Assignment 1: Public policy roles and relationships

 Blog: Introduce yourself briefly and discuss a public policy issue where there have been changes to the roles and relationships across government and the private and community sectors (500 words)

Compulsory education (schools)

The ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ reforms of New Zealand’s school sector in 1989 saw a shift from highly centralised command-and-control system of governance to highly devolved  “self-management” model. A key feature was the creation of community-based Boards of Trustees which were given responsibility for governing their individual schools. These Boards are accountable to their local community as well as the government.
At that time, ‘governance’ and management were still framed as sub-branches of administration rather than disciplines in their own right. The reforms therefore focussed strongly on administrative compliance with centrally-determined policy. That understanding has persisted within both the sector and the Ministry. As Openshaw (2014) notes, “although teacher unions have remained sceptical of these changes, and reservations still remain concerning the impact of the reforms, few critics appear to have advocated any serious alternative to the present reformed system. Any suggested changes appear to be more along the lines of tinkering, rather than wholesale change.”
Alongside the formal governance roles of the Ministry and school boards of trustees are sector-level relationships of government agencies¹ and education NGOs. The command-and-control approach inherited from the pre-1989 Department of Education has been strongly evident until the last 18 months or so, when it has begun to soften into a more collaborative and genuinely consultative approach to policy development and enactment rather than implementation.
The present Minister of Education (Hekia Parata) and Secretary for Education (Peter Hughes) have introduced a strong and clearly stated focus on the Ministry as ‘the steward of the system’ rather than the ‘sector leader’ role of previous years. While this is taking time to permeate through the layers of Ministry bureaucracy, the new stewardship role (which is much more closely aligned to the original vision of the Picot Report) now appears to be gaining traction and credibility with sector groups.
The most notable examples of this shift have been the Ministerial Cross-Sector Forums instituted in 2012, and the Investing in Educational Success (IES) announced in January 2014 which have both placed a strong emphasis on communicating strategic policy intentions and building consensus with NGO sector stakeholders to develop a shared understanding of the policy issues and co-design sector-wide responses.
This new direction is strongly aligned with the views expressed in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 publication The Future Role of Civil Society and raises interesting possibilities for further evolution of policy development and implementation for the future.
The main challenges that the new model of shared policy development in the New Zealand school system must continue to overcome include

• strengthening bureaucratic capacity;
• intense and longstanding distrust between agencies and the Ministry and between individual schools
• information asymmetry (public engagement)
• fragmentation of funding; policy initiatives and community capability

Notes

¹Notably the  Ministry of Education, Education Review Office (ERO), New Zealand Teachers Council (NZTC), replaced on July 1 2015 by the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) and the Office of the Auditor General (OAG)
²  These include teacher unions (New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI Te Riu Roa), Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)), principals’ groups (New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF), Secondary Principals Association of New Zealand (SPANZ), Special Education Principals’ Association of New Zealand (SEPANZ) boards of trustees (New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA)) and others (New Zealand Area Schools Association (NZASA), New Zealand Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools (NZAIMS), New Zealand Catholic Education Office (NZCEO))

Bibliography

Openshaw, R. (2014) Picot Report/Tomorrow’s Schools. Dictionary of Educational History in Australia and New Zealand (DEHANZ),7 January. Available http://dehanz.net.au
Picot, B. et al. 1988 Administering for Excellence: Effective Administration in Education.
Phillips, S. and S. Rathgeb Smith (2014) A Dawn of Convergence? Third sector policy regimes in the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cluster, Public Management Review http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2014.965272
Tanzi, V. (2010) ‘The Role of the State’ in Government versus Markets: The Changing Economic Role of the State, Cambridge University Press.
World Economic Forum (2013) The Future Role of Civil Society http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_FutureRoleCivilSociety_Report_2013.pdf

Another dimension

This semester I've enrolled in Victoria  University's Master of Public Management programme. It's a new programme being offered by the School of Government, and a companion programme to their Master of Public Policy.

It's another dimension in my formal study, ans one that for me intersects nicely with my earlier education studies through USQ.

So, after a 3- or 4-year hiatus I'm back to the blog to record my progress through the course, thoughts on the course materials and how they interact with my existing understandings, and the insights I've gained from it.

It's taken me a while to get back into the rhythm of post-grad study,  but with the first assignment safely under my belt now I feel as if I'm on my way...

Valuing Social Capital

I've been having an interesting conversation on Google+ with Patricia Kokinos of Change the Schools about the significance of the Occupy movement in the US.

Obviously, this is not a unique phenomenon - similar public uprisings against the injustice and inequality of "the establishment" have occurred in a number of countries around the world in the past year.  And, with the world in the grip of what is rapidly proving to be the biggest "global financial crisis" since the 1930's it is hardly surprising that the same kind of grass-roots demonstrations are showing up.


