences.
In this aspect two key features of constructivist philosophy have the potential to change the education offering. These features are play (fun) and experimentation (the ability to fail and fix fast).
An undercurrent of change driven by new teaching practices with proven success includes greater focus on functional skills, collaboration, creativity, understanding and evaluation of online data, social and cultural awareness, global connectedness and effective communication. The most progressive schools and institutes are gradually accepting the transition from teacher to student centred in the classroom. This shift has seen acceptance of the sharing of learning outcomes and a move from ‘covering the curriculum’ to ‘discovering’ it.
In many cases schools have used new technology to enhance old models of learning rather than using technology to transform the way teaching is designed and delivered. The need to update delivery methodologies and enhance existing pedagogies lies at the heart of digital and collaborative learning.
Now, more than ever, the education system must equip young people to be the problem"solvers of the future.
Today’s students need to be innovators, designers and creators ─ not just passive consumers. This
means building competence in computer sciences, information management and ICT, as well as using digital technologies for learning across the curriculum.
Digital pedagogy is based on three key concepts: ubiquity, agency, and connectedness.
Ubiquity refers to the pervasiveness of digital technologies.
Agency refers to the power or capacity to act and make choices.
Connectedness is about having a sense of being part of something that is bigger than one’s self.
Future-focused learning in connected communities:
Ubiquity
Digital technologies are being used in ways that mean the physical location of a ‘place of learning’ is increasingly irrelevant. Learners are now able to engage in their learning at any time, in any place and at any pace that suits their particular needs. Ubiquity has three key drivers:
The significant increase in personally-owned, internet-capable mobile devices — enabling individuals to personalise and manage their interactions with others, their collections of content, and their learning experiences online.
The pervasive availability of wireless connectivity — making access from anywhere and at any time more possible, and indeed expected.
The emergence of cloud applications and cloud storage options — reducing the dependence on locally-hosted applications and content, and increasing the opportunity for connecting to them from multiple devices in multiple locations.
Implications for schools/centres
Implement BYOD strategies and policies.
Provide robust wireless access.
Move to use of cloud-based services and applications where possible.
Build infrastructure based on the notion of 24/7 access for students and staff.
Implications for teachers
Eliminate the notion of ‘homework’ — replace with learning in any location. Encourage appropriate use of personal devices across all areas of the curriculum.
Agency
In simple terms, the notion of ‘agency’ may be understood as having the ‘power or capacity to act and make choices’.
The increasing use of digital technologies inside and outside school allows tailoring of learning experiences to individual learners, to respond to learner-driven choices about where, what and how learning occurs. They allow learners to manage the evidence to support and to demonstrate their achievement as learners.
‘Learner-centredness’ can embrace the notion that learners have agency over their learning, and the system exists to serve the needs and interests of the learner. Having agency as a learner is now becoming a default expectation, as young people become increasingly adept at using a variety of technology-enabled means to access, participate in, and even contribute to the learning that meets their needs.
Implications for schools/centres
Review all structures based on institution-centred decision making, such as; age-based classes, access to resources and timetables that restrict access to subjects of choice.
Make greater provision for including and responding to student voices in all aspects of school operation.
Implications for teachers
Move from being the ‘deliverer’ of curriculum to being the co-constructor and experienced learner. Model all appropriate values and attitudes as a digitally-literate learner.
Connectedness
Connectedness is about ‘having a sense of being a part of something that is bigger than one’s self’. It is not about the technology, but it is all about being connected. Connectedness is having an impact on all areas of human activity.
Jane Gilbert14 suggests that knowledge is now a verb, not a noun — something we do rather than something we have. She describes the ways our schools need to change to prepare people to participate in the knowledge-based societies of the future.
George Siemens has led the thinking around Connectivism as a learning theory for the networked age. He suggests that learning now involves creating connections and developing a network. He argues that learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources, and that learners can exponentially improve their own learning by plugging into an existing network.
The concept of networks and networking as the basis of human activity is central to all of this. Networks redefine communities, friends, citizenship, identity, presence, privacy and geography. They enable learning, communication, sharing, collaboration and community. Howard Reingold (2010) claims that ‘Understanding how networks work is one of the most important literacies of the 21st century’.16
In a connected world, no individual person or organisation can ‘stand alone’. The success of one depends on others, and the failure of one impacts the others. In such a world, synergistic benefits of knowledge creation considerably outweigh the accumulated benefits of individual knowledge.
Implications for schools/centres
Develop strong links and partnerships with community groups and other agencies.
Eliminate any rewards at a system level for individualistic, competitive behaviours.
Implications for teachers
Become active in personal learning networks for personal professional learning.
Use digital technologies to mediate connections with outside groups and experts as part of regular class learning.
Digital technologies are fundamentally changing the learning lives of everyone in the system — teachers, parents and students. Being digitally literate is not just learning about or even with digital technologies, but is being able to participate fully in a digitally-enabled education system.
