The context of educational action

Recently, while working on a paper dealing with learners and technology, I was wrestling with the suggested notion that a sound understanding of the benefits and limitations of the technology along with a clear understanding of design would lead to more effective technology-enhanced instruction. The more I wrestled, the weaker my opponent got. The specific factor under consideration was teacher and student choice. What kinds of choices can and do teachers make when designing learning scenarios? What kind of choices can and do students make when dealing with those scenarios? It struck me that an very important aspect of the scenarios was missing.

Though I'm not the biggest teleologist going, much of what we as humans do is meaningful and purposeful activity (or at least I hope it is). Learning, at least in formal learning situations, should be purposeful. It should get us somewhere or should at least help us to get somewhere where we think we need to go. A long time ago, these goals of learning were simply called objectives, and these described behavioral changes that teachers wanted to effect in their students by the time the unit of learning was over. Over the years, such simplistic goals were deemed inadequate and competences became all the rage, so we have now broadened our horizons and speak primarily of learning outcomes. But how do we know what should come out of learning?

It occurred to me that students are one thing, learners are another. They are two different roles that an individual can take when engaging in the formal learning process. On the other side (of the desk) we have teachers, but given the increase in attention to and implementation of technology to support learning, those that design the learning may or may not be the teachers. In other words, although there are two corresponding roles the teacher can take: teacher or designer, these can actually be different individuals, not just roles.

There was still something missing. Learners are supposed learn particular things in specified situations (and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't or sometimes they learn things other than those that were planned). Designers are supposed to construct specified situations so that learners have the opportunity to learn those particular things. Ah, ha! It came to be: the interaction of the roles is dependent on the context. That is, the situation itself, the scenario in which learning is supposed to take place also affects the choices that the players in that scenario can make.

The materials I was working with started at the activity level: teachers task learners to do things and they do them as they see fit. But, this task/activity doesn't occur in a vacuum. It's part of something larger, like a lesson. A lesson in turn is part of a block or a unit, which is part of a course, which part of a program, and suddenly I found myself in the center of a matryoshka doll of my own making. These contexts were embedded in one context after another, and as far as formal learning is concerned, up to the educational system (usually of a country) itself. Each layer, if you will places constraints and restrictions on every layer inside itself. To help myself make sense of this, I came up with the following diagram, that I like to call my Model of Eduational Action:

Let me explain a bit about what it all means.

Teachers have a certain amount of freedom regarding which institutions they would like to work at and which programs they would like to participate in. Naturally these are limited by a number of factors, but these choices have little direct impact on learners. Similarly, students can also -- at least to a certain extent -- choose which institutions they want to study at and what programs of study they would like to pursue. In most places these days, they also have a fairly wide range of choices when it comes to individual courses as well. Whole curricula are not generally prescribed from above. To a certain extent, then, students have a bit more freedom here than teachers.

In the other roles, however, things look just a bit different. Teachers can be asked (or assigned) to course teams, that is, those who are responsible for designing and developing the course itself. As noted above, this may or may not be the teacher, rather it could be a designer or educational technologist who gathers input from the teacher and gives it form and structure. (That's the reason the roles on the bottom are in different shades of blue.) Once involved in this part of the context, though, the designer has a lot to say about what is done and how, or at least about what is supposed to be done and generally how the learner may go about doing it. All of these choices precede those made by the learners, of course, and as such place another layer of constraint on the context. The learner shows up only after a lot of decisions have been made about just what s/he should be doing with him- or herself.

The role of the learner and the choices s/he can make are pretty well restricted by the overall context of the learning scenario and the choices that have been made prior to his/her arrival. Depending on their own learning styles, interests, motivations, inclinations, goals, aspirations, and so on, they can decide how to deal with the three innermost layers of our context model: the unit, lesson, and activity. The unit level will most likely be influenced by the learner's strategic goals (what do I want out of this course as part of my obtaining, say, a qualification). The range of choice at the lesson level is affected by the strategy and the learner's own operational requirements. In the end, then, the learner may be able to make certain tactical choices about how they deal with any given activity.

What this little exercise has done for me is make me rethink the notion of learner-centered instruction. I'm beginning to wonder just how feasible the concept is and what role the concept should be playing in the general educational context. All the preceding decisions and layers of context ultimately limit the learner's choice. Given the right set of circumstances, even this last opportunity to choose could be taken away as well, for while all choices may be educationally relevant, they may not all be learning relevant.

This certainly needs more thought, but here in the quiet darkness inside the dolls, one has little else to do, but think.

The student voice

That's been the focus of my attention for the past couple of days. It's an interesting sentiment, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

One of the claims that was made was that all education is in effect learner-centered because it is all about getting students through the system in a meaningful way. This is to my mind a bit of a stretch. It makes too many assumptions, the most pernicious being that we (whoever that is) know in no uncertain terms what is best for the future. Unfortunately, the history of the world reveals to us we have precious little clue. No, this is system-centered instruction, at best.