In that conversation, I posted:

Seems to me this genuinely may signal "the end of the world as we know it" - i.e. the collapse of the communist-capitalist industrial revolution social economies. The interesting question (apart from what else can we expect before the end of the Mayan Great Age in 2012?) is - what will [we] replace it with?

One of the critical factors for me that has eventually contributed to the downfall of both these post-classical social/economic models is the failure to find a way of accounting for - and therefore valuing - social capital, for example the value to society of parents being able to afford to spend time focusing on parenting their children well instead of being forced out into paid employment.

On what planet is spending 40 hours at a desk, or on a production line of more value to society than spending those 40 hours providing emotional and physical security for your children? And yet we have structured our society so that staying home to concentrate on providing those things for your children has no "value" because no money changes hands. Ironically, if somebody else cares for your children, that does have "value" because their motivation is financial.

So how do we - especially those of us involved in education and other social profit activities - change this?

Finding an answer is crucial. And urgent.

As I have been thinking about that some more, I've found myself wondering: if part of the issue is indeed "the failure to find a way of accounting for - and therefore valuing - social capital" appropriately in the economic fabric of our societies, (over-valued in the communist regimes, under-valued in the capitalist ones) then might the answer come from the "triple bottom line" concept?

 We have already got the beginnings of an Emissions Trading Scheme, where we assign a  value to the costs or benefits of various activities in terms of their contribution to carbon emissions. The idea of "green dollars"is not new either. So what about a system of transferrrable Social Capital Credits that recognise the social costs and benefits (as opposed to the private costs and benefits)  that activities have?

So for example, a teacher, nurse or counsellor might accrue SCCs as part of their salary package, as these activities have a social benefit as well as the private benefit to clients. Those credits could be traded off later to finance parental leave or vacation time.

Students would accrue Social Capital Credits as they progress through the education system,  since a more educated workforce has social benefits as well as private benefits for the individuals concerned.


People who are not in paid employment, but who work as caregivers in the home, or who do volunteer work in the community, would accrue Social Capital Credits to reflect the value of that work - which could be traded in to provide an income stream.  So parents could afford to stay home and take care of their own children, rather than being forced into menial "work" while someone else gets paid to do it.


The value of social profit (I don't like the term non-profit, and they're not all 100% unpaid /voluntary) organisations would become transparent, and could be accounted for in the national accounts. 


Presumably, activities deemed anti-social would attract Social Capital fines as well as or instead of simply financial penalties or  imprisonment.


It's a simple concept. Not necessarily an easy one to implement, but perhaps an idea whose time has come?

Ubiquitous learning

A colleague has pointed me in the direction of Ubiquitous Learning a couple of times now. It seems to have developed in parallel with the idea of feral learning, from a similar starting point, and spread much more quickly. And, as the name suggests, it seems to have a considerable amount of overlap.

My first impression was that the focus of the Ubiquitous Learning discussion is more firmly on the  technologies of virtual and distributed learning environments (see for example the UbiLearn conference website, but reading Leigh Blackall's critique suggests to me that perhaps there is more overlap than I originally thought.

But, even so it seems to me that there is a fundamental difference in that the material I've found so far on Ubiquitous Leaning is still beginning from the perspective of the educator, and trying to extend it out, where Feral Learning - in my conception of it at least - begins with the individual, and perceives schooling or other forms of education, training, or instruction (when they work) as subsets of the learning and growing that we all do. I may be being precious about this - reality checks are welcome here - but I believe that is a substantive difference. We may all be headed for the same middle ground, but I think we are heading for it from somewhat different worldviews.

The stuff I've read about Ubiquitous Learning seems to start from the idea of ubiquitous technology, and extend that into the area of education and from there to informal learning. Feral learning starts with the human being's need to grow and develop. Learning is an intrinsic part of growing up, growing wise, and growing old.Technologies like the internet and mobile phones can be great enablers, but actually they're not necessary - people learn stuff wherever they are and whatever they do. It's part of the human condition.  In other words, feral learning is a rather more anarchic and radical proposition than what I've read of Ubiquitous Learning suggests.

But, that said, it seems like it's a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

"How am I supposed to be inspired by that?"

A few days ago, Jan Visser of the Learning Development Institute (LDI) posted this on LDI 's Facebook page

Attached is a link to Paul Lockhart's "A Mathematician’s Lament." A brilliant plea, in my view, to refocus education on such things as beauty and to acquire one's knowledge of disciplines like math and science within the context of relevant current issues that can be seen, also, within a historical perspective. Not an entirely new viewpoint, of course, but it's very well formulated. Enjoy! JV

Jan's right, it's a great paper on why our teaching of mathematics puts kids off instead of showing them what's fascinating and beautiful about it. Although it's several years old now (first published in 2002) it remains relevant - unfortunately. Here are a couple of tasters...