Similarly, digital pedagogy is about much more than simply teaching about or with digital technologies. Digital pedagogy recognises the fundamental shifts in the way learning is occurring, and responds in ways that value what we know about effective teaching. Digital pedagogy applies effective teaching in a context where learning is ubiquitous, where learners have agency over their learning, and where knowledge and understandings arise through the connections that are made in a network of provision.
Digitally Collaborative and Creative:
Social learning theories help us to understand how people learn in social contexts learn from each other and informs us on how we, as teachers, construct active learning communities. Vygotsky (1962), stated that we learn through our interactions and communications with others. He examined how our social environments influence the learning process. He suggested that learning takes place through the interactions students have with their peers, teachers, and other experts. Consequently, teachers can create a learning environment that maximizes the learner's ability to interact with each other through discussion, collaboration, and feedback.
Developing Learning Communities
Community of Learners Classroom
Collaborative Learning and Group Work
Discussion-based Learning (Socratic Questioning Methods)
Instruction that supports social learning:
Students work together on a task
Students develop across the curriculum
Instructors choose meaningful and challenging tasks for the students to work
Instructors manage socratic dialogue that promote deeper learning.
Vygotsky argued, "that language is the main tool that promotes thinking, develops reasoning, and supports cultural activities like reading and writing" (Vygotsky 1978). As a result, instructional strategies that promote literacy across the curriculum play a significant role in knowledge construction as well as the combination of whole class leadership, individual and group coaching, and independent learning.
Moreover, teachers need to provide the opportunity to students for a managed discussion about their learning. Discussion that has a purpose with substantive comments that build off each other and there is a meaningful exchange between students that results in questions that promote deeper understanding.
Discussion-based classroom using socratic dialogue where the instructor manages the discourse can lead each student to feel like their contributions are valued resulting in increased student motivation.
The teacher, or local topic expert, plays the important role of facilitator, creating the environment where directed and guided interactions can occur. Many other educational theorists adopted Vygotsky's social process ideas and proposed strategies that foster deeper knowledge construction, facilitate socratic student discussions, and build active learning communities through small group based instruction.
In essence, Vygotsky recognizes that learning always occurs in, and cannot be separated from a social context. Consequently, instructional strategies that promote the distribution of expert knowledge where students collaboratively work together to conduct research, share their results, and perform or produce a final project, help to create a collaborative community of learners.
Knowledge construction occurs within Vygotsky's (1962) social context that involves student-student and expert-student collaboration on real world problems or tasks that build on each person's language, skills, and experience shaped by each individual's culture" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 102).
Shirley Clarke:
"Students will need to take more responsibility for their own education and how it is delivered - to ensure that it equips them with the aptitudes they need for the future."
Inclusion of the following skills or' aptitudes will mean difference between success and failure for the majority of young people:
* Critical thinking and problem solving
* Collaboration and leadership
* Agility and adaptability
* Initiative and entrepreneurialism
• Effective oral and written communication
* Accessing and analysing information
* Curiosity and imagination
Classroom discussion is central to formative assessment - talk partners discussing questions asked by the teacher and cooperatively discussing and improving their learning. Feedback and providing formative evaluation
amount to the same thing and are key to formative assessment, because they are the means by which we progress - learning from teachers and peers. Metacognitive strategies form the foundation of formative assessment, as part of a growth mindset culture, where pupils know that their learning disposition at any one time is as important as the skill or knowledge' in question. The two remaining aspects are teacher-student relationships and lesson study.
The Sutton Trust Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning (2011), referencing the same studies, placed effective feedback at the top of their table, with a potential gain of 9 months and described as 'very high impact for low cost'. Next comes metacognition and self-regulation at a gain of 8 months and then peer tutoring/peer-assisted learning at a gain of 6 months - some new words to mean the same key elements of formative assessment.
Summary:
Digital and Collaborative Tools and Technologies allow children to effectively work collaboratively and creatively, and to communicate the learning, the process and the outcome.
They support -
Inquiry based learning process presenting content that seeds and stimulates interaction and the development of new concepts and skills
Establishment of a close community of fellow ‘learners
Play (fun) and experimentation (the ability to fail and fix fast)
The transition from teacher to student centred learning in the classroom and beyond
The move from ‘covering the curriculum’ to ‘discovering’ it
The equipping of young people to be the problem"solvers of the future
The opportunity for our learners to be innovators, designers and creators
The replacement of ‘homework’ with "learning in any location"
The opportunity for the ‘power and capacity to act and make choices’
The provision for student voice in all aspects of school operation
The move from 'curriculum delivery’ to co-construction of learning
The formation of networks that redefine communities, friends, citizenship, identity, presence, privacy and geography
Networks of learning, communication, sharing, collaboration and community
Effective teaching in a context where learning is ubiquitous, where learners have agency over their learning, and where knowledge and understandings arise through the connections that are made in a network of provision
Learning through our interactions and communications with others
A learning environment that maximizes the learner's ability to interact with each other through discussion, collaboration, and feedback
Students ownership of learning
Critical thinking and problem solving
Collaboration and leadership
Agility and adaptability
Initiative and entrepreneurialism
Effective oral and written communication
Accessing and analysing information
Curiosity and imagination
Talk partners and discussion - cooperatively discussing and improving their learning