Another assertion of learner-centeredness masquerades as technology-enhanced instruction. The use of technology, especially social-networking tools, promotes interaction amongst learners and helps them learn better. One group participating in this discussion maintains that all interaction promotes learning, another group claims that the technology itself is driving and promoting this. Unfortunately, this is technology-centered instruction, nothing more.

Another strain of thought (which tried my patience) is that giving the students themselves more say makes for learner-centered instruction. Given that I can remember how much I knew when I was 18 compared to how little I know today, I'd say this is little more than a cop-out. My experience has been that most young people rightfully want a lot, but don't really know what they really want, for you need a bit more (sometimes painful) experience to figure that all out. This is more a notion of self-centered instruction than anything else.

In my mind, learner-centered teaching/instruction/... must truly start with the learner, that is, the individual who wants to/must/should/will learn. This means, by default, that we must have a clear idea of what we understand learning to be. It's not clear to me that there is general agreement on what this is. My reading and experience has shown me that regardless of whether it is acquisition of knowledge, skill development, effective ordering of thought, problem-solving or even all of these, learning has one significant and outstanding characteristic: it is individual. No two people learn alike. No two individuals in any given learning situation will learn exactly the same thing. In other words, learner-centered instruction must, by nature, be individualized instruction.

Coming down out of the threes

Came across an interesting notion: the "iron triangle" ... a play off of the Iron Curtain of old, that is, a barrier that you really can't do too much about. The iron triangle, when it comes to elearning, of course, has to do with accessibility, quality, and cost [1]. Making adjustments on any single leg of the triangle will have an impact on the other two, and as Daniel et al. (2006) put it, this has been "a straitjacket on the expansion of education throughout history" [1]. I suppose the best we can do is strive for balance, but is that just another dead end?

That's one triangle, but it turns out there are more. While wading through Richardson (2005) on teachers' and students' perceptions of teaching and learning, it occurred to me -- again -- that there are three fundamental elements to every formal learning scenario: the teacher, the learner, and whatever it is that is being learned (the "stuff", if you will). For the longest time, the teacher was the center of attention. In some cultures, like Germany, the "stuff" was. More recently there has been a (n alleged) shift toward the learner. Isn't this triangle, just as iron as the one above?

That, in turn, got me thinking about what is supposed to come out of all this. In other words, the latest educational buzzword came to mind: learning outcomes. I couldn't help but thinking of cyclicity of things, since my old friend Bloom (1956) who really wanted to address not only the cognitive aspects of the learner, but also their affective and psychomotor aspects as well (another threesome). You can't talk about learning outcomes these days without Bloom getting into the action, and though only one of the dimensions of the person is usually addressed, or at least emphasized, aren't they all equally important?

But, I can't think of Bloom without being reminded of Pestalozzi [4] who emphasized the tripartite nature of the learner as well, though his language was more direct and natural than Bloom's. Dear Pestalozzi, in his simplicity, only spoke of "heart, head, and hands". This works very well in practice, too, as my eight years of experience at the Hermann Lietz-Schule demonstrated, for we, too, took him as our starting point. So, with all respect to Bloom, his ideas were not that original, but they were reformulated for modern times. This is certainly no reason to reject them, but is it a signal to accept them as blindly as we seem to?

And there is one final triangle that ties into all of this as well, and it deals with the heart of the entire matter, namely learning itself. The discussion of learning outcomes, at least as seen through the eyes of vocational education, involves three different types of learning as well: formal learning (what we supposed to be learning), non-formal learning (what we learning instead of what we're supposed to be learning), and informal learning (what we do practically every minute of our lives). This is another triangle that needs be thrown into the mix, is it not?

I know we moderns like to focus on the details, but this is often at the expense of the big picture. When considering education today -- online or off, present or distant, or in any other mode -- it would do us good not to forget that there is more involved than we may first perceive. This means, too, that when we're looking for solutions to educational problems, making an adjustment on one leg of a triangle may not get us the results we seek, but all of these triangle are in fact interrelated. We may always be unadjusting much more than we think we are fine-tuning.

References
[1] Daniel, J., West, P. and Mackintosh, W. (2006) "Exploring the role of ICTs in addressing educational needs: identifying the myths and the miracles", NADEOSA 10th Anniversary Conference, Pretoria, South Africa, 23 August 2006; also available online at http://www.col.org/resources/speeches/2006presentations/Pages/2006-08-23.aspx (accessed 2010-05-05).

[2] Richardson, J.T.E. (2005) "Students' Approaches to Learning and Teachers' Approaches to Teaching in Higher Education", Educational Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 6, December, pp. 673-680.

[3] Bloom, B.S. (ed.) (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Chicago, Susan Fauer Company, Inc.

[4] Pestalozzi, J.H. (1979) "Über die Idee der Elementarbildung (Lenzburger Rede) und 5 Schriften um 1810", in E. Dejung (ed.) Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Ausgabe, Band 22, Zürich, Orell Füssli.

[5] Cedefop (2008) The Shift to Learning Outcomes: Conceptual, Political and Practical Developments in Europe, Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.