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.

As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key." ... educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. ...

In the higher grades the pressure is really on. ...Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint. “It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. ... “To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. ... I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”

...Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

... By removing the process and leaving only the results of that process, you virtually guarantee that no one will have any real engagement with the subject. It's like saying that Michaelangelo created a beautiful sculpture without letting me see it. How am I supposed to be inspired by that?

Check out the full paper on the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) website.

BTW - the BEST mathematics book I have ever read is The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

?! Interrobang - How fun is this ?!

How fun is this?! 

The latest adventure from Interrobang is

TALKIN’ ’BOUT MY CONSTELLATION?! 

Mission: Use Microsoft WorldWide Telescope to create a tour of your favorite spots in space. Explain why they are your favorites. Ask each viewer to add a new destination to the tour.

Interrobang is a great concept - a fully realised feral learning site! Participants can choose from existing challenges, or create and share their own, challenging others to join in as well. The framework provided allows for collaboration in teams as well as individual enquiry, and provides a framework of language and acknowledgements to make participation transparent to other site users.It's obviously targetted at school students, and is developed in a way that enables activity on Interrobang to merge in to school-based study.

When is a problem not a problem?

When it's a game!

InterroBang?! is a game where you get to have fun with problems. Students complete real-world missions with deeds that can win prizes, improve problem solving skills, and connect them with others to do things that just might change the world.

Those who remember the success of the Carmen Sandiego games ( a lifetime ago now!) will have no trouble at all recognising the concept and the appeal. Interrobang takes the concept of self-directed enquiry learning and moves it "into the cloud" - with space for participants to interact, compare results, and develop their own social hierarchy through a system of mission badges  and forums.

Gotta love it!!!

People who've been talking about feral learning Frances Bell (University of Salford)

‘Communities of Practice’ Online? The case for ‘going Feral’ in Academic Development  by Frances Bell & Mary Hall, published in Innovative Learning in Action   ( 2006, University of Salford) 

This paper is a few years old now - one of the  earliest. It follows the development of one of the early online discussions about feral learning on the CABWEB portal where Frances was facilitating a group I joined. It goes on to consider the activities on online groups as communities of practice and examines how professional communities of practice themselves embody the ideas of feral learning.

People who've been talking about feral learning - Jane Bozarth

Jane Bozarth (Author biography posted on Amazon)

A decade ago I moved from the world of traditional instruction to designing and facilitating both asychronous and synchronous training. Now that technology -- and learner access to it -- has finally caught up with possibilities, my interests have expanded to the world of social media tools to support and extend the work of the workplace training practitioner.

I have an M.Ed. in Training & Development/Technology in Training and a doctorate in Adult Education. (My dissertation, on workplace social learning/communities of practice, is available free via a Google search). I enjoy writing, and in addition to my books I was, for 10 years, a member of "Training Magazine"'s book review team and now write book reviews and a monthly column, "Nuts and Bolts" for the eLearning Guild's online "Learning Solutions Magazine".

You can find me "live" most anytime on Twitter @janebozarth and almost always on Thursday evenings as one of the moderators of the popular #lrnchat sessions. My Twitter profile describes me as a feral learner, positive deviant, and World's Oldest Millenial.
I also drive too fast.

profile posted at lrnchat.wordpress.com/whos-who/

7 Apr 2011 ... , http://twitter.com/JaneBozarth , AUTHOR,TRAINER,INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER, E-LEARNING SPECIALIST, POSITIVE DEVIANT, FERAL LEARNER ...

People who've been talking about feral learning - Stephanie Zimmerman (ALA Learning Round Table)

Feral Learning posted December 29, 2009 By Stephanie Zimmerman  at  The American Library Association Learning Round Table

The original title of this post was going to be “Using FREE Online Resources for Continuing Education”. However, I was reading my Training Doctor Newsletter for November 2009 (yes, I’m a little behind and you should subscribe too) and came across a term that is new to me, feral learning. The newsletter states:

The term “feral learning” was coined in the 1990s by Ted Nunan, perhaps, or by Dr. Roy Lundin. It is in reference to employees taking control of their own training needs and education by utilizing resources they find themselves (such as Google).

Beautiful description of how I go about meeting my training needs with a very small budget. In these trying times, I currently have no CE budget, so I’m grateful that I have developed the skill of furthering my knowledge through online connections.

People who've been talking about feral learning - Dr Alison Ruth (Vicarious Conversations)

Defining Flexible Learning 

posted by Alison Ruth on 24 March 2008 on her  Vicarious Conversations blog

So, is flexible learning new? Gee, what a loaded question. In some ways, it is a new concept that we recognise and promote, but I think there have always been some elements of flexible learning around, we’re just getting better at talking about it. I came across a phrase a few years ago, and it’s one that has stuck with me since and that is feral learning. Ted Nunan first used it as a kind of throw-away statement in a paper about Flexible Learning. Since then, feral learning has taken on a new meaning for me (compare it to the way we do our PhD research as opposed to the structured processes in degree programs). But I don’t think it (feral learning) is really useful as a phrase for discussing structured learning environments, which is where I am most likely to be found. There are elements of feral learning in both flexible and blended learning environments.

Who else has been talking about feral learning?

Finding the Facebook group "Fans of feral learning" that I blogged about in my last post made me wonder what else has been happening with the idea of feral learning since last time I looked.

The posts that follow are some of the other people who've been talking about it...

People who've been talking about feral learning - Pam Hook (Artichoke)

Learning communities as cryptoforests   
posted by Pam Hook on  March 23rd, 2011 at  Artichoke

Wilfried Houjebek’s Cryptoforestry blog looks for “forests in cities” and for “cities in forests” – a purpose I want to adopt as I travel around different places working with schools in New Zealand.
He describes cryptoforests as a “cultural and not a biological way to classify nature”.
And claims that “the recognition of a cryptoforest is a visionary act, not a mechanical operation: there is no machine vision here.”

1) Feral forests (Planted tree zones, for instance along motorways, that have been allowed to become wild to the point that their wildness is outgrowing their manmadeness.)
2) In limbo forests (Tree-covered plots that feel like forests but technically probably aren't; states of vegetation for which lay-language has no name.)
3) Incognito Forests (Forests that have gone cryptic and are almost invisible, forests in camouflage, forests with a talent for being ignored.)
4) Precognitive forests (Lands that are on the brink of becoming forested, a future forest fata morgana.)
5) Unappreciated forests (Forests regarded as zones of waste and weed, forests shaming planners, developers, and the neighbourhood. NIMBY forestry.)  

It is a lovely way of looking at forests – one that allows us to more widely imagine what the connection between human systems and natural ecosystems might be.
And it makes me want to look at "learning" and “learning communities/networks” in a similarly "visionary" way.

1) Feral learning communities (Learning communities, for instance associated with a prior event or a conference, that have been allowed to become wild to the point that their wildness is outgrowing their manmadeness.)
2) In limbo learning communities (Imposed or artificially populated teacher learning communities that feel like learning communities/networks but technically probably aren't; communities formed to meet a contract outcome; states of networking for which lay-language has no name.)
3) Incognito learning communities (Learning communities that have gone cryptic and are almost invisible, communities in camouflage, communities with a talent for being ignored.)
4) Precognitive learning communities (Communities that are on the brink of becoming learning communities, a future learning community fata morgana.)
5) Unappreciated learning communities (Learning communities regarded as zones of extremism, immaturity, irresponsibility, belligerence, anecdote, and romanticism; communities embarrassing those with institutional authority, policy writers, politicians and curriculum developers, and the neighbourhood. NIMBY learning communities.)

I can identify examples of each but it is likely I will not understand these learning communities fully until I find a way to join them.

One of the comments posted in response on

 March 29, 2011 botts says...

I love the idea that a learning community could be feral. That it could become so wild and entangled that it no longer resembles whatever it was that it originally resembled.

In Australia, the biggest danger of the feral forest is that it might catch alight and as the tangled, heavy, uncontrolled underbrush burns, the canopy above explodes with a violence not unlike a war zone. As the canopy explodes, the burning embers that are thrown into the air get blown forward ahead of the fire, sometimes for many kilometres, and when these embers touch down new fires are created. When this happens we start describing them as wildfires and wildfires are extremely dangerous and unpredictable, fast moving and incredibly hard to stop.

Imagine working with students who’s learning is dangerous, unpredictable, fast moving and incredibly hard to stop.

I want to see my classes go feral. I want to feed them with the passion and energy that comes from knowing that everywhere around us is the chance to learn, that all knowledge should be grabbed and grappled with and turned into usefulness, that everyone around us has knowledge that could be gleaned, that everyone of us has knowledge that should be shared, that not knowing is simply an excuse for finding out.

I’ve spent years reading and studying the “right” way to teach and learn. I have regurgitated countless thousands of words on proper controlled educational environments. I have university degrees that declare that I have mastered the understanding of how to appropriately disseminate knowledge to those who would come to listen to my outpourings of know-it-all told-you-so lock-step lessoning. But I’m not convinced.

The more I explore the fringes of learning, the more disinclined I become to believe that we have it right. I want to deconstruct and tear down and grant freedom. I want to lose control and give back power. I want to give permission to go feral.

People who've been talking about feral learning - Gary Woodill

Gary Woodill

Psst…wanna hear something great?   (Posted on December 15, 2008 on Gary Woodill's blog)

As a “feral learner“, I am always searching for interesting sources of ideas and information. ...

DIY: Do-It-Yourself Learning  (posted on May 27, 2010 on Workplace Learning Today)

When change happens as quickly as it is now happening, there are few experts – just a few people running to keep up. Most of what I learned in university it not relevant to what I do today…and I’ve stopped taking courses a long time ago. Instead, learning has shifted to being a do-it-yourself operation, looking for answers when you need them, “learning by wandering”, being a nomad in a continuous search, a feral learner, and other metaphors of relative freedom from the confines of a classroom. The downside is that you have to know where to look, and what to look for, in order to succeed. The upside is often innovation and exhilaration. What is making it all easier is that knowledge is becoming more open, once exotic technologies are becoming inexpensive and can be easily ordered.

"Fans of Feral Learning"

How exciting! I've just discovered a Facebook page called "Fans of Feral Learning".  The initial post references Jan Visser's 2006 blog posting on feral learning, which in turn references my earlier blog ... so there you have a perfect example of social media nurturing and disseminating innovation and social change.

What an exciting example of the amplification process Sandy Britain talked about.

I wonder where it will lead next?

Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.

There are two underlying philosophies that come into conflict in our education system.

One of them is the Disneyland philosophy - that a good heart is what matters: if you mean well, and wish hard enough on your lucky star, your dreams will come true. The good guys will always win, even against impossible odds. It's not what you do, but how hard you try that counts.

Pinocchio - When you wish upon a star ♫ (original)… - MyVideo

The other is the Yoda philosophy captured in the quote at the top of this post: A pure heart may be a prerequisite, but it is not enough. It's not about how hard you think the task is, whether or not you have to extend yourself to achieve it, or how many reasons you can find for it being an unreasonable expectation: it's whether or not you achieve the result that matters.




We in the education sector have not yet managed to reconcile these perspectives - and we need to.

This  underlying dispute is very evident in today's education headlines - with some saying "We try really hard to make your kids try really hard - so you should be satisfied with that," and others saying "How hard you think you're trying is not the point. Whether you understand and meet my child's needs is the point."

Our education system requires both: to keep trying, and to look past "try" to "do".

As a parent, I don't care if "85% of our students do well." I want to know that my child is getting the professional attention and support he needs to get to achieve at the level he needs to in order to have the best possible quality of life he can. Yes, I care that if you are teaching him, your heart is pure and that you really care about him as a person and that you will not stop trying. But that in itself is not enough. It is no consolation to me if every other child in the class - or the school - is validated, challenged, and experiences success, if mine doesn't.

Where my child's education and future is concerned, I'm with Yoda: "Try" not. Do... or do not. There is no "try".

Reflection: How did I get here?

My mother was a secondary teacher, so one of the things I always promised myself growing up was that I'd never be one myself... which is a shame, because I L-O-V-E teaching, I just couldn't stand be a school teacher (!) I love learning new stuff, finding things out I didn't know before, testing my understanding and my thoughts against what other people know, and I love helping other people to discover the thrill of doing that.

Somehow though, that's not what school-teaching is all about. ECE, postgrad, workplace, anywhere else is fine - but schools and undergraduate university study are generally not. *sigh.*

When I left university with an Honours degree in economics I had had enough of formal study & promised myself I wouldn't ever go back. (It was a mediocre degree, university didn't engage or challenge me any more than school had. I've always regarded it as a double major - in Economics and Nightclubbing. As a consequence, the result didn't do me or the university in question much credit really. )

The thing that drove me back to education was having kids. In New Zealand we have a wonderful co-operative Early Childhood organisation called Playcentre (one word) where parents train to work as ECE 'teachers' learning child development, observation skills the ECE curriculum etc alongside their children. You get a very different perspective learning ECE pedagogy to support your own child and your friends' and neighbours' children from what you might otherwise. It can't help but be learner-centred. (Besides which, working in ECE settings is like herding cats - first of all you have to figure out where they want to go, then you work with that.... otherwise you're sunk!)

Once my kids had both gone to school I worked for about 5 years doing project management of course materials in a distance education institution, and as part of my PD there I began studying online in the University of Southern Queensland's M.Ed programme.

Postgrad rocks! You're allowed to have an opinion again - and to question and challenge and THINK FOR YOURSELF! I don't think it was just that I had learned by then to work to my own satisfaction, rather than anyone else's (although that was part of it), a big part of it I am sure was a difference in attitude on the part of the course leaders from what I had experienced in formal education anywhere before.  I loved it! Haven't finished my M.Ed yet, but I will (one day)...

The feral learning idea grew out of an assignment I did for a paper in Instructional Design. I once heard Marc Prensky quote his game designers as saying "You give an idea to an instructional designer and they'll suck all the fun out of it..." Frankly, I think they have a point - and not just instructional designers, professional educators across the board tend to fall into the same trap. And you know, none of those andragogy, pedagog or other-gogies actually describe how I learn, although Jack Mezirow's transformative learning is close (although he doesn't understand kids), and so is Linda Silverman's visual-spatial model. Why on earth not?

I was very fortunate to find myself participating in a group at CABWEB with Jan Visser of the Learning Development Institute (LDI), who was editing a book, "Learners in a Changing Learning Environment". Jan invited me to submit a chapter on feral learning (which I'd been holding forth on at some length) - so the ideas got formalised and incorporated into the book... which I'm very proud of.

So here I am... in a bit of a hiatus at the moment because Real Life has taken over again for a while - and developing my own PLN through interesting sites like Change the Schools,  Edutopia,  AERO,  Shifting Thinking and the like.

I wonder what's around the next corner?

What's wrong with this picture?

There’s something profoundly ironic about the difficulty professional educators have in accepting the power of an individual’s capacity and desire to learn.  I’ve even been in a seminar recently where the presenter joyfully produced a photo of a sign over a school gate:

“If you’re not here, you can’t learn!”

The teachers in the room loved it.

So, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that is that the real question is not if we’re learning, or where we're learning, it’s what we’re learning.

Would we accept a doctor telling us that if we aren’t in hospital we can’t heal, or a lawyer telling us that if we don’t have a defence attorney we’re not safe? I don’t think so.

[Thought: Perhaps everybody who works in education (or wants to) should be handcuffed to a 14-year-old for a fortnight or so to remind them what we're really there for, how hard and complicated life is, and how much our kids need us to help them find the things that will make their lives feel like a gift not a penance...]

Learning is what children do.
They can't help it. They sure as heck don't need us to tell them how to do it. Babies and young children are natural learners, natural scientists. They spend their lives conducting experiments - testing the world around them in order to understand it. Everybody’s first five years are shaped by a series of "scientific" experiments - an ongoing series of situations where you interact with the world around you in a purposeful way in order to refine or expand your understanding of it…Taste… Observation… Manipulation... Interaction…. An ongoing and vitally important process of trial and error. It may lack the level of verbal sophistication you would use now, but it's a robust scientific process none the less.

New Zealand's ECE curriculum by the way is a marvellous document - well worth a look as a model of how a genuinely student-centred curriculum can be created that works at a national level. Our school sector is moving towards a similar model, with the "revised" New Zealand Curriculum. There's a separate and parallel document for Māori medium education (Māori are New Zealand's first people).

If you want to understand learning - watch a kid 
 Back in Playcentre, my working definition of a scientist was "someone who finds out the answers to questions"… Now, doesn't that sound suspiciously like a definition of learning? [And I do mean “me learning”, not “you trying to teach me” which is something different]

So it's no wonder that children love science. It has been their constant companion since before they could talk.

And then they go to school, and we tell them that they can’t learn unless we let them...
 

So, let me ask you again - what's WRONG with this picture?

From the archive - The new pedagogy: Feral learning

This was originally posted in Mary's M.Ed. Journal, Tuesday, October 12, 2004. 

Several threads have come together for me during e-Fest, and the feral learning model is beginning to take on more definition.

Feral Learning is a phrase coined by Ted Nunan (1996) [see below]. My interpretation of the concept draws on constructivist and transformative learning theory.

Lert's start with an acknowledgement that learning (as opposed to being taught) is a basic, instinctual survival skill.

From before their birth human beings learn more, better and faster than any other species on the face of the planet. This characteristic of the species is cited as the reason why human young take such an absurdly long time to reach sexual maturity. The extra time is available for learning - assimilating information into our disproportionately large brains. The ability to learn, and to mainipulate thoughts, is what we humans have instead of strength or speed or size. An infant (and not only the human infant) learns - assimilates information and uses it to manipulate its environment - or it does not thrive.

This is the natural condition of children up to the age at which we put them into a formal eduation setting. For the next 12 years or more of that child's life, we have traditionally proceeded to alienate them from their own learning process. Pupils are socialised not to enquire for the sake of it, because they want to know, because it's fun finding out - but to channel their learning into the narrow curriculum that someone else has determined they OUGHT TO be interested in. The compliant survive this system - some survive well, and some of them go on to become the next generation of teachers. Those who don't learn (in Marc Prensky's words) to "play school" become alienated and drop out.

We continue to socialise students throughout primary and secondary school and on into undergraduate study, to accept that someone other than themselves is the best arbiter of what they need to learn, what they ought to learn, and what they will learn. Anything they pursue for themselves outside of their formal education curriculum is scorned. They are labelled as "off-task", "un-co-operative", or worse. Of course, those who do reach the giddy heuights of post-graduate study are then expected to be self-motivated, reflective, critical thinkers in spite of the training that has got them to that point.

Feral learning is alive and well. What Wayne Mackintosh referred to as the future that has already happened. For the most part, it does not reside in formal education centres. It lives in early childhood, (the pre-school sector) and in the social interactions and interests of people outside of formal eduacation. Most of all, it rules the internet. This is not, as some have suggested, a problem to be overcome. It is the energy that powers the new pedagogy. Rather than farmers taming the landscape, the educators of the new age must learn to be conservators of the natural world.

Feral learning is

• holistic
• student-led
• seamless
• a-curricular.

Holistic: The pedagogy of feral learning is less concerned with reducing the scope of knowledge to a modular series of disciplines or curriculum areas than with acknowledging the validity of learning as and when it occurs.
Student-led: Transformative learning, even more than constructivist, describes learning in terms of the contribution it makes to an individual's personal development. A transformative learning experience is one that changes (transforms) the learner's understanding of their world.
The roles of the educator in a feral learning environment are in many respects the same as those described in existing student-centred models of learning: mentor, coach, facilitator, guide, assessor, co-constructor of knowledge. There is a strong overlap here with the roles of a professional counsellor. This is no coincidence. Like constructivism, transformative learning and feral learning, counselling theory and practice is rooted in the writings of theorists such as Jung, Berne and Carl Rogers.
The one role that is no longer appropriate is Dictator of what is relevant. Rather than prescribe curriculum content, the educator's job is to assess how the content selected by the learner may speed them on their learning journey.
Seamless: Because feral learning describes a lifelong process of growth and adaptation it is a seamless process. It is not helpful to base learning models on arbitrary distinctions between how an eight year-old, an eighteen year-old and an eighty year-old learn. It is not the process of learning that changes, but the social context in which those learners are placed. Anyone familiar with the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum, Te Whariki, will know that it is based on an acknowledgement that young children are critical, self-directed, reflective learners. If we as educators provide a learning environment throughout their later years that enables students to retain those characteristics, there is no need to create pedagogical models of how we learn when ownership of our own learning is alienatd from us. The infant can mature incrementally into a critical, reflective, self-motivated post-grad student.
A-curricular: Feral learning is a-curricular in that all learning is acknowledged as valid. In a formal education context, the only vestige of curriculum that is required in a feral learning pedagogy is an assessment framework. How or where a learner acquires their learning (the content) is not the point. The point is whether they have done it. Again, this is simply an extension of existing pedagogical principles. A primary school student's integrated studies project on a topic of their choice is a feral learning strategy. A secondary or tertiary student referencing texts or theories not presented in the learning material presented to them, or drawing an analogy from a different curriculum area because it makes sense to them, is using a feral learning strategy. As these discussions clearly indicate, feral learning can, in fact, cope with some level of prescribed curricula, so long as they are a means to the learning experience rather than the end point of it.
Sandy Britain's discussion from yesterday of the different approaches to managing complexity - attenuation (filtering information/stimuli from the environment down to a level that you can comfortably deal with - as a 'discipline' or 'course', for example) or amplification (disseminating thoughts or ideas out into the environment as a blog or discussion, for example) blends into it along the way, as does the concept of "learning nuggets" from Elizabeth Valentine's presentation on m-learning.
There, though, I have to stop for now or I shall never drag myself out of gbed in the morning.

Nunan, T. Flexible Delivery - What is it and Why a part of current educational debate? Paper presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Annual Conference Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July, 1996.

The teaching of science and the science of teaching

Why is it that science has such a low profile in our formal education system?

Into the mouths of babes

Babies and young children are natural scientists. They spend their lives conducting experiments - testing the world around them in order to understand it.

What was the first experiment you (or your babies) conducted? Perhaps it was putting your thumb in your mouth to see what it was, what it tasted like, what shape it was, whether it would stop you feeling hungry. Perhaps it was something else... smiling at the face in front of you to see if it would smile back; seeing if you could move a limb to an intended destination; biting a nipple to see if it made the milk flow faster ;making a certain sound and waiting to see if it prompted someone to meet your need....Whatever it was, your first five years, like everyone else's, were shaped by a series of "scientific" experiments - an ongoing series of situations where you interacted with the world around you in a purposeful way in order to refine or expand your understanding of it. Taste. Observation. Manipulation. Interaction. An ongoing and vitally important process of trial and error. Of course, you were unlikely to formulate or rationalise the process with the level of verbal sophistication you would use now, or that I am using now, but the integrity of the scientific process was there none the less.

It's no wonder that children love science. It has been their constant companion since before they could talk.

And then they go to school...

So, why does it languish in so much of our formal education system?


It's not (all) rocket science

Here's a challenge: see if you can capture the internal dialogue you go through when someone says the word "science". What does that label conjure in the recesses of your subconscious? I'm betting that for many of us, it goes something like this:

"H'mm - science. That means laboratories and equations and test tubes...
...it's things I don't understand....
... writing things in notebooks and diagrams of bunsen burners and things...
...it sounded like it should be fun before I started doing it. Why wasn' it fun?...
... so many rules and don'ts ...
...so hard to get the right answers first time. Never long enough to figure out why..."

 One of the things I realised in reflecting on this, is that part of my subconscious framing of 'science' is that it is, by definition, things I don't already know about. The the things I know already or can do, aren't 'science', they're facts of life, folklore, skills, habits... something other than 'science'.  Science is the scary unknown.  As in: "It's not rocket science."

Good grief! How did that happen? I love science - the idea of it, anyway. I'm fascinated by the ideas, the cutting edge theorising about how things are, what they are, and why they are. I even carry a little book called The Little Book of Big Ideas - Science in my briefcase to read on the bus. When my kids were at  ECE I used to love setting up experiments for them to explore ideas - wave theory, floating and sinking, gases, all the usual 'science games'.


So what is 'science' if it's not the big scary unknown stuff?
Back to ECE days, my working definition of a scientist for  my 3- and 4-year-olds was "someone who finds out the answers to questions".  I've recently had that amended to "someone who does something to find out the answers to questions".  Which, by extension, makes science the process of doing something that helps you find out answers to questions. 

Now, doesn't that sound suspiciously like a definition of learning?

So why is science languishing in our schools? I suspect that it's at least in part a victory of form over substance.  'Science' in school isn't really about developing a robust process of trial-and-error that will provide answers to our questions - satisfying our natural curiosity about what, how, why, and so on. It's
about being right. Keeping the 'right' records, getting the 'right' results in your classroom experiments, labelling the 'right' parts of the diagram, looking up the 'right' part of the textbook (or internet site).

How ironic.  Real science isn't about being right first time. It's about asking the questions we can't answer, learning from the things we didn't get right the first time when we try again (there's no "trial and error" if you don't allow "error").  In trying to ensure that we direct students to the right answer in the shortest possible time, we have quite literally schooled curiosity out of our education system, and out of many of our students.

The science of teaching
This idea of science as a process of doing something concrete - interacting with the world around us - in a purposeful way that will increase our understanding, is pretty much the same as the idea of 'action research' or, in this year's jargon, "evidence-based practice". It's what we ask our teachers to do when they collect information about student achievement to evaluate the effectiveness of their classroom programmes and practices.

So why does it seem so hard to transfer those ideas to  physical sciences?  I'm not sure I have the answers -  but perhaps we should be  looking a bit harder for ways to join the dots.

From the archive: Transformative learning (2)

Transformative Learning

This was originally posted in Mary's M.Ed. Journal, Friday, September 10, 2004 as part of a larger post, Discussion: Design & development phase

 Transformative learning is based on humanist principles and is in many ways an extension of the constructivist framework. With roots in the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow about self-direction and self- actualisation, it spans the fields of education and counselling. The critical difference is that transformative learning not only perceives the learner (client) as being at the centre of the process, it also explicitly frames the learning process as an aspect of the lifelong process of personal growth and development. The learner learns because they have a natural inclination and an intrinsic motivation to do so. It is a natural part of the human condition.

According to Hiemstra and Brockett (1994),

Humanism generally is associated with beliefs about freedom and autonomy and notions that "human beings are capable of making significant personal choices within the constraints imposed by heredity, personal history, and environment" (Elias & Merriam, 1980, p. 118). Humanist principles stress the importance of the individual and specific human needs. Among the major assumptions underlying humanism are the following: (a) human nature is inherently good; (b) individuals are free and autonomous, thus they are capable of making major personal choices; (c) human potential for growth and development is virtually unlimited; (d) self-concept plays an important role in growth and development; (e) individuals have an urge toward self-actualization; (f) reality is defined by each person; and (g) individuals have responsibility to both themselves and to others (Elias & Merriam, 1980).